When numbers go low, we go lower: What the press is saying on October 5

1. Slowed, but not slowed enough: Two weeks into a nationwide lockdown, Israel is beginning to see some tiny signs of hope amid reports of mass disobedience among two usual suspects: the ultra-Orthodox and politicians.

• “Israel’s rate of coronavirus infection – which is among the highest in the world – may be slowing down, according to data from the past few days. But it will take another week or two to see if these preliminary indications reflect a real change,” reports Haaretz.
• The paper adds, though, that Health Ministry officials are showing cautious optimism.
• Channel 12 news reports on a “slight” downward trend in the percentage of tests coming back positive, and the number of serious cases (based on a single day’s stats).
• The channel quotes from a daily report by the military-run coronavirus task force that says “in the last few days, [there has been] a certain drop nationally in the percentage of positive cases, but they are still very high. The scale of daily infection is much higher than estimation of what will allow the country to sustainably manage breaking the infection chain.”
• In a tweet, Israel Hayom’s Ariel Kahana quotes from the same report and highlights all the places it says that Israel is doing poorly. “Failure!” he writes.
• Minister Orit Farkash tells Army Radio that things are going great: “This wave is being managed better than the first wave. There are tens of thousands of tests a day, the medical corps has opened wards, there’s no comparison.”
• The head of Maayenei Hayeshua hospital in Bnei Brak isn’t so sure though, telling the same station that “there are a lot more sick people than in March, in terms of numbers and in terms of serious cases, but the percentages are lower.”

2. Now can we go out? Things are apparently going so swimmingly that some are already talking about getting out of the lockdown.

• Reports indicate that Finance Minister Israel Katz, Economy Minister Amir Peretz and Science Minister Izhar Shai are all pushing for the reopening of many businesses, as well as permitting preschools to open so that parents of small children are able to go to work.
• However, in a video released Sunday night, Netanyahu appears to push against those pressures, calling himself “more cautious than the cautious.”
• “Seeking an exit,” reads the top headline on Israel Hayom’s front page, though it should possibly read “seeking to stop an exit.”
• “Sources in the cabinet say that the fear is if they start opening up certain sectors, there will be pressure to open up more and so for this stage they need to stick with the graduated lockdown as much as needed until the goal that has been set is reached,” the paper reports.
• According to the paper, health ministry officials are pushing for an eight-stage exit to the lockdown, with three weeks between each stage, which will be reversed if numbers start to go back up again, which sounds an awful lot like the first failed exit. It’s also unclear why the same pressure to rush a reopening won’t exist whenever this goal to start the potentially five-month process begins.
• Kan reports that the official leading the charge against lifting restrictions is the government’s coronavirus czar Ronni Gamzu, who is expected to recommend to the cabinet that elementary schools and Haredi yeshivas remain closed at least for the coming month — and not until October 19 under the current lockdown plan.
• Army Radio meanwhile reports that Treasury officials fear allowing the lockdown to to be drawn out should the government collapse, saying that ministers in Likud and Blue and White will prefer to present voters with a lower infection rate, even if it means keeping businesses shut. (Given the popular support for opening back up after the first lockdown, one wonders if they have it backwards.)
• And ToI’s Nathan Jeffay speaks to epidemiologist Ora Paltiel, who thinks Israel should open up schools to younger grades and let the nearly virus-proof rugrats catch as catch can. “Young children are not the main engine of transmission for this virus, and therefore we have to do everything we can to protect their ability to go and learn,” she says.

3. Lawmaker, lawbreaker: Why wait for stuff to reopen? Haaretz reports that many Israelis are already exploiting loopholes to beat the lockdown and fly around or stay in business. The article actually lays out the loopholes being used (with a warning that they are not strictly legal.) Among them is a trick used by restaurants who can offer delivery, but not takeaway, and so just “deliver” it to a corner a few feet down the street, which does not sound shady at all.

• “Business owners are indignant. They feel that the government hasn’t compensated them [for their lockdown losses] and are looking for ways to stay in business. People who are on the brink are willing to take their chances,” Israel Restaurant Association head Shai Berman is quoted saying.
• Here’s another loophole: be a politician. After Minister Gila Gamliel comes down the virus, reports proliferate Monday morning that she spent Yom Kippur breaking lockdown rules by traveling 150 kilometers (90 miles) to her in-laws and praying in a synagogue.
• Haaretz, which breaks the story, reports that “Gamliel refused to respond to Health Ministry investigators for hours, and when she eventually did, she intentionally misled them by falsely claiming that she was infected by her driver.”
• Channel 12’s Amit Segal writes in an opinion piece that Netanyahu should fire Gamliel posthaste: “Even in a broken country, even a corrupt one, Gila Gamliel cannot stay as a minister one more day,” he writes.
• Israel Hayom covers Gamliel, who comes from Likud, but also plays up Yesh Atid-Telem MK Mickey Levy seemingly having broken lockdown rules by visiting his son’s home, which was first reported by Channel 12.
• While the paper includes the fact that Levy says he was only there outside for a short time, and that it’s within walking distance of his own home, it also tries to catch him out on some supposed hypocrisy: “Levy, who is on the coronavirus committee, was in a discussion in August during which members of Blue and White were asked to leave immediately. The reason: they had met with minister Pnina Tamano-Shatta, who tested positive. He claimed ‘they are endangering us.’”
• Walla’s Barak Ravid also tries his hand at pointing out a double standard, tweeting that “Yair Lapid said a few days ago that any minister who breaks the rules should be fired. If he is serious, he should start with MK Mickey Levy from his party.”
• It’s not only elected officials breaking the rules. Kan reports that coronavirus czar Ronni Gamzu is refusing to quarantine despite having met with the mayor of Shfaram, who has since tested positive.
• “Gamzu’s staff say that nobody at the meeting needs to quarantine because they kept rules about mask-wearing and keeping distance,” it reports.
  And throwing everyone through a loop, an apparently hacked Israel Hayom Twitter account announces that another politician with the virus, one US President Donald Trump, has handed power to Vice President Mike Pence and been taken into intensive care.

