How their prime minister is making Israelis sick

These are unusual and extreme times for all those who live under the constant impact and threat of the coronavirus. It is somehow even eerier in Israel as this is the month of Jewish high holidays, a time to celebrate the Jewish new year but also, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a time to repent and ask forgiveness for sins committed over the previous year.

However, this year Israelis are not in a festive mood. The second wave of COVID-19 is worse and more deadly than the first; hospitals are filling up, with the highest ever number of patients in a serious condition, and the death toll has exceeded 1,600. Cases as a percentage of population are among the highest in the world. However, the person one would expect more than anyone to display repentance, reflection and atonement for his conduct over the last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has instead imposed an almost complete lockdown during the high holidays; and not out of concern for the health of the country’s citizens, but rather to prevent them from protesting against him.

Cynicism is not regarded as a sin for which those who attend synagogues are usually expected to ask forgiveness, and politicians without even a hint of this trait are few and far between, but in the case of Netanyahu cynicism has become a leitmotif. When the number of coronavirus cases exceeds 8,000 a day it is clearly time to act, and act swiftly. Had it not been for Netanyahu’s habitual indecision and hesitancy the government would have taken appropriate measures when numbers started to increase exponentially again. Such measures would have enjoyed broad support from the political system and the public and didn’t need to be that drastic. Nevertheless, it is sickeningly obvious that the most severe measures now in place are aimed at stopping protests at Netanyahu’s failure to contain COVID-19.

According to Israeli media reports, the highly respected coronavirus czar, Prof. Ronni Gamzu, privately expressed his disgust with the government’s decision to order a full nationwide lockdown for at least two weeks, and probably much longer. His observation was that Netanyahu pushed for harsher restrictions on the entire public after he learned that anything short of total lockdown would not satisfy the legal requirements for justifying a ban on the protests. Gamzu apparently suggested that Netanyahu’s behavior during the deliberations on the lockdown measures was so disgusting that he contemplated taking nausea pills. That feeling is probably shared by many Israeli citizens.

The sheer cynicism of not only depriving people of all social activity — against the recommendations of government experts — but worse, to push Israel’s economy into a much deeper recession, with an estimated cost of $10 billion, is unforgivable, especially when unemployment is on the rise again. Netanyahu gets away with this because he is surrounded by a cabal of loyalists who would never dare question or challenge him; his main partner in government, Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party, is spineless, and the other coalition members represent vested interests that require them to be part of government and permanently attached to the public purse.

This allows Netanyahu to blame the protesters for spreading the coronavirus, though data shows that a quarter of all those tested positive belong to the ultra-Orthodox, a disproportionately higher figure than this group’s numbers in Israel, while infections among protesters show hardly any increase on the national average. In his unscrupulous attempts to stop citizens from exercising their basic rights to assemble and protest, the prime minister is ready to compromise the democratic system, and shamefully the Knesset passed an amendment to the government's coronavirus law late last week that would bar protesters from travelling more than 1km from their homes to attend a demonstration, while also embroiling the police and the army in stopping the protesters, and in the process eroding Israel’s democracy further and further.

At a time when the most important asset a government requires to curb the pandemic is trust, Netanyahu has completely lost the confidence of the Israeli people, including many who voted for him. They witness him and his family violating the lockdown themselves, and they are smart enough to understand that his main motivation is to disrupt and derail his corruption trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He would rather destroy the civil rights of his people and sacrifice their livelihood than face justice.

This loss of trust led thousands of ultra-Orthodox to pack synagogues on the Day of Atonement, many of them not even wearing masks. They already know that to maintain his coalition Netanyahu wants to stop them from congregating, just as he is attempting to do with his political rivals. Others also violate the lockdown, though on a much smaller scale, as they recognise that they face a politically motivated lockdown more than a pandemic-motivated one.

Netanyahu’s blunt attempts to misuse the government machine and abuse his power to stop his court case led Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit to warn him that if the government continues to try and influence a criminal case, then it might be time to for him to step aside as prime minister. How much more evidence is needed to convince Mendelblit that this is precisely what the Netanyahus are doing, fomenting divisions and inciting against their political opponents, all to save their skin? It is time for the attorney general to back up his warning with action, for the sake of the entire country.

• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg