Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Religious Jews are among the biggest victims of COVID-19

Boro Park. Flatbush. Crown Heights. Forest Hills. Fresh Meadows.

Every single New York neighborhood with a large religious Jewish population has the highest percentage of patients testing positive for the coronavirus, according to this map published by the NYC Department of Health.

Looking at New York State as a whole, the heavily Jewish Rockland County has a higher percentage of COVID-19 cases per capita than New York City (as far as I can tell, second only to Westchester County.)

And in New Jersey, the two towns with the highest number of COVID-19 cases are not the major cities of Newark (155) or Jersey City (130) or Camden (2) or Trenton (7).

They are the much smaller towns with large Jewish populations: Teaneck (population 37,000, Jews 15,000, 213 cases) and Lakewood (population 102,000, Jews 60,000, 198 cases.)

Even though Orthodox rabbis across the board closed down all schools and synagogues before the government authorities said to, the sheer amount of interaction that religious Jews have with their communities - often going to prayer services 2 or 3 times a day, and this year especially celebrating Purim (March 10) together with friends and family, made Orthodox Jewish communities Ground Zero for the coronavirus. This was not helped by the refusal of a small minority to shut down their synagogues and cancel wedding parties - stupid, selfish decisions that are ensuring that the numbers continue to grow as we approach the two week mark since rabbis first called for the shutdowns. There were reports that some Jews still insisted on praying with others as recently as Friday.

Only this week will we begin find out the effectiveness of the shutdowns that started on March 12 in Teaneck/Bergen County and then spread across the region in the following week.

Every day we learn about more and more people we know, or in our circles, who have gotten ill or passed away. Often they are community leaders - rabbis and others - whose jobs involve close interaction with their followers.

It is a very scary time, and the worst is still to come.

We are facing a Passover without extended family. But it is necessary to keep all of our extended families as safe as possible.

And those who continue to pretend to be "frummer" by still praying with a minyan/quorum are playing Russian roulette with their families, and everyone else's lives.

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03/28 Links: Douglas Murray: In this strange new world, where do we find purpose?; What do you do during a rocket attack amid coronavirus quarantine?

From Ian:

Coronavirus cases in Israel rise to 3,619 with 54 people in serious condition

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Israel rose to 3,619 people, the Health Ministry announced Saturday evening.

The tally included 54 patients in serious condition, of whom 43 are attached to ventilators.

Another 81 are in moderate condition and the rest have mild symptoms.

The ministry said a majority of patients, 1,828, were isolating in their homes under monitoring and 484 were currently hospitalized. The remainder were in various care facilities, including the specially converted hotels.

Twelve people have died in Israel from the virus, and on Saturday the Foreign Ministry announced an 82-year-old Israeli tourist died in an Italian hospital after he contracted the virus.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Friday that the country could enter into a complete shutdown if there isn’t an improvement in the number of confirmed virus cases in the next two days.

Netanyahu held a series of discussions with top ministers regarding additional steps the country can take to manage the ongoing crisis, “including preparations for a closure,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

He said that authorities would bring the additional movement restrictions before the cabinet in 48 hours.

Trump Says He May Quarantine New York, New Jersey and Connecticut

President Donald Trump said Saturday he was considering imposing a quarantine on New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Trump said he was mulling the quarantine, while at the same walking back urging to quickly reopen the economy. Trump said he was unsure about whether the United States will reopen for business by April 12th following shutdowns in major cities across the country. Asked whether he thought the United States would open by Easter Sunday, Trump said at the White House on Saturday, “We’ll see what happens.”

NY rabbi who survived COVID-19 donates blood plasma to treatment research

A New York rabbi who recovered from a mild case of COVID-19 donated blood plasma to researchers on Friday in the hope that his antibodies could be used to treat patients with more severe coronavirus symptoms.

Rabbi Daniel Nevins, dean of the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, was laid up for a few days earlier this month with a fever and some aches, and then recovered.

Nevins was tested for the coronavirus on March 12 and a week later got back a positive result. A week after that, he was tested again. Friday morning, he got the result: All clear.

Within hours, Nevins was hooked up to a machine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York to donate blood plasma. In the race to develop effective treatments for the disease, researchers are investigating whether antibodies from the blood of people who have successfully fought off the disease may provide treatment for people who with more serious symptoms.

Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration allowed doctors to treat critically ill coronavirus patients with plasma on an experimental basis. Plasma has been shown effective in treating other infectious diseases, like polio, measles and influenza.

“I felt fortunate that my mild case of this illness might turn into a blessing for people who are seriously ill,” Nevins told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The Torah teaches us not to stand idly by the blood of our neighbor. My Midrash [interpretation] is that no, instead lie down in a donor bed and give plasma.”

NEW from The New York Times Obits desk: Those We've Lost. Lives of the victims of the coronavirus. https://t.co/oxgEhOVU9h pic.twitter.com/k6YDm1VoUB
— John Schwartz (@jswatz) March 27, 2020

Douglas Murray: In this strange new world, where do we find purpose?

