Education Ministry to present its plan to reopen schools

Health Ministry: Daily coronavirus testing reached close to 14,000 this week

The Health Ministry says it conducted close to 14,000 coronavirus tests on Thursday and almost 12,000 on Friday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has set a goal of 30,000 tests a day.

Increased testing is seen as vital to being able to slowly reopen the economy and ease social distancing restrictions on the population.

Iran records more coronavirus deaths as hardest hit state in Mideast

Iran says it registered 76 more deaths in the previous 24 hours. That puts the reported death toll from COVID-19 at 5,650 and confirmed cases at over 89,000. Iran is the country hardest hit by the virus in the Middle East.

Iranian Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour says more than 1,100 new confirmed cases were detected from the previous day.

Jahanpour added nearly 3,100 patients are in critical condition.

– AP

Trump Jr. peddles conspiracy theory about Clinton poisoning Epstein

Donald Trump Jr. suggests Hillary Clinton poisoned Jeffrey Epstein in response to a tweet the former presidential candidate posted Saturday urging people not to poison themselves with disinfectant.

“Please don’t poison yourself because Donald Trump thinks it could be a good idea,” writes Clinton, after Trump this week wondered during a televised briefing if it would be helpful to inject disinfectant into people to fight the coronavirus. The idea drew loud warnings from health experts who said it was dangerous.

In response to her tweet, Trump Jr. writes, “We know, we know… poison is reserved for a long list of people like Jeffrey Epstein… and servers. Am I right?”

The conspiracy theory surrounding the Clintons and Epstein’s death is popular in some right-wing circles.

Dozens of lawyers post letter supporting Attorney General Mandelblit

Dozens of private Israeli lawyers circulate a letter supporting Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit amid a public row with Acting State Attorney Dan Eldad this week.

“We, lawyers from the private sector, express our unreserved support and full confidence in the Attorney General Dr. Avichai Mandelblit,” reads the letter. “The Attorney General’s Office is one of the most important offices in Israeli democracy. It must be protected and its independence guarded.”

Mandelblit and Eldad engaged in an astonishing war of words Thursday, with Mandelblit saying Eldad had exhibited “moral, professional and administrative failings” during his short time in office, and the latter claiming he was under attack for investigating “worrying” information about his boss.

Mandelblit’s comments were made in a letter to Civil Service Commissioner Daniel Hershkowitz in which he expressed vehement opposition to extending Eldad’s tenure, explaining he found him unfit for the office and citing legal impediments.

Eldad was appointed to the position for a temporary three-month period in February by interim Justice Minister Amir Ohana, after former state attorney Shai Nitzan concluded his five-year term in December and after Ohana’s previous candidate was rejected by Mandelblit.

Gabi Ashkenazi: Coalition deal is ‘right thing to do’; Ya’alon: Dishrags

MK Gabi Ashkenazi of the Blue and White party says the coalition deal with the Likud is “the right thing to do.”

Asked if he is “satisfied” with the deal on a Channel 12 interview, Ashkenazi responds: “It’s not about being satisfied, it’s about doing the right thing.”

“I am convinced that – given the reality – it was the right things to do,” he says. Coalitions deals have a price, he explains.

“A responsible leadership cannot ignore the reality,” he goes on. “We said we wouldn’t sit alongside Netanyahu but we didn’t get the mandate to replace him.”

Ashkenazi understands “the disappointment” of the party’s voters but says he hopes “to convince them that this was the right decision.

Pushed on clauses of the deal that aim to protect Netanyahu from High Court intervention to bar him as prime minister or “alternate” prime minister because of the indictments against him, Ashkenazi says “there is nothing in the deal to circumvent the High Court.”

He says Blue and White will not fill all of the numerous ministries promised to it in the deal — which provides for a government of 32 ministers, rising to 36 — and won’t take all the promised deputy ministries either. (The deal provides for 16 deputy ministers in all.) He says Gantz has made clear he does not want the official residence promised to the alternate prime minister.

Asked about his former ally Yair Lapid’s allegations that Gantz, Ashkenazi and their colleagues betrayed their voters, and surrendered to Netanyahu and to ultra-Orthodox coercion, he says he respects Lapid and won’t get dragged into an exchange of allegations with him.

In a Channel 13 interview, Moshe Ya’alon, another former colleague of Gantz and Ashkenazi, says the Blue and White leaders “were reduced to dishrags, I’m sorry to say,” in the coalition negotiations with Netanyahu.

