Not Everyone in Israel Took Virus Seriously

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

When it comes to calamities, Israelis have been there, done that. More than 25,000 have been killed over the decades in wars, missile strikes, and terrorist attacks in a nation of less than nine million people.

On March 19 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a national state of emergency. Israelis were told to remain in their homes and work from there unless it is absolutely necessary to leave. All Israelis were expected to wear masks or scarves if going outside.

Schools, churches, mosques and synagogues are shuttered. The courts are shut down. Visiting parks, beaches, pools, libraries and museums is prohibited, as are all social interactions. Only “essential” services would remain open, including supermarkets, pharmacies and most medical services. The army is aiding in enforcement.

Some people were shocked by the Ministry of Health’s decision on March 17 to initiate a digital surveillance program designed to track the movements of infected citizens or those suspected of being infected, via their cell phones.

When the cabinet order was challenged, the Supreme Court required legislative authorization and oversight.

The ministry launched a new app on March 22 called “The Shield” which allows people to identify whether they have come in contact with a known coronavirus carrier in the 14 days preceding the patient’s diagnosis of the disease.

While Israel’s two chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef and David Lau, urged the public to abide by the government’s policies, one segment, comprising about 12 per cent of the population, has been more recalcitrant.

Many haredi (ultra-Orthodox) have high levels of poverty and live within large families in crowded neighbourhoods. Their access to the internet and social media is also limited for religious reasons. 

They consider themselves as a kind of “state within a state” and listen to their rabbis far more than to politicians. This has been a cause of friction and animosity between them and the rest of society.

Ultra-Orthodoxy’s highest living authority, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, at first overruled the government’s order that all educational institutions be shut and ordered all ultra-Orthodox schools and yeshivot to remain open.

Many in those communities were at first ignoring rules forbidding gatherings of more than 10 people, including for prayers, weddings, and funerals. Their religious yeshivas also stayed open.

Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, leader of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, was at first reluctant to acknowledge the threat. He resisted the stringent limitations on public movement his ministry’s own senior officials sought to impose. 

Avigdor Liberman, chair of the Israel Our Home party, on April 6 rebuked the haredi leadership, accusing it of “endangering the health of the public.” 

Liberman, who has often clashed with the ultra-Orthodox over issues of religion and state, criticized lawmakers from the United Torah Judaism and Torah-Observant Sephardim (Shas) parties for calling for limits to the restrictions on ultra-Orthodox towns, so that the community wouldn’t be singled out.

Police dispersed hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem March 30, following efforts to convince the community to comply with social-distancing orders. Of Jerusalem’s cases, 75 per cent were concentrated there. 

The government on April 2 approved a full, military-enforced closure on the haredi city of Bnei Brak, which has the highest number of infections per capita -- almost 40 per cent of its 200,000 inhabitants. The same quarantine followed for other predominantly haredi cities. 

There was also a complete nationwide lockdown for the first and last two days of the Passover holiday, prohibiting all travel between cities.

Yossi Elituv, editor of the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Hamishpaha, tweeted on April 5 that many Israelis were trying to “turn the ultra-Orthodox into scapegoats.”

Israeli society and the ultra-Orthodox community will need to engage each other in a new dialogue, rather than the current enmity.

All told, though, Israel moved quickly and its relatively low death rate provides room for wary optimism. 

It appears any exit strategy would be run in three phases, each of around two weeks, with office workers first returning to work, followed by stand-alone stores opening, and finally schools would resume.

Still, as Netanyahu remarked last month, “No one knows where this is going to go. I am navigating the Titanic and there are many icebergs before us.”