DIPLOMACY OF SOIL
It’s a world where embassies talk missiles and markets. Israel and the Philippines, meanwhile, talk about greenhouses.
“Over the past four years, under my leadership, the embassy has remained committed to my vision of ‘building bridges of innovation and technology’ between Israel and the Philippines,” Fluss said.
It is a vision rooted literally in soil.
“A few weeks ago, we inaugurated a 3.5-hectare greenhouse facility in Bulacan province. It is the largest greenhouse project in the Philippines, fully based on Israeli technology and expertise.”
It isn’t mere economic cooperation. It’s co-survival.
“This is the best example of smart farming based on the Israeli model adjusted to the Philippines.”
The Israeli drip irrigation systems in Tarlac. The solar-powered irrigation network in Pampanga.
The interns (700 Filipino students every year), who train in Israeli farms for 11 months, and return with skills and blueprints. For a new Philippine agriculture. For a different kind of diaspora.
“These initiatives are so important for me since they further enhance agricultural productivity, food security and rural development in the Philippines.”
It’s too big for charity. It’s co-creation. Strategic empathy. Fertile diplomacy.
QUIET PART OF LOUD
In the brutal ledger of disaster, 2013 was a year written in blood and disaster.
Typhoon “Haiyan” leveled Tacloban and turned the word itself into shorthand for annihilation. Aid came. Checks were cut. Flags were waved. Logos slapped onto relief goods.
But Israel didn’t send a slogan. It sent soldiers.
The IDF landed 148 strong. Medics, engineers, search dogs, trauma teams. No entourage. No press scrum. Just boots in the mud and hands in the wreckage.
They erected a field hospital while the air still smelled of salt and death. Treated thousands. Brought light to the dark. Filtered water for strangers they’d never meet again.
No ribbon-cuttings. No staged hugs. Just help.
And when “Odette” tore through years later, they came again. Not with headlines. But shelter kits, food, medicine.
Presence. Not policy. Not posture. Just that rarest thing in diplomacy: Follow-through. Quiet. Steady. More real.
“We don’t only send money. We come. We carry. We stay.”
If Israel’s foreign policy in the Philippines has a superpower, it’s consistency. It’s the MASHAV-built learning spaces in public schools. The partnerships with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority or Tesda, the Departments of Agriculture, and Interior and Local Government.
You don’t need to advertise compassion; you just need to practice it.
Even Israel’s support for shelters like the Laura Vicuña Foundation, where they help abused girls, is done without headlines.
REMEMBRANCE HAS AN ALLY
In a country far removed from Europe’s killing fields, Israel has found a quiet, unwavering partner in remembrance.
Each year, in partnership with the Philippine Department of Education, the Israeli Embassy marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day in classrooms, where history is served as lesson.
Here, genocide is not abstract. It’s taught with intention, with names, with faces. In a land that once said yes to Jewish refugees, memory is a shared civic act.
“Remembering our past is so important. I want to commend our collaboration with the Department of Education in holding the annual commemoration of the international Remembrance Day of the Holocaust,” said Ambassador Fluss.
The events also honor the Quezon legacy.
“We remember how President Quezon allowed 1,200 Jewish refugees escaping death and murder by the Nazis in Europe enter into the Philippines. He made sure they lived.”