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 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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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.
"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
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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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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While people who pretend to care about Palestinians put up petition after petition to use the pandemic as an excuse to pressure Israel to compromise its security in the name of human rights, they are curiously silent about the plight of Palestinians not only in Lebanon but in Syria also.
As the novel coronavirus COVID-19 continues to grip the Middle East and the world, AGPS has called on the Syrian government to free all Palestinians and Syrians held behind prison bars.
AGPS is deeply concerned over an unabated outbreak of coronavirus in Syrian prisons, at a time when the deadly virus continues to claim the lives of thousands of people across the globe.
Though the Syrian government reported only one case of coronavirus infection throughout the war-ravaged country, there are growing fears that a large outbreak in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria could be particularly catastrophic.
Over recent weeks, AGPS has warned of a projected outbreak of COVID-19 in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria. Though campaigns to help spread awareness among the camps’ residents have recently seen the day, limited access to running water, pharmacies and medical facilities mean displacement camps are more susceptible to the spread of the highly infectious virus.
Displacement camps set up in northern Syria are especially vulnerable as most hospitals and medical facilities have been bombed, rendering them out of order.
Over 4000 Palestinians have been killed in Syria. More than 1700 are missing. The ones who are still in Syria have very limited access to medical facilities; those in refugee camps are in great danger of a massive epidemic in those camps.
Somehow, these Palestinians aren't on the radar of the people who claim to care so much about the human rights of Palestinians.
Perhaps the motivation of these "activists" has nothing to do with helping Palestinians and everything to do with blaming Jews.
It is the only explanation that is consistent with their actions.
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Gaza health officials announced that seven more people have been tested positive with the coronavirus. The good news is that they were all security guards who worked at the quarantine center where the two infected Gazans who came from Pakistan are being held, and the guards have never left the center, according to authorities.
They are all in good health.
Meanwhile, between 15 and 18 Palestinians from the village of Bidu northwest of Jerusalem were found to have the virus. They were all in contact with the first Palestinian who died of the virus, a woman who succumbed yesterday.
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In the pre-state period, the socialist Left dominated the yishuv. They created the institutions that would form the basis of the state, and ran them according to their ideology. The Histadrut labor federation dominated the economy; its closely allied kibbutz movement was the primary producer of agricultural products, the Solel Boneh construction company built roads and buildings, and the Kupat Holim Clalit health fund was everyone’s healthcare provider. The Zim shipping line and the ports, the Tnuva dairy cooperative – most of the essential pieces of the economy were fully or partly controlled by the Histadrut, which was the heart of the Labor Party.
When Labor Party leader David Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel and became its first Prime Minister, naturally his people ended up in key places in government and business. The government supported arts and culture, and naturally the artists who received grants were the right kind (I should say, the left kind) of people. Music on the state radio stations was primarily written and performed by ideologically correct artists. The Mizrachi Jews that came here after the War of Independence and through the 1960s were treated as second-class citizens by the Labor establishment, which tried to keep them out of the political and cultural life of the country (this was the case for many years – when I tried to buy music by Mizrachi artists in the early 1980s, it was still mostly found on cassettes produced by back-porch entrepreneurs).
The right-wing political opposition was kept as far away from power as possible. Efforts were made to delegitimize the Herut party, led by Menachem Begin, and even to “remove [it] from any recollection or participation in [remembrance of war dead].” The contributions of the right-wing military organizations, Etzel and Lehi, to the achievement of independence were minimized or erased from official histories. Ben Gurion would not even mention Menachem Begin’s name in the Knesset, or speak directly to him. Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Etzel and the inspiration for much of the Israeli Right, died in 1940; Ben Gurion did not allow him to be buried in Israel and it was not until he left power that Jabotinsky’s remains were finally brought to Mount Herzl.
But in 1977, the world (well, at least Medinat Yisrael) turned upside down. In 1973, the Labor government had blown it big time. Regardless of the debate about precisely who was responsible for the debacle that almost ended the State of Israel, it was clear that it was time for new leadership. At the same time, Mizrachim had had enough of the paternalistic condescension and discrimination that characterized the establishment that was running the government. The people of Israel gave Begin’s Likud 43 seats, despite the fact that Begin himself had recently suffered a heart attack and did not participate in the campaign.
Since then, Israel has had right-wing leadership – or at least purportedly right-wing leadership – with the exception of a period between 1984-86 when Shimon Peres was PM in a rotation agreement as part of a unity government, 1992-96 when Yitzhak Rabin was PM, followed by Peres after his assassination; and then in 1999-2001, the term of the execrable Ehud Barak.
The Labor Party and the various small parties to its left have shrunk radically, as the Israeli public lost confidence in them following Oslo and then the Second Intifada. But to a great extent the leftish establishment in the media, the arts, academia, and the legal profession has remained dominant in those areas. And it has become more and more frantic in its desire to regain its former control of the country. In particular, it sees Binyamin Netanyahu, who has surpassed Ben Gurion as the longest-serving Prime Minister, as the personification of the enemy, a fascist enemy of democracy. But that is unfair. Netanyahu has problems, but he is not an enemy of democracy. He has become PM by winning democratic elections, or at least by putting together coalitions, something the opposition cannot do.
