One thing that Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu share is they both live in their own self-constructed alternate reality. Trump continues to deny he lost the Presidential election. According to an article in the Huffington Post, Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen believes that Trump has actually convinced himself he won the election. “I won by a landslide,” Trump claimed on the news, recently, in spite of the fact that the landslide never existed. “He is copying (Joseph) Stalin’s tactics,” said Cohen. “Say something over and over and over and people start to believe it.” But, Cohen wasn’t pardoned by Trump as others were so perhaps Cohen has a jaded perspective.
One of the people
who believe Trump is Marc Zell, the American-born Israeli who is head
of Republicans in Israel. Earlier this week Zell told Army radio that
the election was certainly stolen and the Republicans had won. Today,
he told Israel Radio’s Ran Suriel that states like Pennsylvania
have appealed to the US Supreme Court with proof that the election
was stolen. Zell dismissed the facts that Trump lost the election and
that ultimately the election results will be recounted and Trump
would come out the winner. Zell, an attorney who immigrated to Israel
in the 80’s, lives on the West Bank settlement of Tekoa. He also lives in his own alternate reality, said one observer, who added, 'How can he belief that stuff?' Another said that Zell's law firm may benefit from ties to the Republican party and has to tow the party line.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, is trying his best to copy Trump’s playbook in order not to go to jail. Today, Netanyahu’s attorneys filed a motion to postpone Netanyahu’s trial on fraud, breach of trust, and bribery that is to resume on Sunday. Like Trump, Netanyahu’s attorneys have filed motion after motion trying to either get the cases dismissed or the trial postponed. And like Trump the reason is an election. Israel is set for new elections to be held on March 23, 2021, the fourth election in less than two years. Netanyahu has tried to appoint judges and police officials who would help him get out of his legal troubles, so far to no avail.
One of Netanyahu’s on-going goals is to get a Knesset law passed that would assure him he could stay out of jail until after he was no longer Prime Minister. This is called the so-called “French Law” modeled after France’s one-time President Jacques Chirac who managed to have cronies in the French parliament pass such a law when Chirac was on trial for embezzlement while mayor of Paris (1977-1995). Chirac stayed out of court until after he was no longer President (1995-2007). In 2011 he was found guilty of corruption, for embezzling public funds while mayor of Paris, but given a two-year suspended sentence. Netanyahu is reportedly trying to pull off the same maneuver. But he has to stay in office as Prime Minister to do that. And get a friendly Knesset to pass a law similar to the one that kept Chirac out of jail.
One of the ways Netanyahu is handling that goal is by rolling out a rapid Covid-19 vaccine campaign and taking credit for the over 1.5 million Israelis quickly vaccinated. Netanyahu was on TV boasting of his connections with Albert Bourla, the head of Pfizer, and then showboating when the yellow DHL planes landed at Ben Gurion airport, standing beside the crates of the vaccines as they were unloaded. Then he made certain to have his picture taken getting the very first vaccine in Israel, attending the clinic when the 500,000th dose was injected, and again when the 1 millionth dose was administered. Other countries showed regular citizens receiving the first dose.
This entire campaign was not only to secure vaccinations for the Israeli public, and for that he should be thanked, but more to show the electorate that Netanyahu was the one bringing in the vaccine and saving lives. “It wasn’t his money,” said Avigdor Leiberman of the Yisrael Beitanu party on Army radio. “We paid for it. The citizens of Israel.” Israel has mandatory health coverage, each citizen must belong to, and pay monthly fees to, one of Israel’s 4 HMOs. (Health Management Organizations)
Netanyahu’s idea, according to analysts, was that he would have the entire country, or most of it at least, vaccinated by the time elections rolled around in the third week of March. But there was a problem with this strategy. It backfired. One observer pointed out the old biblical dictum, ‘Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; A stranger, and not your own lips.’ (Proverbs 27:2)
The news that Israel was going at an incredible pace vaccinating the population, something Netanyahu announced by tweets, posts, emails and press releases, was picked up around the world. Netanyahu’s grandstanding garnered attention internationally. Countries around the world that had also pre-ordered the Pfizer vaccine were demanding an explanation why Israel got the vaccines before they did? Suddenly, this week, Israelis were told that there would be a pause in the program of inoculations.
This came as Israel’s infection rate began to soar. As of Jan 6, 2021 Israel has 458,132 infections, that’s 49,810 per million with 3495 deaths, at 380 per million, 824 in critical condition, and 59,229 active cases. Israeli hospitals were complaining they were running out of beds for sick patients. All but essential surgeries have been postponed.
Israel has also called for a complete lockdown, the third since the pandemic began. This lockdown will last for at least ten days and up to a month should the daily infection rate not abate. As of now Israel is experiencing over 8,000 new cases a day.