During recent years, much of our society found a purpose, and a kind of meaning, in politics. Even at the time that period seemed curious. It was a period in which people who had no connection to the media felt that they needed to absorb minute-by-minute updates on everything. It was an age in which watches would beep, phones would buzz and tablets would ping with updates on things that few of us could affect and mostly wouldn’t affect us. But it gave a purpose of a kind. Worlds away though they seem now, the Stop Brexit and Stop Trump crowds (and their opposites) had a distractingly busy few years. And if they didn’t find meaning in the deepest sense (as in ‘what I would look at with pride on my deathbed’) they certainly found some of the best simulacrums around.

There is a risk that this virus also becomes ‘something to do’. A thing which — how-ever well or badly we ride it out — absorbs almost all of our time, thoughts and energies. The temptation is there in the regular news conferences and announcements. Each day brings new figures to absorb, new comparisons to make between countries. Hell, we’ve even had that hangover discussion about what to call the virus and whether referring to its origins is racist or not. Absorption in some or all of these things has already come to constitute a full-time job for many people. And I will say nothing about the number of undercover virologists who turn out to have been living among us all these years.

Still the question lingers: ‘What ought we to be doing?’ Both during and after this crisis, I would expect the political left to once again prove their ability to provide narratives and explanations. Doubtless at some point they will declare a great mission. And perhaps it will have its attractions: a call to have more doctors or care workers, for instance. Or an insistence that since we were all equal in the eyes of the virus, so we should be made more equal in other ways too. Parts of the political right will bang their own ideological drums. They will talk about the markets and much more, as if everything did not just change radically. In the era to come, who knows which of these people we will want to listen to? If any.

As a writer, I might claim to have been in training for this moment all my life. Solitude and silence have been agreeable, indeed vital, companions to me. And to that extent recent days have not been that different from any others. Apart from performing the new chores we all must carry out, I spend my days as I always do at home. Inside, I migrate between my writing desk and piano. I enjoy the garden more. And yet in the gaps that have opened up the bigger question hovers. I suppose my own answer is a doctrine of a kind. Which is that we are most likely to find meaning in the places where meaning has been found before. That what has seen our forebears through, and nourished them, will see us through and nourish us in turn. I don’t listen to the news much. If the church is open I will sit in it. I remake my acquaintance with great music. In the evenings I read Anna Karenina.

03/27 Links Pt2: Hope Is Nice, but After Coronavirus, Demonization of Israel Is Unlikely to Change; Caroline Glick: Israel and the demise of the global village

From Ian:

Gerald Steinberg: Hope Is Nice, but After Coronavirus, Demonization of Israel Is Unlikely to Change

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin recently tried to provide some optimism amid the gloom and doom of the corona epidemic. Noting the cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), he tweeted: “I just spoke to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas. Our ability to work together in times of crisis is also a testament to our ability to work together in the future for the good of us all.”

This peaceful scenario is worthy of the Jewish prophets, particularly Isaiah and Micah.

Unfortunately, the reality now, as it was then, is quite different. In contrast to Rivlin’s optimism, the Palestinians and their allies are currently moving at full speed to continue their campaign of demonization against Israel.

Most notably, Palestinians, in coordination with an army of NGOs, are pressing the effort in the International Criminal Court(ICC) to take the false “war crime” accusations to the next stage — a pseudo-investigation of Israel.

Over the past week, a number of these groups have submitted briefs (many of which go beyond the absurd in stretching historical truth) to prop up ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s weak attempt to justify this travesty. The NGO list includes Al Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), which work very closely with the PA in this campaign and are funded by European governments.

Among their Israeli allies, the Israeli left-wing group B’Tselem wrote a report accompanied by a media campaign (also enabled by European funders). As usual, B’Tselem blamed Israel exclusively for the conflict, erasing the long history of Palestinian rejectionism and terror, and even accused Israel of exploiting the Holocaust in rejecting the ICC prosecutor’s arguments.

Breaking the Silence, Gisha, and other NGOs continued to blame Israel for not doing enough to stop the spread of the coronavirus among Palestinians, repeating their one-line agenda — “occupation, occupation, occupation” — even in Gaza, where the “occupation” ended almost 15 years ago.

Melanie Phillips: How the virus exposes magical thinking and short-term greed

This culture of denial is the product of a century of demoralization in which the west lost belief in itself and decided that it stood for nothing worth fighting for. Instead, the world had to be changed.

Unable to accept the impossibility of their utopian ideals, progressives are particularly prone to magical thinking. They believe they can banish prejudice and bigotry from the human heart, end war and usher in the brotherhood of man.

They pretend the world is not how it actually is but how they want it to be. They pretend to themselves that, because they are idealists, they are immune from bad thoughts or deeds; and they pretend that anyone who contradicts them is not just wrong but evil.

Often, though, there aren’t clear choices between unalloyed good and bad. The available options may present a choice between terrible and worse.

Israel, caught between assorted rocks and hard places, has to make these tough choices between evils all the time. And yet even super-realist Israel got sucked into the China illusion.

