H EADLINES
Israel Continued from Page 11
prosecutor and the chief of
police. Coronavirus czar
Ronni Gamzu was appointed
without the basic authority
that he needs to implement his
programs, and his plans have
been weakened by the govern-
ment’s constant bending to
pressure from diff erent sectors
of the public.
“The same government
that appointed [Gamzu] has
no problem with subverting
or eroding some of his main
recommendations and to water
them down,” said Yohanan
Plesner, president of the Israel
Democracy Institute.
Rather than operating as it
should, the coalition is in many
ways acting like an interim
Th en in the fall, with the
government and is operating as
if it is “sliding toward an election help of the Trump team, Israel
signed normalization deals
campaign,” Plesner added.
with the United Arab Emirates
and Bahrain, two of Israel’s
Netanyahu’s distractions
Israel began coming out of Arab neighbors. Netanyahu
its fi rst lockdown in early May, attended a signing ceremony
opening businesses, restau- for the so-called Abraham
rants and schools. It had four Accords in Washington, D.C.,
months to prepare for the just days before the beginning
challenges of any second wave. of Israel’s second lockdown
But besides the domestic went into eff ect, giving him
politicking, Netanyahu was just the right visuals to mount
also preoccupied with bigger a new election campaign,
moves that he knew would add whenever relevant.
Th ere would, of course, be
to his diplomatic legacy. He
fl irted with the idea of annexing competing visuals from the
parts of the West Bank, an idea anti-Netanyahu protests that
that drew criticism from an grew over the course of the
unusually wide range of stake- summer and fall. Critics of
holders — including the Trump the prime minister gathered
administration and even some outside
his Jerusalem
settlers, whom Netanyahu has home weekly to call atten-
successfully courted for years. tion to his poor handling of
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Reopening timing
Th e seemingly successful
quick reopening of Israel’s
economy that drew so much
praise proved to be dangerous,
and all sides of the government
have admitted it.
Israel began coming out of
its fi rst lockdown in late April.
Some retail outlets were allowed
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the coronavirus crisis and
his governing while under
indictment for corruption.
Th e protests grew to include
disparate segments of Israeli
society and at times resulted in
violent clashes between police
and protesters. Th is week, the
government enacted steep
restrictions on protests as part
of its pandemic response, eff ec-
tively ending the weekly public
display of resistance.
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to open, with a limited number
of customers at a time. Schools
then reopened, followed by
hotels, malls and gyms, then
restaurants, cultural venues and
event halls, all operating at less
than full capacity.
But by July, some restric-
tions — including on gyms,
public pools, event halls, bars,
clubs and cultural shows —
were reimposed as coronavirus
cases began rising again.
Israelis had headed to beaches
and restaurants, unmasked,
too early, encouraged by a
government that fi gured it had
conquered the virus.
In the hours before the start
of Yom Kippur, Netanyahu
acknowledged that the country
opened too fast aft er the fi rst
lockdown. “Did we make
mistakes in the past? Of course,”
Netanyahu said in a Hebrew
video posted on social media.
“Our decision to open event halls
was too fast. Perhaps also the
decision to reopen all schools.”
Gantz agreed, saying that
the country was also too slow
to implement widespread
contact tracing. On Oct. 3 in
an interview on Channel 12’s
“Meet the Press” show, Gantz
apologized, saying the govern-
ment had been too involved in
political squabbles to get their
jobs done.
Despite the now out-of-con-
trol COVID caseload, there is
still opposition to the second
strict lockdown — from Gamzu,
the coronavirus czar himself.
Gamzu said last week that
he preferred the idea of “a slight
tightening of the lockdown,
to prevent serious damage to
the economy.” By that night,
he called the government’s
decision to implement a total
lockdown “disgusting,” added
that he would have to take an
“anti-nausea pill.”
Schools in session
When Israeli
schools reopened for the fi rst time in
May, things did not go very well.
The announcement that
schools were opened came
out days before the planned
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
H EADLINES
reopening date. A patchwork
of policies and guidelines left
administrators scrambling.
Hundreds of teachers, students
and their relatives contracted
the virus quickly. In less than
two weeks, dozens of cities shut
down their school systems.
Still, with many Israeli
parents sick of home schooling
and supervising, clamoring
to send their children back to
school, Education Minister
Yoav Gallant insisted in July
that the next school year should
start on time on Sept. 1 —
and it did, despite widespread
objections from teachers.
Th at didn’t last long either.
Almost immediately, outbreaks
were associated with schools,
and classes, grades and even
entire schools were sent into
quarantine. Even as students
were lumped into “capsules”
to limit exposure to each
other, teachers moved between
capsules, potentially spreading
disease between them. (Th e
country had too few teachers to
reduce class sizes and had tried
to mount a rapid hiring eff ort.)
Th e situation became so acute
that schools ended up closing
before the general lockdown on
Rosh Hashanah.
Th e emphasis on getting
students back to school meant
that little attention had been
given to what would happen
if they needed to learn from
home again.
“I believe that we made a
mistake and missed an oppor-
tunity to develop the distance
learning components,” said
Zimra Vigoda, a parent whose
daughter’s school switched
to virtual learning earlier in
September when there were
too few unexposed teachers to
operate in person.
“The administration and
teachers worked hard to develop
the pod-based learning and added
a multitude of interesting courses
but, here in Israel, the land of
apparent perpetual optimism,
nobody, including myself, really
wanted to believe that in-person
learning would not be possible
this year,” Vigoda said.
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