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The Daily Edition

What Matters Most On Monday, April 20, 2020

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Yuval Carmi, a falafel store owner in Ashdod who has been hit hard by the pandemic, April 19, 2020. (screen capture: Channel 13)

Refuses public donations: 'I just want to make a living'

Sobbing falafel seller, symbol of virus’s financial toll, moves TV crew to tears

Yuval Carmi, banned from operating his shop amid pandemic and deep in debt, pleads for Netanyahu’s help: ‘I’m embarrassed from my children. I have nothing to give them to eat’

Yuval Carmi, a falafel store owner in Ashdod who has been hit hard by the pandemic, April 19, 2020. (screen capture: Channel 13)

‘You touched my heart,’ Netanyahu tells falafel seller facing ruin from pandemic

Secretary-general of the Israel Teachers' Union Yaffa Ben-David speaks during a protest event in Tel Aviv on August 29, 2019. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

Teacher’s Union chief draws outrage, and support, after fiery TV appearance

Ullmann family photos (Elisabeth Åsbrink)

Author interview

Renee Ghert-Zand

Letters reveal curious tie between Jewish refugee and Nazi-admiring IKEA founder

Initially, IKEA’s Ingvar Kamprad was happy to cooperate with Elisabeth Åsbrink’s book on his Jewish friend. Then she found a 1943 file showing he’d been a Swedish Nazi party member

Prewar photo taken outside Penguin House at Amsterdam Zoo. Pictured are Leo and Bertie Serphos and their friend, Rene Schap. Bertie and Rene later perished in the Holocaust. (USHMM)

Dutch province seeks ‘smuggled’ Jewish children rescued by residents in WWII

By Matt Lebovic

Benjamin Levin several years ago and as a member of the 'Avengers' partisan group during World War II (Chaim Levin and public domain)

‘Avenger’ Benjamin Levin, ‘Forrest Gump of Jewish history,’ succumbs to COVID-19

By Matt Lebovic

From killing Nazis in Lithuanian forests to jumping from flaming Altalena off Tel Aviv, young hero of Jewish Vilna participated in more than his share of Jewry’s turning points

Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, says prayers before the monument to the heroes of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Warsaw, Poland, April 19, 2020. (Czarek Sokolowski/AP)

Virus spread scales down Warsaw Ghetto commemoration events

By AP

Visitors walk past the gate, inscribed with the words: 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Work makes you free) of the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp, now a memorial, in Oranienburg, Germany, February 7, 2020. (John MACDOUGALL/AFP)

Germany marks Holocaust anniversary in shadow of virus

By AFP

A rally against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Rabin's Square, Tel Aviv, on April 19, 2020 (Elad Guttman)

Thousands rally in Tel Aviv, 2 meters apart, accusing PM of destroying democracy

By Raoul Wootliff

Addressing protest in Rabin Square and online, Lapid and Ya’alon rail against Netanyahu, and against former partner Gantz

Self-employed Israelis participate in a rally calling for financial support from the government outside the Knesset in Jerusalem, on April 19, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Israel media reviewBroke as hell and not going to take it anymore: 6 things to know for April 20

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks before a map of the Jordan Valley, vowing to extend Israeli sovereignty there if reelected, during a speech in Ramat Gan on September 10, 2019. (Menahem Kahana/AFP)

Live updates (closed)

Unity government deal guarantees vote on West Bank annexation

According to coalition agreement signed by Netanyahu and Gantz, all government legislation will need agreement from both sides, but bill to apply sovereignty can’t be blocked

8:59 pm

Gantz will be able to replace Netanyahu-tied envoy to US once he becomes PM
8:24 pm

Zalman Kossowsky, former chief rabbi of Zurich and a US Marines chaplain, dies at 80
8:07 pm

2 women die of COVID-19 in Jerusalem hospital bringing Israeli toll to 177

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference about the coronavirus COVID-19, at the Prime Ministers Office in Jerusalem on March 25, 2020. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

TOI investigates

Behind PM-cited study showing Israel is safest place, a rabbit hole of weirdness

By Simona Weinglass

The strange saga and curious origins of research hyped by Netanyahu and seemingly confirmed by Forbes that purports to prove Israel tops the world’s COVID-19 ‘safety rankings’

Illustrative image of a computer hacker using a smartphone. (stevanovicigor; iStock by Getty Images)