Last month, Israel’s cyber directorate issued a directive requiring Israeli companies to bar all Chinese-made systems and components in communications and security systems used in sensitive infrastructure.

An earlier directive, issued after the Trump administration blew a collective fuse over Israel’s acceptance of Chinese technology, was voluntary.

Israel’s reluctance to comply with the United States over this isn’t surprising. Chinese investment in Israel has reached an estimated $11.7 billion over the years. But now, like other countries, Israel is in lockdown and its economy hugely damaged as a result of Chinese negligence and malevolence.

The virus crisis is a wake-up call to all who chose to substitute short-term self-interest for realism about the Chinese Communist party, and now find themselves reaping the whirlwind.

Col Kemp: We should establish a Coronavirus citizens’ volunteer force

An accelerating sense of crisis now engulfs our society. As the impact of Coronavirus deepens and the death toll mounts, the scale of the emergency is unprecedented in peacetime. Yet there is a silver lining to this black cloud. It can be found in the growing ethos of selfless compassion across the country, with millions of citizens feeling a new concern for their neighbours and the vulnerable.

During the Second World War, our nation became renowned for its unity and self-sacrifice, an outlook known as the ‘Blitz spirit’. Today we can see a reawakening of that same community spirit, reflected particularly in local neighbourhood schemes, where people volunteer to check on the elderly, organise essential home deliveries and support imperilled businesses.

That mood of compassion should now be harnessed more systematically for the good of the nation. Yesterday Lord Stevens, the former head of the Metropolitan Police, called for the urgent mobilisation of retired coppers in order to relieve the huge current burdens on the police, the NHS and other emergency services. Pointing out that there are at least 100,000 former officers, Lord Stevens rightly said that their experience and enthusiasm is a ‘golden resource’ that ‘we cannot afford to waste’.

While I welcome his admirable suggestion, I would go even further. I believe that, in response to the crisis, we now need a national citizens volunteer force to help maintain the civic infrastructure which is under unique strain. This new organisation would capitalise on the yearning of so-many people to do their bit, as well as giving the public a defiant sense of purpose in these dark times. There is a vast range of tasks that could be carried out by these volunteers, like performing basic duties in the NHS, cleaning and sanitising public buildings, transporting goods, and providing cooked meals and groceries to the housebound. Former teachers could organise childcare for key public workers.

Cartoon of the day: An opportunity not to be missed

Another of my series of re-purposing single-panel cartoons for more immediate topics:

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

03/27 Links Pt1: Four more Israelis die of virus, bringing COVID-19 death toll to 12; IDF Prepares for World War C; 21 Nobel laureates blast Iran for allowing spread of coranavirus, cover-up

From Ian:

Four more Israelis die of virus, bringing COVID-19 death toll to 12

Four more Israelis have died of the coronavirus, bringing the country’s death toll to 12, as the number of infections nationwide climbed to 3,035.

The Soroka Medical Center on Friday morning said 93-year-old Avraham Aroshas was brought to the hospital from the nursing home where he lived. He had a fever and shortness of breath and had “complicated and difficult underlying illnesses,” the Beersheba-based hospital said. He tested positive for the virus and hours later succumbed to the illness, according to the statement.

A 76-year-old woman with preexisting health conditions also died of the virus, the Sharon Hospital in Petah Tikva announced Friday morning.

Hours later, a 73-year-old man was pronounced dead as a result of the virus at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. He was identified as Shaul Farhi. He reportedly caught the virus on a trip to Tenerife in Spain.

On Friday afternoon, the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon said that an 80-year-old man had died. He had been in a serious condition for several days.

The number of Israelis diagnosed with the coronavirus has risen to 3,035, the Health Ministry said Friday morning. Of them, 49 are in serious condition and 60 are in moderate condition.

Some 45 Israel Defense Forces soldiers have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the illness caused by coronavirus, while 4,156 are in quarantine, the IDF said on Thursday.

Of the 12 fatalities in the country, three died on Thursday.

One of the three was an 89-year-old woman being treated at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem.

“This is a patient with preexisting conditions who a week ago already was categorized as being in critical condition and was treated with devotion during her entire hospitalization by the department staff, who did everything possible to ease her suffering,” the hospital said in a statement.

Another was an 83-year-old man from Bnei Brak who had preexisting conditions. Wolfson Medical Center in Holon said earlier that the third victim was a 91-year-old woman.

IDF Prepares for World War C

It’s come to this: The whole country on lockdown, the civilian population locked away in their homes, hiding from a deadly and invisible enemy. The only people on the street are police officers and IDF troops. It’s World War C.

The coronavirus crisis, a global pandemic on a level not seen since the Spanish flu in 1918, reminds many of the 2013 zombie movie World War Z. For Israelis, the “Jerusalem scene,” in which healthy Jews and Arabs are quarantined in the Old City singing songs of peace until zombies breach the walls, is extremely poignant.

