ISRAEL SHUT: Netanyahu’s Lockdown is More Controversial Than Most

Israel, like most western countries afflicted with the coronavirus, is now groping toward a partial exit strategy from the severe government measures imposed on the public. Only the debate there is more fraught because of the growing disparity between the economic toll and that inflicted by the virus itself.

On March 25, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu declared a state of national emergency and essentially shut down the country. The speech came four days after Israel recorded its first covid-19 death. The victim was an 88- year-old man; the fact that he was a Holocaust survivor added emotional impact. So did Netanyahu’s rhetoric. “Citizens of Israel,” he said, “the coronavirus joins the deadly epidemics that have hit humanity – the Black Death, cholera and the Spanish flu early in the last century.”

Later, officials of the Health Ministry put numbers to his warning: Tens of thousands of Israeli could die. That number set the tone for what came next – the imposition of a strict, nationwide shutdown of schools, businesses and gatherings of any sort. Since then, 150 Israelis have died of the virus or its complications, substantially lower than that of most European countries and many American cities.

The most recent polling shows a large majority of Israelis support Netanyahu’s policies. If elections were held today, his party and its allies would win an easy majority. They credit him for the low death total.

But this cause and effect thesis was challenged this week by Professor Isaac Ben-Israel. Calculating the growth in reported case around the world, he argues (in a paper published in Hebrew) that the virus follows a predictable eight week cycle from start to finish; and that this cycle is largely independent of government action. He also accused the government of sacrificing the national economy in what was, at best, an overreaction. In an English version of the paper, Ben-Israel writes:

“It is possible to lift the restrictions that are not only causing monetary losses, but are leading to a higher amount of deaths (unrelated to the coronavirus). At the same time, it is possible to keep cost-efficient measures (as in: wearing masks, expanding the testing, especially to specific populations, restricting mass gathering, etc.).”

He recommends that of April 19, 50% of the workforce returns to work, with the rest returning a week to 10 days later (apart from a small number of groups where contagion growth needs to be monitored). His paper suggests that social isolation measures can be useful and also backs the expansion of testing.

Ben-Israel is a physicist and mathematician who heads two prestigious academic think tanks at Tel Aviv University. A retired major general in the Israeli Defense Forces, he commanded air force intelligence and the Israeli Administration for the Development of Weapons and Infrastructure. In civilian life, he led Israel’s National Cyber Initiative, is the chairman of the Israel Space Agency and co-chairs the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative.

Despite his formidable reputation, Ben-Israel’s research was greeted with derision by the former or current public health officials who dominate prime time commentary on Israel’s three major television networks. Dr. Gabi Barbash, the former head of Tel Aviv’s largest hospital, spoke for the consensus. “We’re going to be living with the coronavirus for the next year,” he asserted after a TV appearance by Ben-Israel. “I strongly urge that we not let mathematicians – who know nothing about biology – determine when we lift the shutdown.”

But even if Ben-Israel’s thesis is an outlier, he is not alone in thinking that the “war on the coronavirus” does not justify an open-ended national lockdown. On April 6, 25 of Israel’s leading medical scientists and economists sent a public letter to the Prime Minister, asserting that the virus has been sufficiently contained and the country should be allowed to return to normality. Signatories included the deans of several medical schools, two former heads of the Ministry of Health, a roster of senior professors and Nobel Prize Laureate bio-chemist Aaron Ciechanover.

The letter didn’t dispute that government action had been effective but mainly concerned the horrific economic and social price of the shutdown. In just a few weeks unemployment has risen from 4% to 25%. Entire industries have been destroyed. The Treasury estimated (as of April 1) that the cost of the government rescue package will be 5.7% of GDP.

The Israeli ethos frowns on discussions of money in a time of national emergency. “Human life comes first,” is the slogan. But realism is also a strong force in Israeli thinking and realists see the war against the coronavirus in broader context. “Every year, about 4,200, mostly elderly patients with underlying diseases, die from respiratory complications not unlike corona,” says Professor Arie Bass, a longtime member of Israel Medical Association’s Board of Ethics. “That’s probably many more than will die from the effects of this virus. Has anyone ever suggested that we close down the country over it? ”

On Sunday, the cabinet is scheduled to decide on planned first steps in relaxing restrictions. The meeting is a formality. By design, there are no independent thinkers among Netanyahu’s ministers, and there is no serious political opposition in the Knesset. In the tug of war between safety-at all-costs pessimists and back-to-work optimists, Netanyahu holds both ends of the rope.

So far, he has sided mostly with the former. This fits both his cautious temperament and his bias toward accumulating and using power. The “war on coronavirus” has given him unprecedented control of the country. Early on, he ordered the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, to use cyber technology to track virus carriers. A terrified public accepted this departure from normal procedure as a limited emergency measure. But now Netanyahu proposes to widen the circle of surveillance to an unknown degree (perhaps beyond the “contact-tracing” being contemplated in other countries). He also seeks, understandably but also conveniently, to limit the size of public demonstrations.

Netanyahu’s supporters regard this as a simple exercise of wartime power. Cynics think it is less innocent. His intentions were there in his speech to the national in March. “I know there is considerable unrest in all parts of the people,” he said at the time. “We must put an end to this. The order of the day is unity.” He didn’t mention the price.

(c) 2020, Bloomberg Opinion · Zev Chafets

Chafets is a journalist and author of 14 books. He was a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the founding managing editor of the Jerusalem Report Magazine.

{Matzav.com}