Government ministers are coming out against former health minister Yaakov Litzman, denying that he expressed opposition during cabinet meetings to forecasts that tens of thousands Israelis could die from COVID-19.
In an interview yesterday, Litzman called the warnings of a potentially high death toll by ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman-Tov “exaggerated” and said he railed against them at a cabinet meeting.
“If there was an exaggeration,” an unnamed minister tells Channel 12 news, “why was Litzman the one to approve the lockdown of Bnei Brak and defend the decision to his community and in the media.”
The minister continues: “Litzman let Bar Siman-Tov be the main actor in the play, many times he got off the [telephone] line or didn’t get on it all to allow Bar Siman-Tov to lead. In some sense [Litzman] wasn’t present for the event at all.”
The criticism came as Litzman, who heads the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, officially left the Health Ministry today and moved over to the Housing Ministry.
Bar Siman-Tov, who announced last week he would be stepping down as director-general, said in response to Litzman’s criticism that he respected his former boss and was certain the measures adopted by the government to contain the pandemic had saved thousands of lives.
Then-health minister Yaakov Litzman, left, and Health Ministry director general Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, during a press conference at the Health Ministry in Jerusalem on January 3, 2019. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)
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