Coronavirus is the great equalizer, but it's not enough

Israel’s adversaries are watching as the country constantly fails to grasp the health crisis and health restrictions and regulations swing back and forth.

By JPOST EDITORIAL
Coronavirus face masks in the pattern of the Israeli flag (photo credit: NINA BRODER)
Coronavirus face masks in the pattern of the Israeli flag
(photo credit: NINA BRODER)
Coronavirus is the great equalizer. It does not distinguish between wealth, race, gender, sex or any of society’s other great dividers.
The best example for this was highlighted with Friday morning’s stunning news that President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump had both been infected by the virus.
There is definitely irony in hearing that the man who had long dismissed the virus as a mild affliction has now been forced to hospitalize because of the same virus.
But that is not for now.
Now is the time to send best wishes and prayers for the president’s full recovery from this dastardly virus.
And while this is true for everyone who is sick, when the president of the US is hospitalized and potentially incapacitated, that is a matter of national and international security. First and foremost, it applies to the US, but it also applies to the rest of the world, especially in volatile regions like the Middle East.
What is happening right now in Israel, where world records in infections and fatalities per capita are being broken with worrying regularity is no less a national security challenge for the country than Trump’s illness is for the US.
Israel’s adversaries are watching as the country constantly fails to grasp the health crisis and health restrictions and regulations swing back and forth. They surely wonder whether the country is as strong and resilient as they had assumed it to be.
And there are problems in the way the situation continues to be managed. One example was the announcement by Public Health Director Prof. Sharon Alroy-Preis on Thursday that the government’s decision to extend restrictions to departing flights through October 14 was made to create equality. It was difficult, she said, to tell Israelis not to travel more than a kilometer from their home when “someone who has money, can buy a plane ticket and travel somewhere else.”
That comment was indeed strange.
Yes, the virus is, as mentioned, the great equalizer, but what sense does it make for the entire country to be prevented from flying abroad because there are others who cannot afford to do so? Sadly, that is the case every day even without a raging virus, and based on this logic, nobody should ever be allowed to fly abroad if there are others who don’t possess the means to do so.
And this is far from the only example. The entire lockdown in which Israel currently finds itself stems from the government’s failure weeks ago to lock down the areas with the highest infection levels.
This should have applied to ultra-Orthodox areas and communities that are now responsible for 40 percent of all infections, proportionately four times the size of the sector among the population.
Coronavirus commissioner Ronni Gamzu’s “traffic light” plan was supposed to isolate areas according to infection rates. If an area is red, it locks down, but if a nearby population center is green, it remains open.
The government, under pressure from Haredi politicians such as Shas leader Aryeh Deri and UTJ head Ya’acov Litzman failed to implement the plan and instead led us to where we are today – a nationwide lockdown.
All this makes little sense, but if equality is needed, there are other ways for the government to start attempting to create such a culture in Israel. One example concerns military service.
For more than two years, the government has failed to pass a new bill for the IDF draft. Now would be an ideal time to enact a law that requires haredi men to begin enlisting in the military just like their secular and national-religious countrymen.
If everyone needs to shoulder the burden of the lockdown, then it makes perfect sense that everyone also carry the national burden of service in the IDF, something that the haredim have historically evaded since Israel’s founding in 1948.
And just as the entire country remains in lockdown because of a high infection rate that primarily pervades the haredi sector, so too should the haredim start to properly deliver their portion of the national burden in military service, taxes, and other national obligations.
Coronavirus is the great equalizer, but to create proper equality in Israel, systemic change is a must. Now is the time to begin.


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Equality