It is as though the movie has come to life, but instead of the enemy being zombies, Israel is afraid that the invisible enemy - Coronavirus - could breach its walls and infect the population, as it did in Asia.

Israel had quickly closed its borders and quarantined all travellers returning to the country for two weeks. But the virus seeped in, and slowly the numbers of those infected with coronavirus started to rise. At the time of this article’s writing, 2,000 are reported sick and five are dead.

On Wednesday, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett warned that Israel is facing “severe morbidity levels” in the coming days.
“We are in accelerated growth in patients in serious condition; the number of positive tests is increasing. Severe morbidity levels are approaching,” he said. “Within 10 days there will be a significant rate of serious patients, but this is not a matter of fate. We can work to change the situation."

Mossad Brings another 400,000 Coronavirus Test Kits to Israel

The Mossad intelligence service on Thursday helped bring another 400,000 coronavirus test kits to Israel from an undisclosed foreign location, the Prime Minister’s Office said.

That was in addition to the roughly 100,000 test kits the spy agency brought to Israel last week.

The Prime Minister’s Office, which is responsible for the Mossad, said the intelligence service had imported the chemical reagents needed to perform approximately 400,000 tests. The swabs needed to carry out the task are being sourced both internally and from a number of foreign countries.

The PMO refused to comment further on the matter, specifically on the country or countries that sold it the testing components, leading many to assume that it was a country that does not have strong or formal ties with Israel.

The Mossad’s first operation to bring the chemical reagents needed for 100,000 coronavirus tests sparked a minor controversy last week, after Health Ministry officials lamented that what they’d actually needed were more swabs. After a small flurry of accusations and reversals, the ministry released a statement affirming that the test kits were “important” and “necessary” in the fight against the disease.

Israel has significantly stepped up its testing over the past week, performing several thousand each day, with the goal of increasing that level further.

The other arms of Israel’s defense establishment have also enlisted in recent days to tackle the virus threat.

B'Tselem published yesterday:

During the Coronavirus crisis, Israel confiscates tents designated for clinic in the Northern West Bank

This morning, Thursday, 26 March 2020, at around 7:30 am, officials from Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank arrived with a military jeep escort, a bulldozer and two flatbed trucks with cranes at the Palestinian community of Khirbet Ibziq in the northern Jordan Valley. They confiscated poles and sheeting that were meant to form eight tents, two for a field clinic, and four for emergency housing for residents evacuated from their homes, and two as makeshift mosques. The force also confiscated a tin shack in place for more than two years, as well as a power generator and sacks of sand and cement. Four pallets of cinder blocks intended for the tent floors were taken away and four others demolished.

As the whole world battles an unprecedented and paralyzing healthcare crisis, Israel’s military is devoting time and resources to harassing the most vulnerable Palestinian communities in the West Bank, that Israel has attempted to drive out of the area for decades. Shutting down a first-aid community initiative during a health crisis is an especially cruel example of the regular abuse inflicted on these communities, and it goes against basic human and humanitarian principles during an emergency. Unlike Israel’s policies, this pandemic does not discriminate based on nationality, ethnicity or religion. It is high time the government and military acknowledged that now, of all times, Israel is responsible for the health and wellbeing of the five million Palestinians who live under its control in the Occupied Territories.

What really happened?

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) slammed the Human Rights NGO B'Tselem for alleging that the IDF demolished a coronavirus treatment center built by Palestinians in the Jordan Valley.

“We are sorry to see a Human Rights NGO choosing to exploit a global crisis to spread fake news,” the COGAT press statement said.

COGAT claims that the demolished structure was a guarding post built illegally and without permits by a resident of Bardala, which is northeast of Nablus.

Neither the Palestinian Authority (PA) nor International Health groups requested to build a treatment center for COVID-19 patients, according to COGAT's claims.

COGAT is coordinating the delivery of thousands of masks and COVID-19 test kits donated by the World Health Organization to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, despite the blockade still enforced there. The aid is also provided to the West Bank, which is under the control of the PA.

Khirbet Ibziq is in Area C where Israeli permits are required to build - under international law. (If Israel is considered the belligerent occupier, then Israel is required to administer building permits. If Israel claims the territory then it still is required to administer building permits.) Residents in the area of Khirbet Ibziq have a history of illegal building, which B'Tselem documents. This time they pretended that a couple of the tents were for a coronavirus clinic, even though no one even told the Palestinian Authority about this, let alone Israel.

It was a basic land grab - one made even more immoral because it was specifically done during this crisis. It was a lie from the start to make Israel look like monsters for confiscating the materials - way before they were even erected.

B'Tselem knows this and they play along with the fiction, because to them the moral imperative of demonizing Israel is far higher than little things like telling the truth.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

The antisemitism of the PLO and others saying Israel is "fully responsible" for all Arabs who die of coronavirus

The PLO Department of Public Diplomacy and Policy today issued a statement saying that they "hold the Israeli occupation fully responsible for the lives of our valiant workers, families, and people in the Gaza Strip and occupied Jerusalem."