Sheldon Adelson’s Israel HaYaom, ladies and gentleman. pic.twitter.com/9cZD82IyCO

— Harry’s Baked (@HarryR) October 5, 2020

4. I fought the law, and the law threw a bucket at my head: The cops, meanwhile, have their hands full trying to enforce lockdown regulations on an obstreperous ultra-Orthodox public. Social media and traditional media are filled to the gills with both reports of mass disobedience in the community and cops seemingly taking enforcement a bit too far, attacking kids and the like.

• Videos that get wide coverage show cops in Jerusalem shoving a Haredi kid in a scooter onto the ground, throwing a bucket at a kid in Beitar Illit, and arresting a man seemingly for committing the crime of taking a video.

https://twitter.com/ishayyurslaem/status/1312786986785280000

תיעוד מביתר עילית: שוטר משליך דלי על ילד, תעודת עניות למשטרת ישראל@IL_police pic.twitter.com/UIWircs0XG

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— חיים גולדברג (@haim_goldberg) October 4, 2020

צילמת – נעצרת. מטורף.
הוא לא תוקף שוטרים. כלום. בסך הכל עומד (עם מסכה) ומצלם. ואז נעצר. pic.twitter.com/gJJxPVJRpM

— בני רבינוביץ (@benirabin) October 4, 2020

• One less popular video tweeted out by ultra-Orthodox journalist Avi Gadlovitz shows police shoving a man to the ground during riots in Bnei Brak: “Police violence is reaching new highs! … A man in his 50s who innocently tried to get around the gathering was hit with murderous blows. No response from the police can explain these images,” he writes.

האלימות המשטרתית שוברת שיאים! את הרוע הזה צילמתי עכשיו בבני ברק. אדם בשנות ה-50 לחייו שהלך לתומו וניסה לעקוף את ההתקהלות חוטף מכות רצח. שום תגובה של במשטרה לא תסביר את המראות האלו. pic.twitter.com/RMJVrQjMiT

— אבי גדלוביץ' (@avigad27) October 4, 2020

• Channel 12 news reports that Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, who heads the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, called up acting police Commissioner Motti Cohen to warn that “the strong arm of the police in these confrontations may create unwanted consequences.”
• According to the channel, Cohen told Deri that given the various challenges, enforcement had been less than perfect.
• A Yedioth story, under the headline “The ground is burning,” writes that the confrontations between cops and ultra-Orthodox youth in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak have become “more severe.”
• The paper quotes the kid who got a bucket to the head saying that everything was hunky dory with the cops until the Yassam elite anti-terror police force swooped in: “They cuffed my friend and I wanted to see where they were taking him, so I went with them. Suddenly, one cop threw a bucket at my head. After that he hit me in the head and threw me in a cruiser and took me to the police station while I was injured.”
• “Police in the eye of the storm,” reads a headline in Israel Hayom.

5. The root of all problems: Between the violence seen Sunday and reports of police abuse at anti-government protests on Saturday, Haaretz’s lead editorial takes aim at Public Security Minister Amir Ohana.

• “The police, which for a long time now have not had a permanent national commissioner, were sent to use great force in the name of a government that has completely failed in its handling of the coronavirus crisis, and is headed by a person who has been charged with severe felonies,” it reads.
• Yedioth leads off its front page with a lengthy excerpt from a column by Nahum Barnea aiming squarely at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
• “The big sin, unforgivable, of Netanyahu is that he tried to manage the coronavirus crisis using political tools. The politicization of the coronavirus knew no bounds. The result is a crisis of faith among the worst that we have known. A gaping maw has been ripped between the government and its citizens,” he writes.
• In Walla, Lior Horev writes, “Since he entered office, Netanyahu has managed to foist his failures on his adversaries and to present himself as all-successful. This time it is his failure, and this is the greatest price in recognition that he is paying since entering politics — according to polls, most of the public is unhappy with his handling of the virus.”
• Criticism also comes from inside the party. Speaking to Kan, Likud MK Gideon Saar says that the government has screwed up its handling of the virus and protests in several ways.
• “Some of the decisions were not right. Forbidding flights out of the country to create equality between citizens is not a smart thing from a legal, epidemiological or sensical point of view,” he says. “These are days that the public being hurt is much less interested in politics. The one responsible for dealing with the virus is the government, no doubt. … Has the prime minister handled the virus well? When he needs to be criticized I say it.”