Israel: Week Ending March 5th

Business to open on Sunday despite high Covid numbers,High Court Recognizes Reform and Conservative conversions creating a firestorm from Ultra Orthodox and much more

Prime Minister Netanyahu is in the midst of his reelection campaign, and therefore, as a leading Israeli commentator said the other night, any decisions regarding COVID–19 and necessary health considerations are only coincidental. On Thursday, Netanyahu appeared on Fox and Friends and announced that COVID–19 was over in Israel. This announcement was made the day after the Likud received special permission to hold its kickoff rally for the upcoming election with more attendees than currently allowed.

The health establishment was aghast at Netanyahu's declaration, in fear it will lead to people ignoring all caution, as the economy opens up almost entirely on Sunday. The country is taking a tremendous risk — despite the continued emergence of an average of over 4,000 new cases a day, the hope is that with 50% of the population inoculated, the numbers could continue to go down. Fewer and fewer people will become severely ill. However, pessimistic observers are very concerned.

To date, the vaccine’s stunning efficacy has only been vetted in conditions where people kept social distance; what happens when all restrictions are lifted remains a big unknown. Also, while 50% of the population has been vaccinated, the other 50% (including all the children), are not. There are an increasingly greater number of cases of young people becoming infected with COVID–19, including more cases of severely ill children. But with the election less than three weeks away, hotels (with full food service), restaurants (which effectively also means bars), wedding halls, and middle schools will open on Sunday. Technically, according to the rules, only people who have been fully vaccinated or those who have recovered from Coronavirus can enter indoor restaurants or wedding halls, but as one wedding hall owner honestly admitted, he has no way of enforcing the regulations.

Meanwhile, political pressure worked, and as of midnight Sunday, Ben Gurion Airport will be open to all incoming Israelis. Travelers will have to show a negative COVID–19 test within 72 hours of boarding their flights. Those who have been vaccinated abroad will have to go into limited quarantine, until their serological test results come back. As of Midnight, the forced stay in hotels will come to an end, although legislation to force everyone who returns from abroad to wear a location bracelet to ensure all those who land here stay in home isolation has not yet been passed. Instead, the government has promised increased enforcement of the requirement to remain at home, by having surprise home visits. No one believes that will work. So now, Israel braces to officially welcome every COVID variant it has tried to keep out these past two weeks. For Israeli who seek to travel abroad, anyone fully vaccinated individual is permitted to leave, but those who are not vaccinated need special permission. Flights will currently be limited to New York, Paris, London, and Kiev.

POLITICS

This week, the Supreme Court breathed life (and not necessarily in a positive sense) into the moribund election campaign. After waiting 12 years for the government to pass a law on the matter, the court ruled that conversions by Reform and Conservative Rabbis performed in Israel are to be recognized under the Law of Return that grants all Jews the right to move to Israel.

The ultra-Orthodox parties went off the deep end. They immediately articulated their scathing criticism of the decision and defiantly stated they would not sit in any government that did not override this latest Supreme Court decision. United Torah Judaism (UTJ) then came out with a Facebook ad, which compared Conservative and Reform Jews to dogs. Adding insult to injury, a UTJ Knesset member went as far as to say that conversions that take place in the army (by orthodox, but not necessarily ultra-orthodox Rabbis) were invalid. He called a woman who converted that way a “Shiksa” (a derogatory Yiddish term for a non-Jewish woman), and added that a parent would have to sit shiva for their son, if he decided to marry such a woman. Not to be outdone, Shas came out with an ad warning that thanks to this new law, Reform and Conservative Rabbis would convert all of the illegal Africans in Israel, thus, allowing them to stay.

These actions and statements forced Yair Lapid, once known as a warrior against the ultra-Orthodox, (but who has been more restrained in the past year, in the hopes of potentially entering into a coalition with them), to finally react, calling the ultra-Orthodox “genuine antisemites”. Avigdor Lieberman, who has not wavered in his commitment not to join any government that includes the ultra-Orthodox, has also seen his support grow due to recent events.

In some perverse ways, these events work to Prime Minister Netanyahu's advantage, in that they have built up Lapid, making him Netanyahu’s leading opponent. This brings Netanyahu back into his comfort-zone campaign, i.e., warning that unless he is reelected, the detested Left-wing, led by Lapid will come to power. However, after this past year battling Coronavirus, it is unclear whether or not the average Israeli fears “the Left” more than they despise the ultra-Orthodox.

On another front, the announcement that the International Court of Justice in the Hague plans to open an investigation into Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza came as a complete surprise to the government. They believed that with the term of the current chief prosecutor ending shortly, she would refrain from rendering any crucial decisions. Netanyahu promptly called the decision “an act of antisemitism”. The Prime Minister’s swift denunciation of the investigator seems a rather pavlovian response to any criticism of Israel.

First, I oppose the action, on legal grounds (since the court’s jurisdiction is only over acts between state actors, and at the moment, Palestine is not a recognized state). Furthermore, I agree with many regarding the Whataboutism criticism — i.e. there are numerous other and much more severe violations of international law that the court has not chosen to investigate. That being said, I find it challenging to listen to critics who defend all of our actions. We have been an occupying power for 50+ years. When you occupy a people for that long, you are bound to make mistakes, whether intentional or not, that violate international law and norms.

I can say that I witnessed some such actions 40 years ago, and I am sure the situation has not gotten better with the years. It's time for Israelis (and others) to understand fundamental truths. This occupation would have ended years ago, if the Palestinians had been willing to make the minimal concessions required to resolve the dispute. Second, even though the Palestinians are mainly responsible for our continued occupation, occupation is terrible. There is no such thing as a good occupation. It destroys both the occupied and the occupier, and that is certainly true after 50 years.

Nadav Eyal landed a blockbuster interview with the former number two in the Mossad. In the interview, he blasted the overall decision processes employed by Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the results to which they led. He stated that there was no real strategic planning taking place at the governmental level. The former Mossad Deputy Chief claimed that Netanyahu’s effort to persuade President Trump to exit the nuclear agreement with Iran was a disaster. Israel, he argues, is worse off due to Netanyahu's all-or-nothing strategy. "Look at what happened since Israel pushed to cancel the nuclear deal; and the amount of uranium Iran has accumulated since then. It's terrible.” He added pulling out of the accord, without a “Plan B” was a huge mistake. Iran, he claims, is now closer to a bomb and a delivery system than when Trump pulled out. The former Mossad Deputy Chief also criticized Netanyahu's actions in opposition to the original agreement, claiming that because of Netanyahu’s actions Israel lost its seat at the table and its chance to make the deal better, by opposing the Obama Administrations' actions.