This mirrors the statements of idiots like Ariel Gold that "Israel is culpable for every COVID-19 death in Gaza."

Let's pretend that Israel completely controls Gaza. In fact, let's pretend that Israel annexed Gaza. Would it make sense to say that Israel is responsible for the lives of every single person who gets infected with the coronavirus?

Would anyone ever say that Switzerland is responsible for the lives of every Swiss citizen and culpable if they die from a worldwide pandemic?

A government can and should be held responsible for protecting its citizens, of course. That is in fact its primary responsibility, way above protecting others. The decisions a government makes in times like these are made with incomplete information and competing priorities. It is fair to say that one disagrees with their decisions or their prioritization or their pre-existing planning.

But these statements aren't saying that Israel is responsible for doing all it can to stop the spread of Covid-19 in areas under its control, which it is. They are saying that Israel is responsible for every single person who dies, citizen or not, under their sovereignty or not, despite their efforts.

Which means that these people are ascribing God-like capabilities to the Jews. (They aren't talking about the high percentage of health care workers in Israel who are Arabs.)

In short, they say that the all-powerful Jews have full responsibility.

Which sounds a lot like the idea that the Jews control the world.

We've seen this before, of course. Palestinian leaders regularly say that Israel is culpable for prisoners who die from heart disease or any other cause. It is partially propaganda, but a great part of it is teaching their people the idea that Israeli Jews have Elders of Zion-style superpowers in controlling every aspect of everyone's lives in the world.

The corollary to that is that Palestinian Arabs have no agency to protect themselves, because everything is up to the Jews anyway. And that gives the Palestinians the message that they don't even have to try to take responsibility for their own lives.

This idea has hurt the actual Palestinian people far more than anyone is willing to admit.

Luckily, not all Palestinians have internalized that message. A number of clothing and shoe manufacturers in the territories have pivoted and now manufacture masks and protective clothing. There are certainly Palestinian health care workers who take their jobs seriously.

But on the whole, blaming Israel for everything means taking responsibility for nothing. This is antisemitism that hurts the Palestinians more than it hurts Israel.

It is a shame that not one Palestinian can say this publicly.

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The Israel in Arabic account from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted this fairly bizarre scene:

فيديو مؤثر من إسرائيل..
في بادرة مست المواطنين المسلمين لدى دخولهم الى مطعم حمص في البلاد انطلق تسجيل لسورة الفاتحة من القرآن الكريم. قام بهذه اللفتة عامل متدين يهودي في المطعم قائلا إن هذا كلام الله. رسالة واضحة لكل ابناء الديانات التوحيدية كلنا واحد. pic.twitter.com/DWOtwCcliS
— إسرائيل بالعربية (@IsraelArabic) March 26, 2020

It shows a religious Jews who is the owner of a shop, blasting Koranic verses from a famous Muslim cleric. An Arab enters the store and compliments the Jew in Hebrew.

The MFA account says, "The gesture was carried out by a Jewish religious worker in the restaurant, saying that this is God’s word. A clear message to all the people of monotheistic religions, we are all one."

But somehow that message got garbled. Arabic media are saying that the Jews was playing the Koran audio as some sort of protection against the coronavirus, which is not even hinted at anywhere.

UPDATE: The restaurant is part of a chain of hummus restaurants called "Hummus Eliyahu." (h/t Yoel)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

03/26 Links Pt2: Abolish the World Health Organization; America’s Largest Population of Holocaust Survivors Is Endangered by the Coronavirus

From Ian:

America’s Largest Population of Holocaust Survivors Is Endangered by the Coronavirus as Crown Heights and Borough Park Shut Down

By last Wednesday afternoon the outer doors of 770 Eastern Parkway were locked, while the doors connecting the complex’s narrow lobby to the rambunctious communal shul for New York’s Chabad Hasidim were chained shut. The unthinkable was occurring. The Mitzvah Tanks sat idle on Kingston Avenue, Crown Heights’ typically lively ultra-Orthodox main street, which is now almost fully emptied of people. The mikvah and the Beit Din were closed, although in the latter case, “drop-off for shaalos can be done in the door slot as always,” per a posted notice. Pallets of paper towels and toilet paper crowded the entrance to nearby Empire Kosher, where the shoppers seemed every bit as fearful of one another—or, perhaps, every bit as wary of revealing their fears to one another—as the people in my local Walgreens a couple neighborhoods north. “You see,” said Dovid Margolin, an editor for Chabad.org and my guide around virus-era Crown Heights last week, “there are no old people here.”

The coronavirus pandemic is perhaps the first total event in human history. There have been other spells of worldwide pestilence and conflict, but this is the only one to occur during a time of instantaneous mass communication and high-speed global travel—and maybe the only one to occur during an era in which there is theoretically a species-wide agreement on the intrinsic value of human life.

