Published: 6 July 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
WE WERE DOING SO WELL. The personal, social and economic costs were tremendous, yet, strengthened by our sense of social responsibility and self-preservation, we stayed in lock-down, "flattened the curve," and seemed to have conquered the coronavirus pandemic.
In March, Israel was a global leader in combatting the virus, and the whole world was watching us admiringly. Even some of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's strongest critics had to agree – he seemed to be doing it right. He was listening to the experts. He took science seriously. He updated the public in daily briefings which, although overly dramatic, were nevertheless authoritative and credible.
But then, Netanyahu ordered a speedy and uncontrolled reopening of the schools and the economy with almost no restrictions. The health instructions that remained – social distancing, wearing masks, avoiding crowds – were in effect only recommendations, with almost no enforcement.
And Israel, like several other countries that took their foot off the pedal, lost control over the virus.
The result is that parts of the country will once again be shut down or restricted after the government announced a new set of directives yesterday, on July 6. Event halls, clubs, bars, gyms, public pools and cultural performances will be closed, although at the time of publishing it was unclear when the new restrictions would take effect. Restaurants will be limited to seating 20 patrons inside and 30 outside. Synagogues must have no more than 19 prayer attendees.
According to Haaretz, based on information provided by the health ministry, on Monday morning, there are 30,162 confirmed cases of coronavirus (204 of which were diagnosed in the last 24 hours); 90 of these (up by four in the past 24 hours) are considered critical or serious. There have been 332 deaths, one in the past 24 hours. Last week 30,000 people were instructed to self-quarantine.
“In terms of the number of infected, and the fact that they’re scattered throughout the country, we don’t know the sites of infection for most of the infected, so we’re unable to control the outbreaks…we can no longer disrupt the chain of infection,” Professor Eli Waxman, a physicist who heads the panel of experts advising the Israel National Security Council’s deliberations on combating the pandemic, told Channel 12 TV on Sunday evening.
Those same European countries that looked at us with envy only a few months ago are opening up their borders to tourism. Israelis, who love to vacation abroad, were so proud to be invited to join the exclusive club of safe countries, and we were already planning our trips to Greece and Rome.
Four months after the pandemic began, Israel still has no functioning system to manage operations, and no systems to aggregate and analyse data so it can be presented to decision-makers.
But now we've been kicked out of the club. Israelis, the so-called champions of health and hi-tech, are considered dangerous and infectious, and we aren't welcome anymore.
The experts told the government this would happen. In March, an advisory committee recommended establishing a ‘National Control Centre’, created by the Israel Defence Force and Mossad. This centre would be responsible for building a plan to manage the pandemic, based on daily epidemiological data and in consultation with Health Ministry officials. No such centre was set up.
In mid-June, an intelligence report warned that Israel must act urgently to avoid renewed shut down of the economy. The government did not respond.
As the numbers of the sick grew, and the numbers of the infected grew exponentially, the Knesset coronavirus committee hastily, and without explanation regarding the specifics of the plan, approved limitations on congregation in event halls, bars and clubs to no more than 50 people. No explanations were offered for the reversal; no rationale was provided for the specifics of the decision.
In any event, these measures are most probably inadequate. “We have to understand that the alternatives that lie ahead of us are to act fast now, to suppress the rate [of infection] in order to avoid a general closure later on. This will have an economic cost,” Waxman said.
All of this has happened under the “unity government” that Netanyahu insisted Israel needed to avoid a fourth election so it could tackle the coronavirus with the urgency it demanded.
Two months later, we have a bloated, inefficient government made up of two prime ministers, 36 ministers, nine deputy ministers, hundreds of jobs that have gone to cronies.
This was supposed to be the government, Netanyahu promised, that would deal with nothing other than fighting the pandemic and ensuring the economic and social wellbeing of Israelis and Israeli society. However, while this government has dealt with many things, none of them seem even to be even remotely connected to the coronavirus.
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Four months after the pandemic began, Israel still has no functioning system to manage operations, and no systems to aggregate and analyse data so it can be presented to decision-makers. Israel is still counting on tracking by the General Security Service - although the service did not want the task, despite the implications for a democratic society, and the tracking has proven itself to be wildly inefficient.