Scammer alert: Israeli cybersecurity firm warns COVID-19 phishing attacks rising

StudyThe end of exponential growth: The decline in the spread of coronavirus

By Isaac Ben-Israel

Protesters hold up a sign in front of the Texas State Capitol building on April 18, 2020 in Austin, Texas. (Sergio Flores/Getty Images/AFP)

Anti-Semitic sentiments seen rising as pandemic dredges up old hatreds

Tel Aviv University researchers say Jews are being accused of instigating pandemic to profit from it, find 18% jump in anti-Jewish attacks worldwide in 2019

Yad Vashem Security guard stands at the empty Hall of Names in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem on April 19, 2020 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Commemorating Holocaust in isolation, survivors say comparing eras is ‘indecent’

By Michael Blum and Guillaume LAVALLÉE

Two Minnesota high schoolers drew public condemnation for a TikTok video involving Holocaust imagery. (Screen shot from YouTube via JTA)

Minnesota high school students mock Auschwitz victims in TikTok video

Illustrative image of winners & loser as coronavirus strikes globally (Rawf8;
iStock by Getty Images)

Analysis

Shoshanna Solomon

From the arts to Zoom: ToI’s subjective look at winners and losers amid COVID-19

Ranging from Amazon to weddings, hairdressing to germaphobia, an interim list of those who are gaining and losing in a locked down world

Self-employed workers and kindergarten owners participate in a rally calling for financial support from the government outside the Knesset in Jerusalem, on April 19, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Small business owners rage at government, Netanyahu over handling of crisis

By Stuart Winer

Illustrative: Citizens of Tournai bury Black Plague victims. Pierart dou Tielt, 1340-1360 (Public Domain)

Inside storyThe reaction of the rich to bubonic plague is eerily similar to today’s pandemic

By Kathryn McKinley

Border Police officers enforce a curfew in the ultra Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, April 16, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Analysis

Judah Ari Gross

Newly eased guidelines are almost unenforceable, but that may not matter

If you can’t run more than 500 meters for exercise, but can run 5 kilometers for groceries, what’s the point of the restriction? To show people how to behave, one expert says

Magen David Adom workers move a patient outside the new coronavirus unit at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, April 3, 2020. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Virus deaths climb to 173, with increase in number of patients on ventilators

Border Police officers inspect drivers in a checkpoint at the exit of the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak on April 3, 2020 (Gili Yaari /Flash90)

Bnei Brak still has highest per capita infection rate as lockdown rolled back

A woman and a girl read the names of Holocaust victims. (Courtesy of Yad Vashem)

Holocaust Remembrance Day

This Yom Hashoah, survivors must bear witness from their living room lockdowns

By Yaakov Schwartz

Forced laborers captured in a rare snapshot that was discarded by the posing Hungarian soldier (far left). (Courtesy)

Times of Israel Podcast

LISTEN: Gripping saga of teen’s escape from WWII death march to join partisans

To commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, we hear from two Holocaust survivors with very different tales of survival in war-torn Europe — and today

Before the Corona and after the Corona

My parents’ rules when I was growing up have taken on a whole new meaning: they lived in fear of infectious disease when they were eluding the Nazis, and I get it now

Pamela Laufer-Ukeles

Women and public prayer, or why I nearly lost my mind on Saturday night

It is one thing to count only men to create a minyan; it is quite another to make a law that restricts public prayer to only men

The balcony bris

My heart ached at performing this lonely circumcision ceremony in a cramped Jerusalem apartment. Then I heard the singing outside

Dear schools: Let us parents go

Ideally, every child would have a device loaded with educational apps; absent that, missing some months of school won’t turn the entire generation into illiterate good-for-nothings

Analysis

Haviv Rettig Gur

For Netanyahu and Gantz, a modest proposal to avoid repeat elections

Could one historian’s out-of-the-box idea end the political deadlock and give everyone what they claim they want: Unity and stability for a polarized, virus-struck nation?