And yet the pandemic inflicts miseries that are particular to each place it visits. On Wednesday at 770, there were maybe 15 young men standing around a long table stacked with religious texts. I began chatting with two chavruta partners who were sitting together next to the Eastern Parkway bike path, studying the section of the Shulchan Aruch about religious courts—the pages they might have otherwise been probing if their yeshiva had stayed open (all the religious schools in Crown Heights had suspended operations at noon the previous Friday). They, and the nearby group of 15, were all speaking Hebrew to one another. These were students who had no family in America, nothing to do, nowhere else to go. The resilience of the Crown Heights community, and of Orthodox communities in general, comes from their close-knit, multigenerational families, a ready-made support network when things take an unexpected turn for the surreal. These students only had each other.

Everywhere else in the neighborhood, a visitor could feel the presence of people hiding behind brick walls and closed doors. On Crown Street, someone blasted a recording of the Shema from a high balcony, followed by “Ouf Ghazal” or “Fly, Fledgeling,” a beloved secular Israeli folk song by the late Arik Einstein whose lyrics are an extended metaphor for a parents’ hopes and fears for their young in an unpredictable world. Maybe the listeners found the music heartening—but they were inside, invisible.

Stephen L. Miller: Abolish the World Health Organization

The WHO has become another pointless organization pandering to the world’s worst actors

Since the coronavirus has become a global pandemic, halting the world’s economy in its tracks, Tedros has taken it upon himself to repeat Chinese state talking points about shifting blame for their own role in the spread of the virus: ‘When fighting an outbreak such as #COVID19, we must be guided by solidarity, not stigma. The greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; it’s the stigma that turns us against each other. We must stop stigma and hate!’

This has been a familiar refrain from the Chinese state, whose government which runs forced labor and concentration camps. China repeatedly eludes scrutiny by the not only the head of WHO but sectors of the American media as well.

Since his appointment as head of the WHO in 2017, with the full backing of China and its vast financial resources, Tedros has come under fire for his role in covering up multiple cholera epidemics in Ethiopia. Shortly after his appointment as WHO D-G, Adhanom bestowed the honor of Goodwill Ambassador on late Zimbabwean president and tyrant Robert Mugabe. It was only after a deluge of outrage from human rights groups and WHO members that Adhanom withdrew the honor.

According to a Washington Post report at the time, Tedros’s decision was based partly on rewarding China for backing his appointment. ‘Some speculate that Tedros’s decision to appoint Mugabe was a pay-off to China, which worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help Tedros defeat the United Kingdom candidate for the WHO job, David Nabarro. Tedros’s victory was also a victory for Beijing, whose leader Xi Jinping has made public his goal of flexing China’s muscle in the world.’

Beijing and Mugabe had an understanding: he would not criticize Chinese colonialism and exploitation of Africa’s resources; they would support him. In December 2015, Mugabe gushed about Xi at the China-Africa summit in Johannesburg. He called the Chinese autocrat ‘a God-sent person’.

But Tedros’s capitulation to the world’s worst actors isn’t the biggest problem with WHO as an organization. WHO slow-walked its coordinated response to the Ebola epidemic in 2015, which killed more than 10,000 people on the continent of Africa alone. The whole organization is evidently unfit for purpose: it needs to be abolished and replaced. Tedros’s goal seems to be turning the WHO into another United Nations, a body that delivers impotent lectures without ever taking politically sensitive decisions. The world demands accountability and action. It demands both come from the country behind this all and its puppet leader at the WHO.

Ummm...World Health Organization doesn’t include Israel in its list of “eastern Mediterranean” countries but of course includes all the countries around it and the Palestinian Territories 🤔 pic.twitter.com/JhGqKUQ0mH
— Seth Frantzman (@sfrantzman) March 25, 2020

May 23, 2017: Thanks to China's lobbying, @DrTedros wins election as WHO chief.

May 24, 2017: @DrTedros meets first with Chinese health minister, pledges allegiance to "One-China principle", promises to "properly handle Taiwan-related issues."https://t.co/EEmwNvQnok
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) March 26, 2020

I still cannot get over the fact that any Democrat who comes into the White House will favor "pay-to-slay."

This is the policy wherein Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority (PA) literally pays-off random Arabs who kill Jews in Israel with foreign tax dollars. What is even more strange is that Democrats seem entirely oblivious to this practice. Trump cut funding to the Palestinian Authority. The PA, under previous American presidents, both Democratic and Republican, used American tax dollars to primarily line their own pockets and to pay Arabs to murder Jews in Israel. This is what is called "pay-to-slay."

And, yet, American Jews, in the minds of many, are supposed to think of themselves as holding dual-loyalty if we oppose paying Arabs to murder Jews in Israel? Ridiculous. How the Democratic Party maintains American Jewish loyalty is a mystery. Democrats would literally pay Arabs to murder Jews in Israel and we are supposed to smile and nod our pretty little heads?

It is grotesque and almost nobody ever discusses it.

The truth, of course, is that the Arabs in Israel have refused every single offer for a state of their own since the British Peel Commission of 1937. They said "no" in 1937. They said "no" in 1947. They said "no" three times in 1967. Arafat refused an Arab state in the heart of Israel, as did Mahmoud Abbas... a dictator in the fifteenth year of his four-year term.

