The impact of the political infighting and vacillation is clear. The public isn’t entirely certain what the rules are, and if they’re even worth following.
By LAHAV HARKOVA man carries his shopping bags and wears a face mask in a street in Ashkelon while Israel tightened a national stay-at-home policy following the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Ashkelon, Israel March 20, 2020.(photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
There’s something very Israeli about coming together in times of crisis, something that we’ve seen many times when Israel has been at war, and more recently in March and April when fighting the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. An overwhelming majority of the country followed the government’s plan, staying at home and keeping distant from one another, keeping the morbidity numbers down and allowing the rules to be relaxed relatively quickly.But there’s also something very Israeli about not wanting to be a frier, or a sucker. It’s why we’re so bad at waiting in lines. And it’s also where we’ve been for the past two months. Why should I have to be uncomfortable in a mask if they’re not wearing one? My business doesn’t need to suffer under all these new rules, because I know how to handle this crisis.How did we get from one quintessentially Israeli characteristic to another? And why haven’t we been able to get back to taking the pandemic-fighting rules seriously?There are a lot of answers to that question. For example, a huge number of people are suffering economically, and those who had no income during the last lockdown are loath to go back to that situation again.Another major reason that Israelis are more reticent to follow the rules again is that there’s a crisis of trust in the government and its experts.On Tuesday, the Israel Democracy Institute released a poll showing that 75% of Israelis felt disappointed, angry or alienated toward the government’s handling of coronavirus.Trust in the figures leading the fight against coronavirus has plummeted in recent months. On March 29, the IDI found that 63% of Israelis trusted the government’s medical experts; that number stayed steady through June. This week, only 40.5% of Israelis said they trusted the experts. Trust in government economic experts dropped from 48% to 23% in the same amount of time.The public’s trust in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also fell dramatically since the start of the coronavirus crisis, from 56% at the end of March to 29.5% this week.The drastic decline in public trust is clearly a response to a government that seems incapable of functioning properly in this time of crisis.There are a number of steps other countries have taken to successfully keep the pandemic at bay, relatively speaking, steps that Israel did not take in the past four months.The government didn’t establish a system to cut off chains of infection. It hired only a few hundred epidemiological investigators, when about 2,000 are needed, and they are unable to keep up. Information about coronavirus tests are not concentrated in one place, making it harder to know when people were infected. No smartphone application for checking if people were near someone with coronavirus was developed. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) system doesn’t recognize walls – even though you can’t catch it just because your neighbor on the other side of the wall had it – and it doesn’t have an appeals system.As KAN’s Amichai Stein lamented in a video this week about all the things the government has failed to do, cabinet ministers debated fireworks for Independence Day and when bakeries should open after Passover, but they didn’t hold even one discussion of these important measures.Meanwhile, the Likud and Blue and White sides of the unity coalition have been pulling in different directions and trashing one another in the media, and then we’re left with indecision and confusing choices that are not explained to the public.In Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz said Blue and White will not agree to any further limitations without understanding the previous steps’ impact.“We have to strengthen the public’s trust,” he said.Health Minister Yuli Edelstein asked “what steps are you talking about?” He pointed out that weddings are the only things newly shut down, since the Knesset canceled the order closing gyms and swimming pools, in an incident that challenged coalition discipline.No decisions were made in Tuesday’s meeting.Things came to a head afterward, with senior Likudniks complaining to the media Gantz is “politically motivated” in stopping more drastic steps to stop the chain of infection, and this will lead to a full lockdown with all of its economic costs. Blue and White also accused the Likud of playing politics and said now is the time to transfer funds to the self-employed and give the Defense Ministry – which Gantz heads – the authority to lead the fight.The impact of the infighting and vacillation is clear. The public isn’t entirely certain what the rules are, and if they’re even worth following. They certainly don’t trust that the government is making the right decisions.The government will have to work hard at regaining the public’s trust on a matter of life or death.
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