The Blue and White party was created by this establishment for one reason only: to remove Netanyahu. Benny Gantz was chosen as a neutral figure, somebody that would be respected as a former Chief of Staff, a person who has little baggage. His campaign was notable for its concentration on Netanyahu’s indictments and its almost total lack of other content. The party leadership does not share an ideology, and I suspect that 99% of those who voted for it understood that they were voting to depose Netanyahu – and the rest would have to take care of itself.
What has happened now, as I write, is that Blue and White did not come close to being able to obtain the needed 61 mandates to form a government, so they violated their pre-election promise to not try to form a minority government supported from the outside by votes from the anti-Zionist Arab parties. But then it turned out that they did not have the votes to do even that. So while they negotiated with the Likud to form a unity government in which Netanyahu and Gantz would take turns being PM, they planned to get the Knesset to pass several bills that would prevent Bibi from serving due to his indictments.
In order to do this, the Speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, would have to let it happen, and Likudnik Edelstein wasn’t moving. B&W demanded that the Knesset vote to replace Edelstein with a more pliant candidate, but Edelstein refused to schedule that vote. So they turned to the Supreme Court, which issued a ruling that Edelstein must schedule the vote to replace him. Edelstein responded by resigning his position as Speaker, and in a particularly moving statement, said,
The High Court of Justice’s decision is not based on the language of the law, but on a unilateral and extreme interpretation. The decision of the High Court destroys the work of the Knesset. The High Court decision constitutes a gross and arrogant intervention of the judiciary in the affairs of the elected legislature. The High Court decision infringes on the sovereignty of the Knesset. ... As someone who has paid a heavy personal cost of years of imprisonment and hard labor for the right to live as a citizen of the State of Israel, no explanation is needed as to how much I love the State of Israel and the people of Israel. Therefore, as a democrat, as a Jewish-Zionist, as a person fighting against dark regimes, and as chair of this House, I will not allow Israel to deteriorate into anarchy. I will not lend a hand to civil war. I will act in the spirit of Menachem Begin who in June 1948, during the Altalena days, prevented civil war. Members of Knesset, citizens of Israel, these days our people need unity, need a unity government. These days, when an epidemic threatens us from the outside and the cleavage rips us from the inside, we must all act as human beings, we must all transcend. We must all unite. Therefore, for the State of Israel and in order to renew the state spirit in Israel, I hereby resign from my position as Speaker of the Knesset. We will pray, and even act, for better days.
Edelstein’s resignation will take effect in 48 hours. But the Knesset’s legal advisor warned him that he will be liable to a charge of contempt of court if he does not allow a vote to be called immediately. I suspect that the man who spent three years in a Siberian gulag will not change his mind.
I see the whole process that began with the investigations into Netanyahu more than three years ago, with all of the improprieties involved – the continuous media leaks from the police and prosecution, the abuse of witnesses, the recent last-minute attempts to change the law so that Netanyahu could not be even a part-time PM, the intervention of the Court – as a continuation of the struggle to subvert the will of Israeli voters, and bring the discredited Left back to power.
But the world has changed. The Labor Party and the Histadrut can’t pick the prime minister from among their activists anymore, as they did until 1977. Ben Gurion isn’t coming back. Form a unity government with Bibi and move on.
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As for the BDS movement, they have been relatively quiet on the question of whether or not they would use a (hypothetical) Israeli vaccine, but at least one pro-BDS Press TV journalist, Roshan Salih, tweeted he would rather be infected by coronavirus than use an Israeli product. Apparently, hating Israel is more important than living to some of these BDS activists. When Salih was mocked on social media, he reverted to another conspiracy claiming “Israel’s troll army” attacked him online.
No less hateful than the conspiracy theories and hate speech, there has also been a litany of outrageous comments exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to smear the state of Israel. From journalists, to organizations like Human Rights Watch (HRW), to Jewish extremist groups like IfNotNow, to Palestinian NGOs, comments which pre-emptively assume that Israel is failing to assist the Palestinians are spreading faster than the coronavirus itself.
Another popular talking point in these crowds has been using the pandemic to talk about occupation. “Students for Justice in Palestine” held a campus event on the topic in the US - before American universities were ordered shuttered. Regardless of one’s position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, if your response to a global pandemic is to bash Israel you can’t be surprised when your motives are questioned. After all, the line between condemning policy and outright antisemitism has been repeatedly crossed in such statements. Last week a former HRW employee, Sarah Whitson, tweeted that Israel is only “missing a tablespoon of blood” in its oppression of Palestinians, a classic antisemitic trope about bloodthirsty Jews. Whitson later deleted the tweet saying it was being “misunderstood” but carried on bashing Israel. It’s no coincidence that statements like this “accidentally” come out when those who hold deeply ignorant and antisemitic views use words like “Israel” or “Zionism” as socially acceptable replacements for the words “Jews” and “Judaism.”