Parents of fallen soldiers criticize decision to ban families from cemeteries

Ahead of Memorial Day this week, the father of a fallen soldier says the decision to not allow families to visit military cemeteries was not thoughtful and did not take the parents’ feelings into account. The decision was made amid fears of the spread of the coronavirus.

“The government did not think of the parents. It took the easiest path, without in-depth conversations and advance preparation,” says Elifaz Beloah, the father of Nadav Beloah, killed during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

“I’m embarrassed that I have to beg the prime minister and the government to open the cemeteries. I want him [Netanyahu] to stand up and say that he trusts the parents of the fallen [service members] to be responsible enough,” Beloah says on Channel 12.

Lt. Col. Varda Pomerantz, a former head of the IDF casualties department who lost her son Daniel Pomerantz in 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, says she won’t go to her son’s grave because she is “a law-abiding citizen,” but expresses reservation about the decision.

“They’re going to reopen the country tomorrow but won’t let us go to the cemeteries?” she asked.

“His grave is 100 meters from my house. But I won’t go in solidarity with other families who can’t go,” says Pomerantz.

Memorial Day will commence Tuesday evening when a one-minute siren will ring out across Israel as the country marks the annual event amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Defense Ministry announced last month that national Memorial Day ceremonies would take place without audiences and that the smaller events planned for municipal cemeteries across the country would be canceled outright over fears of coronavirus outbreaks.

Memorial Day is one of Israel’s few national, nonreligious holidays, during which large swaths of the Israeli public typically visit the graves of loved ones and comrades.

The police will not physically enforce an order banning bereaved families from cemeteries who wish to visit the graves of their loved ones on Memorial Day next week, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett had said.

Hundreds of shops, stores to remain closed as owners demand compensation

Hundreds of businesses and shops are to remain closed tomorrow as a show of protest against the government, Channel 12 reports, amid demands for compensation.

Over 200 stores including those belonging to popular chains such as Fox, Castro, H&M, and Cafe Cafe will not open their doors even as measures lifting pandemic restrictions are to go into effect at midnight tonight. According to a government decision Friday, stores that aren’t in shopping malls will be allowed to operate if they adhere to guidelines regarding cleanliness, the wearing of protective gear and enforcing social distancing.

Business owners are demanding government compensation for operation losses in line with aid provided to small businesses in Israel.

Finance Ministry chief: Grants, loans to businesses will not heal economy

Finance Ministry Director-General Shai Babad says that the “only way to heal the economy is to reopen it,” and not through grants and loans to businesses.

His comment comes amid a developing protest by business owners who are threatening not to reopen hundreds of shops if they do not receive compensation for loss of operations during the lockdown.

Babad spoke during a Channel 12 interview panel that included Shahar Turgeman, chairman of the board of the Brill Group, a shoe retailer in Israel.

“If I were managing my businesses like you run the Finance Ministry, I would have been fired,” Turgeman told Babad who refused to respond directly.

“Businesses will need ventilators,” Turgeman said during the panel.

Education Ministry to present plan to reopen schools

Education Ministry Director-General Shmuel Abuav says a plan to gradually reopen all schools and pre-schools will be presented to the government tomorrow.

Abuav says special education programs this past week welcomed some 25,000 pupils “and it’s only the beginning.”

According to the plan, after Independence Day this coming week, pre-schools will reopen and students in kindergarten classes will be divided into groups of 15, with each group attending school for half of each week to limit the spread of the virus, he indicates.

Students in grades 1 through 3 will also return to school in groups of 15. Students in grades four, five and six, and middle school and high school pupils, will continue remote learning.

Kids in at-risk programs will also return to school after Independence Day, says Abuav.

He adds that starting on May 15, high schoolers who need extra help to catch up may be able to do so in groups of 10.

As for the summer months, Abuav says that should the resources be made available, pre-school may extend to the second week of August.

Yaakov Litzman said to leave Health Ministry

MK Yaakov Litzman, head of ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, tells Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he will step down as health minister, Channel 12 reports.

Litzman is set to head the Housing Ministry.

Litzman has been the de facto head of the Health Ministry since 2009, except for a period between 2013 and 2015 when he was out of the government.

Channel 12 reported on Thursday that Litzman had told Netanyahu of various unspecified considerations for the move, which he asserted was not tied to recent public criticism of his handling of the coronavirus crisis.

He has been largely absent from the public eye over the two months of the coronavirus crisis (the past three weeks of which he spent being treated for a COVID-19 infection alongside his wife). Though he appeared in some earlier briefings, the face of the Health Ministry’s response has been its director-general, Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, leading some to speculate on the level of Litzman’s involvement in the ministry’s decision-making.

