The disease Netanyahu fears isn’t covid-19. It’s dissent

Israelis protest parliament's plans to ban them from demonstrating during the nationwide covid-19 lockdown in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. (Oded Balilty/AP)
Israelis protest parliament's plans to ban them from demonstrating during the nationwide covid-19 lockdown in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. (Oded Balilty/AP)

The new Jewish year has gotten off to a savagely grim start in Israel. On the eve of the Rosh Hashanah holiday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government imposed the country’s second lockdown since the start of the covid-19 pandemic. Last week, the government again tightened restrictions. Citizens may travel no farther than a kilometer from their homes. Much of the economy will shut. The government even ordered synagogues closed, though it allowed indoor prayers under special rules on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, which fell on Monday.

Superficially, this makes sense. Israel is indeed facing total breakdown in dealing with the pandemic. A month ago, the rate of new covid-19 cases per 100,000 residents was about 20. On Wednesday, when the cabinet reached its decision, the daily rate had soared to a terrifying 130 per 100,000. Israel’s daily death rate from the pandemic shot above the United States’ rate in recent days and is now one of the highest in the world.

But the political reality behind the lockdown is more complicated — and more frightening. Two factors have driven Netanyahu's policy prescriptions since the pandemic began. One factor has been suppressing covid-19. The stronger motivation appears to be suppressing threats to Netanyahu's hold on power.

The first case in point came six months ago. The coronavirus arrived in Israel along with the country’s third election in a year. Like the previous two, it produced a deadlock. This time, though, Netanyahu faced a court date laden with symbolism — his arraignment on corruption charges — during the weeks allotted for forming a new government. The opposition was positioned to pass a law barring a criminal defendant from leading a new government.

Netanyahu recognized the crisis posed by the virus — and its political value. He appeared regularly on television, speaking of the threat and announcing new measures.

Yet even before the government imposed a national lockdown, Netanyahu's then-justice minister imposed a near-closure of the country's courts — postponing Netanyahu's arraignment for two months. The then-speaker of the Knesset, another Netanyahu lackey, attempted to shutter Israel's parliament. The Supreme Court overruled him.

But the delay, and well-crafted doomsday mood, induced inexperienced opposition leader Benny Gantz and his Blue and White party to join an “emergency government” under Netanyahu.

Which brings us to the second case in point: In May, a few days after the government was sworn in, Netanyahu lifted many of the pandemic restrictions. “We want to make your lives easier, to make it possible ... to go out and drink a cup of coffee, to drink a beer. Enjoy yourselves”, Netanyahu said. He might as well have said: "I’m safe, so Israel is out of danger".

In daily life, the attitude spread that “corona is past”, to quote my local grocer. The government reopened schools; students spread the virus. Wedding halls — a prime venue for infection —ignored rules limiting the number of guests. New cases increased — from around 100 a day at the end of May, to 1,000 on July 1, to more than 3,000 daily in early September.

Instead of solutions, Netanyahu found a scapegoat — the wave of protests against him, especially the thunderous demonstrations near his residence on Jerusalem’s Balfour Street. By midsummer, he was attacking protesters as “incubators of coronavirus”, a charge already rolled out by his allies.

The limited available evidence said the opposite. In late August, a Health Ministry epidemiologist reported that there were no known incidents of infection at the protests. With contact tracing in poor shape, the ministry could certainly have missed cases. But the protests have been outdoors, and nearly everyone has been masked. The latest research shows those measures contribute to safety. In fact, police created the main infection danger by unnecessarily forcing demonstrators into a small area, pushing them together.

Finally, as the infection rate soared, Netanyahu decided it was time to act. But against what?

The government’s coronavirus czar, Ronni Gamzu, went into marathon meetings of the cabinet’s pandemic committee last week not expecting a lockdown. Hebrew University epidemiologist Hagai Levine a member of Gamzu’s panel of experts, said the priority was to enforce the two-meter distancing rule and to ban indoor gatherings — most pressingly, on Yom Kippur. In a Zoom press conference last week, Levine expressed concern about any gatherings but noted that the number of people attending protests was 1 percent of the number expected at Yom Kippur services.

But in the meetings, Netanyahu and ministers from his Likud party focused on the protests. Only the sense of total emergency produced by a lockdown, Netanyahu concluded, would provide the political cover for forbidding citizens to protest more than a kilometer from their homes. And only a full lockdown would support an argument in court for eliminating the basic democratic right to protest.

On Sunday, in ultra-Orthodox areas of Israel, some synagogues were packed. Before dawn Wednesday, parliament approved the new measure forbidding travel to demonstrations. Netanyahu announced that the lockdown would last a month “and perhaps much more time”.

More than a campaign against the pandemic, this is a campaign against dissent. The one cause for hope is that each previous effort to suppress the protests has pushed more Israelis to join them. The battle for democracy in Israel has not yet been decided.

Gershom Gorenberg is an Israeli historian and journalist. His books include The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 and The Unmaking of Israel.

Deja una respuesta

Tu dirección de correo electrónico no será publicada. Los campos obligatorios están marcados con *