30% of the new
infections in the last 72 hours have from the Arab population,
according to Israel Radio’s Reshet Bet news. Analysts say that the
upswing was expected since, like the rest of the world, Christian
Israelis held Christmas dinners while both Jewish and Arab Israelis,
against health ministry regulations, held New Years Eve parties. While ultra-orthodox leaders called on their followers to get the vaccine, according to the Times of Israel hundreds of Hassidim from the Mea Sharim based Toldot Yitzchak Hassidic dynasty attended a wedding yesterday in the ultra-orthodox enclave of Beitar Illit, disregarding the regulations on numbers allowed to gather, social distancing and wearing masks. The ultra-orthodox population has also shown a sharp rise in infections.
According to commentators, by rushing ahead so quickly, Israel has burned through their vaccine supplies. Pfizer, the news reported, was not going to speed up the new shipments to Israel as had been reported earlier. Critics claimed Netanyahu put his election campaign above the country’s needs. Had he been more modest, and kept quiet about Israel’s vaccination program, perhaps Pfizer would have kept up their timely supplies. Now, in the midst of a serious rise in infections, Israel finds itself in a bind.
After Pfizer’s
decision not to accelerate deliveries, Israel turned to Moderna,
another company producing the mrna vaccine, to speed up the order
Israel had already placed. According to Reshet Bet news, Moderna
agreed to send an emergency shipment of 150,000 doses, scheduled to
arrive on Thursday, January 7, and another 150,000 early next week.
Israel’s corona virus czar Nahum Ash told army radio earlier that
this shipment from Moderna was ‘insignificant’ compared to the
number of people yet to be vaccinated amid the startling rise of
infections. Experts say that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines can be interchanged.
Itamar Grotto, assistant director-general of the Health Ministry, issued a statement recommending that Israel use all of the vaccines they had stored up and give them out as first doses. Grotto claimed this was what the UK was doing. The first dose, according to Grotto, was, by some studies, enough to protect someone even without the second “booster” shot. Other health officials in Israel immediately denounced this approach. Pfizer even said that three weeks were needed before the vaccine doses, and a month, from the first, before both together were fully effective. Grotto, in the past, had made the news when he allowed a wealthy contact to land his private plane in Israel and leave the airport without agreeing to the mandatory quarantine at home. Later that same millionaire held a party on a Tel Aviv rooftop ignoring health regulations of masks and social distancing.
But, how did Israel get the Pfizer vaccines so quickly? Was it because of Netanyahu’s smooth tongue? No, according to Health Minister Yuli Edelstein who told Reuters that Israel paid a premium for the vaccines and thus got them earlier. Another official said Israel paid @$30 a dose, whereas the going rate for the Pfizer drug was half that on the open market. Edelstein said he and PM Netanyahu agreed to pay a premium to get the vaccine early to ward off the coronavirus and keep the economy afloat. Pfizer replied to queries that they have a fixed price policy.
According to Ynetnews, Edelstein told a TV reporter that had they not gotten their order in early and paid a premium Pfizer would not have looked at Israel, a tiny market, when doling out the shipments. Edelstein said that Israel was pitched to Pfizer as a country with an organized health system that could implement a fast rollout though a digitized distribution network and be used as a template for other countries. Ron Balicer, chief innovation officer of Clalit, Israel’s largest HMO, said Israel has an integrated infrastructure of digital data with “full coverage of the entire population from cradle to grave.” This made identifying and notifying those in health services, over 60 and those at risk, easy to find and thus allowing for the quick delivery of the vaccine.
Israel has also innovated a fluid distribution system. Once the vaccines arrive at Ben Gurion Airport, they are stored in the Teva Pharmaceuticals’ underground facility at the airport. Then a team separates the doses into pizza sized boxes that can be easily distributed to remote HMO clinics.
However, one of the shortcomings of Israel’s vaccination system is cronyism. Netanyahu’s Prime Minister’s office employees were all vaccinated. The upper echelons of the Health ministry were also vaccinated. One cynic wondered if he’d ever get his second shot of the two or would Netanyahu give it to one of his buddies? Another observer said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened.” He added, “Who needs friends if you have protekzia (clout).”
Israel's third lockdown begins at midnight Thursday night. All schools will be closed and only essential services and businesses will remain open. This move will throw Israel into another serious economic bind. Already over 70,000 small business have closed since the pandemic began, according to the Times of Israel, with another 7,500 expected to close in the near future. The Israel Finance Ministry says that the lockdown will cost Israel’s economy @3 billion shekels a week, (nearly $1 billion.).According to Israel radio's Reshet Bet, the head of the Ger Hassidim has called on his educational institutions to observe the lockdown.
According to the Bank of Israel unemployment averaged 15.8% in 2020, that’s about 200,000 unemployed, most due to the pandemic. Israel TV’s channel 12 interviewed a number of small business owners on last night’s broadcast. Most said that they were heavily in debt due to the closure of small business and they’d have to take out loans to pay off their loans they took out just to make their monthly payments of rent, equipment payments, and unemployment benefits.
These small businessmen are not living in an alternative reality. One man, who owned a limousine and mini-bus service, said he had no work because of the pandemic. He worried not only about losing his business but his house. All of this while PM Netanyahu plots how to stay out of jail, and which next photo op was going to get him more votes in the next election. And Trump will go on being president in he own mind for years to come.