Thousands protest in Tel Aviv against ‘erosion of democracy’

Thousands of people are protesting in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square as part of the latest “black flag” demonstration against an alleged erosion of Israeli democracy under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership.

The protesters are adhering to social distancing regulations aimed at stemming the coronavirus outbreak, as per Health Ministry guidelines. Israel’s main news channels aired footage from the protest.

The protesters oppose having Netanyahu as prime minister as long as he is a criminal suspect. The protesters say the unity government agreement, which gives Netanyahu influence over the appointment of judges and legal officials, “crushes democracy” and is meant to rescue Netanyahu from his legal troubles.

Netanyahu is scheduled to face trial next month on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes. He denies the charges.

It is the second such protest in less than a week.

The “black flag” movement’s name comes from demonstrators pinning black flags to their vehicles and homes to symbolize what they believe is a danger to Israel’s democracy posed by Netanyahu’s continued rule.

— AP contributed to this report.

US to suspend visa of Israeli with coronavirus who flew to Tel Aviv

The US has suspended a work visa issued to an Israeli national who boarded a flight from Newark to Tel Aviv this past week without notifying anyone that he was confirmed to have contracted COVID-19.

An Israeli official tells The Times of Israel that US authorities have stripped the man of his visa and that the Health Ministry plans to file a police complaint for him to be charged.

A security official confirms to The Times of Israel that the man is a Mashgiach Kashrut supervisor from the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Beitar Illit.

His family called Israeli authorities while he was en route to notify them that he had tested positive for the disease.

“This is one of the gravest incidents we have seen,” a source in the Health Ministry tells Channel 12.

The man had boarded a United Airlines flight to Israel on Thursday without notifying the crew that he was a confirmed COVID-19 carrier.

He was taken to a separate isolation hotel than the other 38 passengers on the plane. While the Health Ministry has not had enough equipment to test every individual who enters the country — despite an initial declaration from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month that the government would do so — a decision was made to test the passengers on the United Airlines flight due to the “extenuating circumstances,” the security official tells the Times of Israel.

Passengers have been told they’d be tested twice during their stay at the isolation hotel.

The Israeli man had been tested for the virus last week and flew to the US anyways. While there, he was notified that his results had come back positive. He could not get treatment in the US due to a lack of health insurance and decided to return to Israel, according to the Channel 12 report.

He boarded the flight and only notified authorities at Ben Gurion Airport after landing.

Amid criticism, government decides on new measure by which to ease restrictions

The government has decided on a new measure by which decisions will be made on whether to continue easing restrictions or tighten limitations on the public and the economy, amid criticism of a confusing decision-making process, Channel 12 reports.

The report says any of the following conditions will likely result in increased restrictions, while remaining below the thresholds will promise continued relief: Over 300 new sick people per day (numbers have hovered between 200-300 in recent days, though they did pass 500 on Wednesday, possibly due to a backlog of tests); over 300 seriously ill patients (currently 130 are in serious condition); a doubling of the national number of sick every 10 days or less (currently cases are doubling every 20 days).

Global death toll from coronavirus surpasses 200,000

The global death toll from the coronavirus has surpassed 200,000, researchers at Johns Hopkins University say.

— AP

Bennett: PM has to decide if he wants Yamina in coalition

Outgoing Defense Minister Naftali Bennett of the Yamina party says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has to “decide if he wants us in the coalition; the ball is in his court.”

Bennett tells Channel 13 the party will honor the unity agreement between Likud and Blue and White and will serve in the government under alternate prime minister Benny Gantz.

Under the terms of the deal struck this week, which ends over a year of political deadlock during which Israel has not had a permanent government, Gantz will become prime minister in 18 months. Until then, he will serve as defense minister and have veto power over most legislative and policy matters.

Bennett says he wants his party in the coalition in a “position of influence” and indicates that should that not happen, the party will stay out of the government.

Israel’s coronavirus death toll reaches 199

Another death over the course of the day has taken Israel’s death toll from the coronavirus to 199, the Health Ministry indicates.

There are 15,298 confirmed coronavirus cases in the country as of Saturday evening, 150 more new cases since this morning. Over 6,400 people have recovered from the disease, a number which is included in the tally of total cases.

Of the active cases, 127 are in serious condition, of whom 99 are on ventilators. In addition, 98 are in moderate condition.

On Saturday morning, the death toll stood at 198 after another four deaths were recorded over the previous 24 hours.