As Israel records more than 3,000 new coronavirus cases a day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents and also his ultra-Orthodox partners gang up against him.
By Ben Caspit, AL MONITOR
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem on Sept. 8, 2020, after his government faced an uproar on its COVID-19 policy and then backtracked on it. Photo by ALEX KOLOMIENSKY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger coined the famous aphorism that “Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic politics.” In the half century since this insightful pronouncement, the situation has only deteriorated. Today, Israel is a state in disarray. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brought the lack of management and control to an art form of rare perfection. With the number of coronavirus infections breaking daily records, Israel is verging on anarchy.
The final nail in the coffin of Israeli governance was hammered in Sept. 7 when the chair of the Yisrael Beitenu party, Avigdor Liberman, called on Israelis to stop obeying government-issued instructions related to controlling the COVID-19 epidemic. “I call on the people to act in accordance with common sense and not in accordance with government guidelines,” Liberman said, accusing Netanyahu of having “sacrificed the public’s health for the health of his coalition, and therefore government decisions being made now are illegal.”
Following Liberman’s widely quoted remarks, Netanyahu sent an urgent letter to all the heads of the Knesset opposition factions (among them Liberman, Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid, Meretz party head Nitzan Horowitz and others), urging them to stop undermining the government. The lawmakers immediately fired back angry responses, calling on Netanyahu to step down and accept responsibility for the chaos.
Liberman’s exhortations reflect what appears to verge on a campaign of organized civil disobedience. The government of Israel and the project manager it appointed to deal with the spread of the coronavirus, Dr. Ronni Gamzu, are unable to come up with a publicly credible, organized response. Public trust in the government’s coronavirus-related decisions, motivations and performance has plunged to record lows. More than 65% of Israelis give Netanyahu’s handling of the country’s health and economic crisis a failing grade. Moreover, that is not all. The government has lost almost all ability to issue publicly acceptable instructions and to translate them into action. The prevailing sense is one of a free-for-all, of every man and woman for himself or herself.
In recent days, Israel has broken all previous records for the number of daily COVID-19 diagnoses, crossing the 3,000 mark, sending shock waves throughout the system, from Netanyahu down to the heads of the coronavirus hospital wards. Already on Sept. 3, in response to the hike in numbers, Gamzu presented to the government an emergency plan. Gamzu was planning for a lockdown on some 10 designated “red” towns and neighborhoods where the rate of infection is particularly high. The residents of these towns are either Israeli Arabs or ultra-Orthodox Jews, two population cohorts that account for a significant number of Israel’s COVID-19 cases due to their crowded neighborhoods, large families and prevailing norms of mass gatherings for prayers and celebrations.
The response to Gamzu’s lockdown decision broke out three days later. On Sept. 6, mayors of ultra-Orthodox towns informed the prime minister that they were considering a halt to all cooperation with the coronavirus “czar” and the government guidelines. Some of them dubbed Gamzu as “anti-Semite” and mounted vicious attacks against him on social media and elsewhere. Arab mayors were also clearly dissatisfied with the decision and spoke of a lack of police enforcement of coronavirus rules in their communities.
After the mayors came the ultra-Orthodox Knesset members and government ministers to whom Netanyahu owes his political survival. They demanded an urgent meeting with Netanyahu, at which they hurled harsh accusations against him, not just over the planned lockdown but also in the wake of the farcical handling of the annual pilgrimage of Breslov Hasidim to Ukraine. Tens of thousands of Hasidic Jews from Israel and other countries congregate each year in the Ukrainian town of Uman on the eve of the Jewish New Year to worship at the grave of their revered Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. Israeli and Ukrainian authorities sought to prevent this year’s pilgrimage over coronavirus infection concerns. The Breslov Hasidim, considered hard-core Netanyahu voters, announced they would no longer vote for the prime minister — and Netanyahu was quick to fold. He distanced himself from the decision to close Ukraine off to the pilgrims and did what he does best in such cases: He formed a ministerial committee to examine the issue and draw up a “format” for the annual trip to Breslov. His attempts to evade the Uman affair were not entirely successful.
And so, Sept. 6 was particularly chaotic. The ultra-Orthodox turned on Netanyahu in full force, the public expressed disgust with the government’s performance and Netanyahu gave in, once again. The decision on a total lockdown in ultra-Orthodox and Arab towns was rescinded and replaced by a decision to impose a nightly curfew on 40 towns hard hit by COVID-19. That decision, too, was delayed at the last minute Sept. 7. On Sept. 8, the ministerial coronavirus committee convened and after much arm-twisting, voted in favor of a weeklong nighttime curfew from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. in dozens of towns and neighborhoods, starting immediately.
The vote notwithstanding, Israel is clearly on the brink of anarchy. In addition to Liberman’s call for civil disobedience, the head of the opposition Yamina party, Naftali Bennett, has also expressed particularly lethal criticism of Netanyahu in recent days. The prevailing sense is of a loss of government control given the inability to agree on solutions, implement them and mobilize the public’s support.