The government has yet to articulate a clear strategy for handling the coronavirus. Common wisdom tells us that to cope with the pandemic, societies must maintain a risk assessment predicated on a delicate balance between morbidity and mortality and the death of the economy. But the public has not been presented with any sort of benchmarks or rationales to back up decisions and regulations.
Nor has this government become more economically compassionate or politically caring. In a kinder society, the most important elements that ensure a minimum standard of living – including housing, nutrition, the environment, education and health – should never be abandoned to the vagaries of the free market. Yet even now, as individuals and families worry about paying the rent and feeding their children, Netanyahu continues to rail against the bloated public sector.
So it was hardly surprising when “Minister Without Portfolio” Tzahi Hanegbi, a Netanyahu loyalist and apologist, said on Israeli TV on Friday night that claims that people are hungry in this country are "bullshit". (Hanegbi has since offered an apology of the "that's not what I meant to say" variety.)
According to the Taub Centre, an independent economic think tank, nearly one-quarter of Israelis remain unemployed, and the lack of jobs is expected to create a long-term problem of unemployment. Experts do not rule out the possibility of a depression in the future.
Nor is it surprising that as unemployment soars, Netanyahu arranged a massive handout for himself in the form of tax relief. After all, coalition chairman MK Miki Zohar lamented, Netanyahu was just a hair's breadth away from becoming financially disabled and could have wound up on the breadline.
Neither is there any sign of a clear-cut economic stimulus program. Many Israelis don't know what they are or will be entitled to receive – although we already do know that that whatever it is, it will be less than what citizens in most other developed countries will be receiving.
So what does this government do? Its members are fighting each other, so consumed with petty politics, ego battles, and turf wars that they have little time to fight corona.
The “corona crisis government” has been exposed as little less than an attempt by Netanyahu to bolster his legal situation as he faces trial on charges of breach of trust, accepting bribes and fraud. And he is back to his usual tricks – degrading and humiliating his political opponents, calling for the imprisonment of independent journalists who don't toe his line, setting politicians and social groups against each other; and trying to distract and appease his hard-core political base with shifting promises of "annexation".
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Even as he claimed that he was "fighting the good fight" against the virus, media reports have revealed that Netanyahu capitulated to the demands of his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners to lock down the entire country, rather than only those neighbourhoods (most of them ultra-Orthodox) where the public was not observing the lockdown and the virus was spreading.
Meanwhile Gantz, the ostensible great hope of previous elections, has belatedly realised that by agreeing to join the "unity government," he both played into Netanyahu's hands and lost his political cred. In an effort to redeem a modicum of dignity, he has taken to publicly bickering with Netanyahu.
Turf wars have taken the place of efficient government. Ministries are fighting with each other; crude metaphors have taken the place of strategic thinking. Early on in the pandemic, the government adopted war metaphors to describe its plan for "conquering" the coronavirus. Rather than understanding, as other countries have done, that the virus is a formidable opponent that cannot be conquered and can, at best, be tamed and managed, Netanyahu and his government implied that Israel, with its massive might, could win a conclusive victory.
In a spirit of triumphalism, he opened up the economy prematurely. But now that we are losing that self-defined war, the government is blaming us, the public. Education minister Yoav Gallant explained in an interview that Israeli citizens are "rebellious and are "getting infected in cafes and at the beach" (ignoring the fact that he is a member of the government that irresponsibly opened up those cafes and beaches.)
We've been had.
And we, the public -- exhausted, confused, frightened, and increasingly financially and emotionally impoverished – have been abandoned to deal with this crisis by ourselves, making our own risk-assessments while knowing that the government is likely to undercut our very best efforts.
READ MORE
Over 30,000 Israelis ordered into quarantine as coronavirus digital tracking resumes (Haaretz)
Some say they were at home at the time in question, but they have no means of appealing the order which came after Knesset temporarily allowed Shin Bet assistance to locate suspected patients
Coronavirus burning through Haredi, Arab areas of Jerusalem (Jerusalem Post)
IDF Intelligence Corps. recommends re-opening ‘coronavirus hotels’
Coronavirus is a test for western leaders; Netanyahu passed, then lost control (Haaretz)
The Israeli government did little in the face of the sharp rise in cases. The price could be another lockdown that would decimate the economy; Netanyahu should already be preparing for Trump's likely November defeat
