Following the visit of the Minister of Health Adonis Georgiadis to Israel for the signing memorandum of cooperation with his Israeli counterpart, in a lengthy post on Facebook on 9.4.2024 under the title "For Israel" he writes his thoughts and feedback.
"Returning now from my short but creative visit to Israel, I decided to write an article to share with you what I saw and realized there.
The Jews are an ancient historical People who for 3000 years have been actively participating in the making of world's history. From the Translation of the Old Testament of the Septuagint in Alexandria, under Ptolemy, the Greek World and the rest of Humanity through it, came into contact with Religion and their ideas. After all, it is known to everyone that all three great Monotheistic Religions have their roots in Israel and in the Old Testament.
And yet, though one might expect from this alone, that they should have been esteemed by all others, they have instead been hated and have suffered more than any other people. Anti-Semitism, whose peak expression was the Third Reich with the Holocaust being the greatest crime of all times, was not born with Adolf Hitler. From their Massacre and Persecution by the Romans under Vespasian and Titus in the 1st century AD, to their persecution by the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella in the 15th century, until today, Anti-Semitism is here, present and unfortunately nowadays more intense in various Western countries and due to the events in the Middle East.
But why have the Jews of all the peoples been hated so much by so many different people? The answer is simple in my opinion. This people has some characteristics that make it stand out. Characteristics that led them to excell throughout the centuries. They defend their Identity, but are at the same time innovative. Contradictory characteristics at first sight, but absolutely true.
These characteristics made them stand out at different times, a distinction that was not given to them, but earned through hard work and effort. But in parallel with excellence there came the envy and the conspiracy theories, expressed in Anti-Semitism. Have no doubt, Anti-Semitism is in reality the expression of envy and jealousy of those who see others progressing. Not being able to understand how the Jews collectively succeeded as a people in pioneering, the antisemites interpreted Jewish success through conspiracy theories and hatred. In fact, anyone with rightful judgment should only feel admiration for the Jewish people. The Romans forcibly uprooted them from their land and dispersed them throughout the Empire at the time, with the aim of assimilating and exterminating them, but on the contrary, through their diaspora they prospered. The Roman Empire was dissolved but the Jews survived and came back to their land, liberated it and continue their historical existence in their ancestral lands. The more I get to know them, the more I give them credit.
Here is a small example, in comparison to us. In the 1980s we decided to abolish our Historical Spelling of Greek grammar, introducing the monotonic system, thus condemning all our future generations to the mutilation the Greek Language and their contact with 3000 years of tradition. Why have we supposedly done this? What was our excuse for not admitting our complete indifference to the defense of our Identity? That because of the Computers, we wanted not to waste time with some "useless" grammar symbols, so that we could gain time to have easier access to the new era....
The Jews, whom many Far Right supposedly "patriots" in Greece hate, re-established their State and came from all over the world to live in Israel. They decided to resurrect the ancient Hebrew that they had in their Bibles and that no one at the time, except a few Rabbis, spoke well. But they all learned it from the beginning and today it is their official language and guess what? The people with the greatest progress in new technologies are the Jews, writing Ancient Aramaic on their computers and cell phones!!! As if all of us in Greece decided collectively to learn, to write and speak tomorrow, the Greek we hear in our Churches. Can you imagine that? No, and don't even imagine it because it will not happen. Here most people think that learning Ancient Greek in our school is a waste of time, because none of all those who say this nonsense, have even thought why Ancient Greek survived and is still read all over the world without us. The Ancient Greek language did not and does not need us to exist, we need it so that we become great again, but good luck with explaining this to people who think they are entitled to everything without effort.
So you go to Israel and you see around you at the same time the Orthodox Jews with their traditional costumes and next to them the most modern, innovative and progressive people, but all of them are united by their Jewish identity.
In Hospital Ichilov which I visited yesterday I had my most overwhelming experience of all times.
At the beginning we visited the Management who told us the following: they have created a Venture Capital in which the Hospital itself participates with 15% and their own VC invests in any innovative idea born within their Hospital around Health. Together they have invited investors, who invest in start-up companies which are made by employees or partners of the hospital specialized in innovative treatments and devices in there.