For now, none of this is having a significant destructive effect on Netanyahu. Although public satisfaction with his performance is at an almost record low, support for his Likud party remains firm and the party is still by far the biggest in the Knesset. Support for the party appears stagnant at about 30 Knesset seats (compared with the 36 it garnered in the March 2 election), while the politician benefiting most from the Likud decline is Bennett. His Yamina party, which garnered six Knesset seats in March, is polling at 21 seats, according to a Sept. 7 Channel 13 television poll.
Netanyahu is bleeding in the polls, but his disenchanted voters are moving to the right, not to the center or left. If elections were held now, Netanyahu would still manage to put together a coalition government with relative ease, without Liberman and the political center-left. Bennett is the only one who could try to blackmail Netanyahu politically after elections given his Yamina party’s surging support. Here, however, the crisis of trust between Netanyahu and the public could come into play. How will he talk Bennett into a deal of the type he forged in April with Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz, including a job switch arrangement, when everyone knows he has no intention of making good on his arrangement with Gantz? Netanyahu tells himself that all will be well, that he will cross that bridge when the time comes. Still, right now, the bridge seems to be coming apart.
“J’lem Mayor Moshe Lion attends Torah dedication against COVID-19 regulations
Also on Thursday night, events were shut down for Health Ministry regulation violations, including 15 weddings and a nightclub.
By CELIA JEAN SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 11:43 Email Twitter Facebook fb-messenger
‘THE TORAH is a book that establishes the status of the common man.’ (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
‘THE TORAH is a book that establishes the status of the common man.’
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
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Amid thousands of new coronavirus cases reported daily, hundreds of people gathered in Jerusalem for a synagogue inauguration and the dedication of a new Torah scroll in the presence of Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion and Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Rafi Peretz on Thursday night in the Malha neighborhood, N12 reported.
Also in attendance were both chief rabbis of Israel, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and Rabbi David Lau, N12 reported.
The report states that many of the participants did not wear masks or maintain social distancing, despite the Jerusalem Municipality claiming that the incident took place withing the framework of the “traffic light” restrictions.
The event took place on the backdrop of many others that occurred in violation of Health Ministry restrictions and were consequently shut down and handled by the police.
The police stated that they, “will work day and night to enforce regulations regarding holding events.” They also stated that as of Thursday night, “500 IDF soldiers were deployed for reinforcement efforts throughout the country as part of the national effort to preserve public peace and health.”
Also on Thursday night, a nightclub in Rishon Lezion was shut down after people were found having violated ministry regulations. Police infiltrated the nightclub in an undercover operation while impersonating a club goer.
Upon entering the club, they understood that the club had violated the purple ribbon standard. Hundreds of people were crowded into the club without maintaining social distancing, both workers and customers were found without masks, and people were dancing against regulations, according to the police report. ”
It has become true that the Israeli government a major human rights violator, although for entirely different reasons than anti-Israel propagandists claim. Israel does not seek to oppress Arabs. But the present Israel government is attempting to ban the Jewish faith.
AL Monitor is a viciously anti-Israel newspaper, although many of its writers are Israelis. Everything in it should be taken with a grain of salt
Israel is not having a coronavirus crisis. Instead it is having a mental health crisis among its ruling elites. Either that, or many Israeli politicians and bureaucrats have risen to what an American sociologist once called their “level of incompetence.” In other words, they have risen to high positions that are above their mental “pay grade.”
Israelis who are skeptical of the government’s repressive measures, which make the observance of Judaism nearly impossible and have forced many businesses to close,are absolutely justified. They are also justified in refusing to submit to the government’s constantly changing, nonsensical decrees, which violate their fundamental rights.
The number of daily deaths attributed to CV-2 is way down from its April peak. Total hospitalizations of people suffering from CC-2 are less than a thousand. Claims that the Israeli hospital system can’t handle that many cases is b_____t. The coronavirus wards of some Israeli hospitals are empty.
The number of supposed “cases” of coronavirus has risen only because the number of people tested for the disease has increased. Most of those who have tested have only mild or even no symptoms.
For the first seven months of 2020, Israel had no increase whatsover in the number of deaths in the country over 2019. This means that at least in Israel, either the efforts to contain the disease have been extremely successful, or the illness has decreased dramatically due to mutations to less deadly forms of the virus, or herd immunity has developed. In any case, there is no rational cause for alarm.
As in the United States, Israel’s infectious disease bureacracy classifies anyone who tested positive for CV-2 before they died as having died from CV-2, even if, as was neary always the case, they were suffering from other terminal diseases when they died (chronic lung disease, advanced cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, etc.), and had little time to live whether they contracted-CV-2 or not. That also is a partial explanation as to why Israel’s over-all death rate has not risen this year: Almost all of those whose deaths attributed to coronavirus actually died of other illnesses, and these illnesses did not noticeably increase in 2020 over other recent years.