Composite photo shows Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz, right. (Flash90)

IDF soldiers and bereaved families mourn at a ceremony marking Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers and victims of terror at the Yad Labanim memorial in Jerusalem, April 21, 2015. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Bereaved families threaten to storm closed cemeteries on Memorial Day

Organization says relatives of fallen soldiers, terror victims won’t stay out of military cemeteries due to pandemic; urges PM to launch PR campaign to prevent clashes with police

Israeli Efroni T-6 Texan II planes perform during an air show, over the beach in the Mediterranean coastal city of Tel Aviv, on May 9, 2019 as Israel marks Independence Day, 71 years after the modern Jewish state was established. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)

IDF cancels Independence Day air shows to prevent gatherings

By Judah Ari Gross

Sculptor Dan Reisner grappled with PTSD from his army service in the First Lebanon War, which he thinks of as Israel's version of Vietnam. (Jessica Steinberg/ The Times of Israel)

A veteran of ‘Israel’s Vietnam,’ sculptor casts his traumas in bronze

By Jessica Steinberg

US President Donald Trump visits the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum in Jerusalem on May 23, 2017. (AFP Photo/Gali Tibbon)

Trump touts his efforts to combat anti-Semitism in Holocaust remembrance message

Ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day, US president acknowledges Jews still facing persecution, points to his contentious December executive order

Rep. Heather Scott asks a question a joint session of the Senate Judiciary and Rules and the House Judiciary, Rules, and Administration committees during a special session of the Idaho legislature at the state Capitol building on May 18, 2015 in Boise, Idaho. (AP Photo/Otto Kitsinger)

Idaho lawmaker claims nonessential workers being treated like Jews in Holocaust

The Westville Synagogue in New Haven, Connecticut (Google maps)

Windows of Connecticut synagogue shot with BB gun

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More Headlines

A mother and her child are reflected as they pass a mural by artist FAKE, titled "Super Nurse", paying tribute to all healthcare and medical professionals in times of the coronavirus, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Sunday, April 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Europe, New York see progress in virus battle, even as US toll passes 40,000

By Catherine TRIOMPHE and Mariëtte Le Roux

Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers confront the suspect of a shooting rampage at a gas station in Enfield, Nova Scotia on Sunday April 19, 2020. (Tim Krochak/The Canadian Press via AP)

Nova Scotia gunman kills 16 in deadliest-ever Canadian rampage

A member of Hevra Kadisha, an organization which prepares bodies of deceased Jews for burial according to Jewish tradition, pushes a body during a funeral of a Jewish man who died from coronavirus in the costal city of Ashkelon, Israel, April 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

Pandemic has ‘destroyed’ the rights of the dying, Franco-Israeli academic says

By Guillaume LAVALLÉE

Police arrest an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man in the Mea Shearim neighborhood, following a protest against the coronavirus restrictions April 19, 2020. (Photo by Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Police clash with stone-throwing Haredi protesters in Jerusalem, 5 arrested

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) with Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, at a press conference about the coronavirus, at the Health Ministry in Jerusalem, on March 4, 2020. (Olivier Fitoussi/ Flash90)

Vexed ministers complain Health Ministry chief ‘serving as the acting PM’

Magen David Adom medical team members, wearing protective gear, handle a coronavirus test from patients in Jerusalem, April 17, 2020. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Health Ministry officials warn Israel is not prepared for a 2nd coronavirus wave

Some of the 5,000 people who sent in videos singing Coldplay's 'Fix It' for the Koolulam singing initiative (Courtesy Koolulam)

Vox popThousands sing from home for Koolulam global chorus

By Jessica Steinberg

The front pages of the Jewish News (L) and the Jewish Chronicle. (Jewish News)

Mystery deepens over surprise, multi-million pound bid for UK’s Jewish Chronicle

By ToI Staff and David Horovitz

Prominent Austrian World War II Nazi deserter Richard Wadani in 2017. (YouTube screenshot)

Prominent deserter of Nazi forces dies at age 97

By AFP

In this April 10, 2020, file photo, amid coronavirus concerns, a US healthcare worker takes the temperature of a visitor to Essentia Health who was crossing over a skywalk bridge from the adjoining parking deck, in Duluth, Minnesota. (Alex Kormann/Star Tribune via AP, File)

Uncertainty around asymptomatic virus cases sparks hopes and fears

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE

An ambulance drives past a member of the Hamas security forces wearing protective gear as a precaution against the coronavirus, at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, in the southern Gaza Strip on April 13, 2020. (Said Khatib/AFP)

Palestinians report 2 more coronavirus cases in Gaza, bringing total to 15

By Jacob Magid and ToI Staff

Rabbi Eliezer Berland arrives for a hearing at the Jerusalem District Court on February 28, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Judge rebuked for mocking sex convict rabbi with ‘Mentos’ quip

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