In Greece we are arguing over whether we will allow Afternoon surgeries or whether our doctors will have private income and in Israel they make them participate in start ups and VCs....
Then they took us to the area of new technologies. There some of these start ups implement techniks, using 3D augmented virtual reality, so that the most difficult surgeries have 100% treatment and immediate recovery with the fewest complications.
Then they took us to the Biotechnology Laboratories that they have built on another floor with other similar companies and in collaboration with their Medical School. There they are experimenting with new immunotherapies for cancer, stem cells for innovative treatments for autoimmune diseases, etc. We are talking about laboratories from which treatments will be born that will save thousands of lives but also bring enormous profits to the Hospital, with which they will make more innovations, etc.
And all this in a Public Hospital!
Then they took us to the emergency room... there through another start up company and with digital applications which they developed in the Hospital, they do the triage using AI and automations directly on machines. So the waiting time, which was about 5 hours, has dropped below one hour. You walk into a machine yourself, it measures your temperature and pressure, you answer a few questions to a digital assistant, and the algorithm tells you how many minutes it will take you to see a specific doctor and on which floor. If the machine judges that your health is in immediate danger, it immediately brings a doctor and a nurse and they take you to the emergency room straight away…. Anything to say?…we are talking about a hospital 5 times the size of our Evangelismos Hospital, with 2.000.000 patients a year and practically zero waits…and all this with technologies that they developed not only in Israel but within their own Hospital.... You now sit here and watch the banners, the protest voices, the rallies against the afternoon surgeries in Greece and against any proposed change in general...
Needless to say that for the Israelis the afternoon surgeries, which by the way are paid for by their insurance companies, have been operating for decades and their doctors can work after hours anywhere else they want.... I was telling them what we are voting here in Greece and how the other Political Parties are reacting and they just waved head condescendingly….
And while we were in this incredibly innovative and modern environment and we were talking about the use of Artificial Intelligence and stem cells etc. they took us to the Rehabilitation Center that they have in the Hospital for their soldiers, who come every day wounded from the front.
We saw a 20-year-old, a 21-year-old girl, a 34-year-old man and a 37-year-old man. They told us their stories of how they were injured, how they are recovering in the hospital.
One of them, the 20-year-old man had been wounded again at the beginning of the war and had been hospitalized, but he went back to the front, saved the life of a fellow soldier, got wounded again and was hospitalized to rehab again. He couldn't wait to get well and go back to the front to fight for Israel…
The 20-year-old girl, a little more scared, was telling us how she was injured and what she did before going to the front.
The 34-year-old man with his wife and their 4 children were in Crete when the terrorist attack of October 7th took place. They took the first plane they could find back to Israel and he immediately enlisted, though he was in reserve. So many volunteers went, he told us, that they had nowhere to put them and at first they had no weapons to give them. He was talking to his wife, who was telling him how proud she was that he was injured fighting for their country....
I imagined us in their place…..once we were like them, now I fear that the good times have made us soft, but I hope to be mistaken and not to have to prove it any time soon.
So in the Hospital, co-exist the medical services, the entrepreneurship with VCs and start ups, the medical technology, the artificial intelligence, but also the love and sacrifice for their country.
Modernism and Tradition not against each other but in alliance.
This is Israel! This is the Jewish people and they are Admirable!
Some people will now start telling me about Gaza and the dead etc and they will be right that this war, like any war, is cruel. I wish none of this had ever happened. If the barbaric terrorist attack of October 7th had never happened, the Palestinian issue would have been resolved. But I wonder if Hamas instead of spending the billions of International Aid given to them on tunnels and bombs, they had given it to VC and new Technologies or gave it to build schools and universities in Gaza that they have been governing for so many years, how much more prosperity they would have given to their people…
I forgot to tell you that Israel has the highest Demographic Index in the Western World with a 3,1 birth rate (we are somewhere around 1,3), on the street you only see young people, each of them has 3-4 children and the vibrancy of the Country is indescribable.
In short, Israel was built by capable, patriotic and modern people, as a State of Democracy, Progress, Science and respect for Human rights. It deserves to be both supported and admired.
Leave conspiracies and anti-Semitism of all kinds and see how we can learn from them to make our Greece better."
