Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon posed for a photo with Gov. Linda Lingle on Tuesday inside his office in Jerusalem. Lingle's visit to Israel, she said, is more about strengthening relations and raising the state's profile than about the politics of the volatile Middle East.
Lingle makes dream
trip to IsraelThe governor and state officials
seek to "establish friendship"
As a girl, Gov. Linda Lingle saved her dimes to plant trees in Israel, all the while conjuring an image of a fantastic faraway place.
This week, Lingle finally made the trip she long wanted to take. And while it came amid rising tension and increased bloodshed in Gaza and shifting international support for Israeli politics, Lingle said it was a defining experience of her life.
"For me personally, as a Jew who grew up hearing about Israel, talking about Israel, hearing about Israel as a place where Jews could always go, it was a tremendous experience," she said yesterday by phone from Tel Aviv.
Lingle arrived in the Middle East late Monday with a 27-member delegation of state officials and representatives of Hawaii's Jewish community, hoping to create a partnership between the islands and a country she says is also sort of an island "because they're surrounded by neighbors who are unfriendly to them."
Israel and Hawaii are separated by more than 8,600 miles, but both occupy similar land areas and both base their economies on tourism, agriculture and the military. Lingle brought along state Adjutant General Robert Lee, state Business and Economic Development Director Ted Liu and state Agriculture Director Sandra Lee Kunimoto, among others, in hopes of capitalizing on those similarities during the trip, which concludes tomorrow.
"The bottom line really was to establish friendship between Israel and Hawaii," Lingle said.
To that end, there has been a marathon of meetings with those at the highest levels of Israeli government, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, with whom Lingle said she spent an hour on Tuesday.
Lingle says the trip could have a number of positive results for Hawaii, but perhaps most defining is the personal impact it may have on a woman for whom Judaism is an inseparable part of her life.
Growing up in St. Louis, Lingle attended services and Sunday school every week, learning about her faith, in part, from a devout grandmother who she said once quit her job because her boss was an anti-Semite.
Today, Judaism remains an influence. She meets weekly with a rabbi, Yitzchok Krasnjansky, who joined her in Israel this week. Fresh-baked challah arrives at her office on Fridays for Shabbat and a mezuza has been affixed to the doorway at her home across from the Capitol.
She has strong support among Jews, including Democrats, and she's received checks from supporters scattered across the country. After she was elected in 2002, an Israeli Web site declared her "Hawaii's Jewish Queen."
"For any Jewish person, it's a tremendous experience to come here to Israel," said Lingle, who made the journey at the expense of the Israeli government. "It's really just been a trip of a lifetime."
Along the way, there were emotional experiences for the 50-year-old Republican governor.
At Judaism's holiest site, the Western Wall, Lingle tucked two notes into the cracks. It's tradition to write a prayer and leave it at the wall, the remains of biblical temples, though Lingle wouldn't say what she wrote.
At the President's Forest, Lingle planted trees, just as she hoped her dimes would do as a child.
And at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, Lingle said she was especially affected by the portion of the museum that pays tribute to the children who died at the hands of Nazis during World War II.
Yesterday, Israeli troops killed eight Palestinians, most of them armed, and demolished several buildings in a Gaza Strip refugee camp. In the West Bank, three Palestinians were killed by army fire. The White House sharply criticized Israel's military operations in Gaza and stepped aside to let the U.N. Security Council condemn the Jewish state's campaign in Gaza.
"I think Israel sees the United States obviously as its greatest friend and ally, and I don't think anything has been said to change that," Lingle said.
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Deal with Israel
to encourage sharing
of agricultural research
Gov. Linda Lingle signed an agreement yesterday with the Israeli government intended to encourage cooperation in agriculture and aquaculture research and development.
Lingle is leading a 27-person delegation to Israel, which has an economy centered on tourism, agriculture and military, much like Hawaii. The agreement is one of a number of efforts the Lingle administration expects to result from the Mideast trip.
Sandra Lee Kunimoto, chairwoman of the state Board of Agriculture, said there are a number of areas in which the islands could learn from Israel, including irrigation, pest control and water recycling. Likewise, she said, Israel hopes to learn from Hawaii's advances in fields such as aquaculture.
"Both sides stand to gain," Kunimoto said by phone from Tel Aviv. "We have so many issues in common."
Kunimoto visited a research farm yesterday and planned to tour livestock operations today.
The agreement, called a memorandum of understanding, was signed by Lingle with Israel Katz, the Israeli minister of agriculture, in Beit Dagan, a town northeast of Tel Aviv.
"We are planting a seed that will lead to mutually beneficial exchanges of knowledge and technology," Lingle said in a news release. "And our respective economies will grow as a result."
