ZAKA Head: Jewish Leaders Who Downplay Coronavirus Are ‘Worse Than Holocaust Deniers’

Yehuda Meshi Zahav, in an interview with Yediot Achronot, calls those who try to play down the Covid-19 pandemic “worse than Holocaust deniers.”

Meshi Zahav lost his mother, 80-year-old Sara Zeisel, and his 59-year-old brother Moshe to COVID-19 within weeks of each other. Today, his father, Reb Menachem Mendel Meshi-Zahav, the author of hundreds of Yiddish books under the name “Menachem Mendel” passed away from the coronavirus at age 84.

Meshi Zahav is the chairman and one of the founders of the Zaka emergency response organization

“This is our leaders’ fault. I say this with heavy heart, I think they’re worse than Holocaust deniers. After all, Holocaust deniers deny history, and here, they’re denying the present,” Meshi Zahav told Yediot. “What’s wrong with those leaders? How can they say ‘our hands did not spill that blood?’ There are people around here who are suspected of spilling blood, even if people call them ‘rabbis.’ There isn’t a single neighborhood, building, or home without at least one victim. Forty-four people have died in the last 24 hours, 44 families whose entire worlds fell apart, 44 families for whom nothing will ever be the same again – and we played it down. Can’t they see? Each one of us is literally a ticking time bomb,” he said.

“Their obituaries shouldn’t say, ‘rest in peace,’ but ‘may the Lord avenge their blood’ instead. Hearing [coronavirus patients’] cries in coronavirus wards, it’s heart-wrenching. There is no one there to hear them, and I am sitting there, watching ambulance after ambulance taking out the dead. This is the leadership’s fault that our public plays [the pandemic] down like this. These people are infecting their communities – and each one of them is a ticking time bomb. A ballistic missile that’s hurting others. Everything that is going on in our communities is unbelievable. They should take care of themselves the most. With any other health problem, we are quick to go see the best doctors, so what has happened here?”

{Matzav.com Israel}