Footage shows business owners hectoring prime minister in Zoom call

Channel 12 news broadcast footage of a tense zoom meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and over a dozen angry business owners fuming over the economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic and government shutdowns.

The business owners are demanding more help from the government to weather the crisis, or less draconian rules, with restaurants, gyms, event halls and other spaces shut down or forced to run vastly below capacity.

“There is a feeling that this crisis is not being managed,” says one person. Another complains “we won’t survive.”

“We need the money now, before the 10th, because people are collapsing,” one woman yells at the prime minister. “I have 150 workers. We don’t know what to do.”

Netanyahu, who spends much of the meeting listening calmly to the angry reproofs from his interlocutors, answers that he is trying to help them and proceeds to shunt blame onto Tax Authority head Eran Yaakov for failing to make sure they get rescue money quickly.

“Eran, these people are not lying, okay,” he says to Yaakov, who is also on the call. “Cut them checks now. Or not checks, money transfers.”

At that point, another business owner cuts in over the prime minister, yelling that he is not listening to them.

According to the channel, less than half of the money promised by the government to keep people and business afloat has yet to be disbursed.