And, nonetheless, the Democratic Party would turn over working-class American tax dollars to the Palestinian Authority, if not Hamas, who will use that money to incentivize the murder of Jews on historically Jewish land. And yet they still think that we are somehow unethical if we refuse to vote for their candidates.

The worst example of this antisemitic anti-Zionist trend within the Democratic Party is Bernie Sanders. Sanders is no friend to either the Jewish people or the Jewish state. He has surrounded himself by people who despise Jewish self-determination and self-defense. He has surrounded himself by people who oppose the Movement for Jewish Freedom which we call Zionism. His formal surrogates, such as Linda Sarsour, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar, among others, are uniformly antisemitic anti-Zionist. And he has specifically proposed funding Hamas at Israeli expense, despite the fact that former Hamas charters have called directly for the genocide of the Jews and current Hamas charter scalls directly for the elimination of the state of Israel. In the 2017 version we read:

Palestine is a land that was seized by a racist, anti-human and colonial Zionist project that was founded on a false promise (the Balfour Declaration), on recognition of a usurping entity and on imposing a fait accompli by force.

Palestine symbolises the resistance that shall continue until liberation is accomplished, until the return is fulfilled and until a fully sovereign state is established with Jerusalem as its capital.

Sanders surrogates in "the Squad" are not seeking social justice, nor are they merely criticizing Israeli policies. On the contrary, they actively undermine Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land within living memory of the Holocaust and three of the four do so from within the US Congress. One begins to wonder how much of Tlaib's energies go into supporting the people who voted her into Congress in Detroit versus her efforts to undermine Israel?

My major criticism of President Barack Obama's foreign policy concerning Israel is that he seemed so blithe in telling Jewish people where we may, or may not, be allowed to live within our ancestral homeland. He demanded "total settlement freeze." By this, he did not mean the building of no new "settlements" -- otherwise known as Jewish townships -- but no building even within existing Jewish townships in the parts of Israel that he particularly does not like.

He reminded me of nothing so much as a Medieval Italian prince dictating where Jews might be allowed to live within the Italian peninsula. But at least the Medieval Italian princes had the modesty to keep their demands within their own domains. Obama, on the other hand, took it upon himself to tell Jewish people where we could live on our own land and did so from the other side of the planet.

I was astonished at the time that so few American Jews seemed to mind seeing our brothers and sisters in Israel pushed around by an American President with shaky credentials regarding Israeli well-being. But that was then and this is now. If my major concern during the Obama years was the complacency with which American Jewish Democrats accepted the dictates of that President, my primary concern now is that the election of a Democrat to the White House in 2020 will resurrect US participation in "pay-to-slay."

If Biden wins the Presidency he would send working-class American tax-dollars to Ramallah or Gaza City, or both. Those governments will use a considerable amount of that money for the purpose of killing Jews on the land of the Jewish people.

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Before I Judge An Act I Ask If Israel Did It, And Then I Judge by Issa Amro (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Before I Judge An Act I Ask If Israel Did It, And Then I Judge

by Issa Amro, Palestinian activist

Hebron, March 26 - Philosophers and thinkers have long grappled with the nature of a given act: its context, its purpose, and of course its effects, to determine whether that act complies with or violates human morality. They have failed, however, to reach a convincing conclusion - and I maintain they have failed because they do not apply the litmus test I and my allies have devised. The test asks one simple question: did Israel do the act? If not, the act can be moral; if yes, perforce the act is evil.

This illustrates and explains a phenomenon we saw most recently with divergent official Palestinian reactions to the same act performed by two different agents: Israel and Hamas. The Palestinian Authority, led by Fatah, condemned Hamas's closure of mosques throughout the Gaza Strip; at the same time it lambasted Israel for not closing mosques in areas under its control, because of course Israel neglects the health of its Arab minority.

To many people such contrasting responses to the same question smacks of hypocrisy, but those people ignore the salient point: anything Israel does is evil, even if others engage in the same behavior yet escape that characterization. The answer hinges on Jewish- I mean Israeli or Zionist action, not the act itself. Thus, self-defense by the vast majority of humanity qualifies as a positive moral value, a defensible, if unfortunate act when necessary, and, indeed, a moral imperative; whereas when Zionists engage in so-called self-defense they automatically violate the human rights of Palestinians. I am a human rights activist; I know these things.

Note also that a Zionist failing to uphold the principle of self-defense would not thus perform a good act - just the opposite. That Zionist would be committing evil by choosing not to exercise self-defense, since his refusal to defend himself violates the sanctity of the life God gave him, and is it not just like a Jew to show no appreciation for all the kindness done to him by his non-Jewish hosts through the generations?

The question can still remain regarding acts by non-Zionists; I do not pretend to greater intelligence than all the thinkers who preceded me in this line of inquiry, and acknowledge the larger question remains unresolved. But I do confess no small amount of pride in bringing this iota of moral clarity into the world, and look forward to its application much more widely than has, to our collective chagrin, been the case.

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The PLO is trying to use the coronavirus pandemic to demand international action to force Israel to release terrorists.

Of course, the PLO always demands the release of terrorists, so they are just using the pandemic as a new lever to get their demands met.

But the language they use shows how they project their own thinking onto Israel.

The PLO executive committee member Ahmed Al-Tamimi, head of the Human Rights and Civil Society Department, sent letters to the United Nations and all international bodies, to press the occupation to release the Palestinian prisoners after they became easy prey for the Coronavirus...

Al-Tamimi warned the international community "that the occupation exploits the coronavirus and the preoccupation of societies and states with it, in order to implement its criminal plans against the Palestinians, especially the prisoners who are now in great danger. And unleashing the settlers to attack the Palestinians and the leveling of lands and the expansion of settlements in the occupied territories, is evidence of this fascist racist mentality that will not hesitate to commit any crime against the Palestinians."

If anything, Israel's activities in the territories has decreased, mostly because of fewer Palestinians rioting.

The Palestinian leadership finds any excuse - or no excuse - do constantly demonize Israel, even in the middle of a pandemic. This is practically part of their DNA.

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03/26 Links Pt1: 3 more die from virus as Israel death toll reaches 8; number of cases hits 2,666; Netanyahu and Gantz said forming unity government; Blue and White collapses

From Ian:

3 more die from virus as Israel death toll reaches 8; number of cases hits 2,666

The number of Israelis who have died in the COVID-19 pandemic rose Thursday by three to a total of eight, with diagnosed cases rising by 171 to 2,666, the Health Ministry announced.

The sixth fatality was a 91-year-old woman with the coronavirus, Wolfson Medical Center in Holon said, adding that she had been in critical condition for many days, sedated and on a ventilator, and that staff had tried to save her life “with every means, night and day, with much dedication.”

“We share in the sorrow of the family members,” the hospital said.

It said her family members had been informed and that social workers were helping them.

The Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem said that one of the deceased was an 89-year-woman who had been admitted to the medical center with the virus as well as underlying health problems. Her family has been informed.

The third fatality was reportedly an 83-year-old man who was hospitalized at the Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak.

The Health Ministry also said there were 39 people in serious condition, 68 were in moderate condition and the rest had mild symptoms.

So far, 68 people have fully recovered from the illness, the ministry said.

Earlier in the day, the ministry said there were 5,240 tests conducted for the virus in the 24 hours from Wednesday morning to Thursday morning, and 59,493 people were under mandatory home quarantine over concerns they may have been exposed to the virus, the ministry noted.

The updated ministry figures came after the government tightened lockdown rules and warned violators could face fines and six months of imprisonment.

The emergency regulations, in effect for a seven-day period, include a prohibition on people venturing more than 100 meters from their homes, apart from under certain circumstances, and the shuttering of synagogues.

PM @netanyahu:

"Citizens of #Israel, you know the saying: 'Whoever saves one life, it is as if he saved the whole world'. But with the #coronavirus, that saying has a second, vicious side: 'Whoever infects one person, it is as if he infected the whole world.' pic.twitter.com/YINIAvFlsV
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) March 26, 2020

Instructions for keeping safe in Israel: English, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic

Lies about Israel's Ministry of Health's handling of the Coronovirus are spreading faster than .... well...you know what.

One common trope is that instructions to insure the safety of the populace are only given out in Hebrew.

Um. No.

The truth is out there...in many languages. You need only look.

Google Autotranslate

This is a real PLO press release translated from Arabic:

The President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, congratulated the President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, on the great victory that China had achieved by overcoming the ordeal of the novel coronavirus, and "through which you have proven your country's vast capabilities in the health, administrative and technological fields, and in which you have made achievements that everyone has witnessed, And it won the admiration of the whole world, thanks to your wise leadership and your wisdom in managing the biggest health crisis the contemporary world has known. "

In a congratulatory telegram in this regard, President Abbas said that the State of Palestine was guided from the first moment by the Chinese steps in confronting this pandemic, as we restricted the Covid-19 infections to its minimum.

Thanks for helping kill and sicken millions!

I noted on Twitter another PLO press release, which sounds like it could have been written in China or North Korea as well:

Dictators like to stick together.

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The coronavirus is slowing down Iranian arms transfers to Hezbollah and other terror groups

Al-Modon asks why Israel hasn't been doing as many airstrikes in Syria recently. Is it because the IDF is preoccupied with the coronavirus, or another reason?

A Russian diplomatic source tells the site that the reason is because the amount of air traffic from Iran to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon has plummeted because of the pandemic - and the weapons transfers to Hezbollah and other terror groups were often done by air.

Moreover, Iran's allies do not want Iran's Quds Force members on their lands for fear of more spreading of the disease.

The number of cases of Covid-19 is being severely underreported in Iran, Syria and apparently Iraq as well, as there are credible reports that Iran is sending many of its forces to hospitals in those countries (as well as Lebanon) for treatment.

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