The plague of antisemitism is an ongoing problem on social media, as social media provides uncensored and sometimes anonymous platform to broadcast to the entire world. But this global pandemic has shown, in just a matter of days, that antisemitism today flourishes not just from the usual neo-Nazi or radical Islam fringes, but from the general public – world leaders, journalists, human rights activists, and more. Once again, irrational obsession with Jews demonstrates that antisemitism is not a marginal problem but all-too-mainstream.
It’s been derided as irrelevant and a relic of the distant past that ought to have been junked decades ago. But the World Zionist Congress election that has just concluded generated more interest and participation than it has in decades.
Just as interesting is a clear shift in the results from elections that just wrapped up on March 11 showing an increase in support for Orthodox slates and groups that identify with Israel’s Likud Party and other right-leaning groups. While the increased participation is a healthy sign for the Zionist movement, the gap between these results and polls of American Jewish opinion illustrate something else.
The Zionist Congress is significant because it helps control a nearly $1 billion budget that can support projects in Israel. Americans make up about one-third of those who will attend the gathering, which was scheduled to be held this summer.
Those who voted for the Congress may well be representative of the opinion of Jews who remain affiliated with synagogues and care deeply about Israel. But that distance between that segment of the population and the far larger group of Jews who are not motivated to take part in a Zionist Congress election is greater than ever. Though the vote produced a result that was surprisingly encouraging for most of those who consider themselves part of the pro-Israel community, it may also show that those who answer to that label are actually a minority of those Americans who consider themselves, by one definition or another, Jewish.
The vote that was held online from January through March generated a turnout of 123,629 votes. That may not sound like much when you consider that the Jewish population in the United States is about 7.5 million, according to the generous estimate of the Brandeis University Steinhardt Social Research Institute with the same study claiming that if you define it solely by religion, there are only 4.4 million American Jews.
That notwithstanding, the voters are a significant sample of the opinion of Jews who care enough about Israel and Zionism to pay a modest fee to register and declare support for the Jerusalem Program of the Zionist movement.
Why the Jews? By a liberal definition of tribal membership (meaning those with at least one Jewish parent), there are around 17 million Jews in the world—about the population of Kazakhstan. An ancient civilization, Kazakhstan boasts a 99.5 percent literacy rate, but while it has produced writers and scientists, their names are not exactly household words.
Contrast this with the Jews. They invented monotheism, Hollywood, gefilte fish, relativity, and free will (Adam chose to eat the apple). Over the centuries, Jewish über-achievers range from Marx, Freud, Proust, Kafka, and Einstein to Mahler, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Gershwin, and Dylan; to Disraeli and Leon Blum; to Jonas Salk (polio vaccine) and Paul Ehrlich (chemotherapy); to Silicon Valley titans such as Sergei Brin and Larry Ellison; to Kirk Douglas, Steven Spielberg, and Seinfeld. Not to mention Groucho. Or Helena Rubinstein and Estée Lauder, who cooked up modern cosmetics.
So how did the Jews, who make up .2 percent of mankind, “change the world?” This is the question Norman Lebrecht asks in the subtitle of his new book, Genius and Anxiety. “I am not about to make a case for Jewish exceptionalism,” he answers, “nor do I believe that Jews are genetically gifted above the average.” Instead, he ascribes Jewish seichel to “culture and experience rather than DNA.” It’s all due to numeracy, literacy, and critical reasoning—the stuff of Talmudic study.
Lebrecht keeps referring to the causal role of the Talmud throughout his book, suggesting that even Freud and Einstein, who had never set foot in a yeshiva, were somehow formed by Talmudic sages who kept arguing ad infinitum for some 300 years at the beginning of the first millennium following the destruction of the Temple. But it is a long trip from Babylon and Jerusalem to Vienna and Berlin, from the Talmudic giants to the secularized, even areligious Jews of the 19th and 20th centuries, many of whom (or their parents) had converted to Christianity.
So let’s posit, as Lebrecht suggests we should, that somehow the ancient masters of pilpul handed the art of disputation down through the generations. After all, Freud’s father, Jacob, a wool merchant, was a Torah scholar.
But if “like father, like son” is the transmission belt, there are two problems.
Coronavirus has much of the world on lockdown. But that should not stop the Jews from being “a light unto the nations.” A beautiful example, in this regard, found expression in a Bild interview with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Kurz publicly credited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with spurring him on to take measures to counter the effects of the virus in Austria.
Another example of being a light for the nations is former refusenik Natan Sharansky, who shared tips with the world on coping with isolation. Sharansky spent nine years in a Soviet prison, much of the time in solitary confinement, for the crime of wanting to make Aliyah to Israel. Who better to speak on the subject of how to manage confinement than a prisoner of conscience?
While we are not Netanyahu or Sharansky, each of us, in our own way, has something to contribute to this effort of living under lockdown, to being a light unto the nations. I don't like to talk about it, but I have had some experience with hardship. I once lived on a small settlement I don't like to remember, called Metzad, where we had no shops or sidewalks, water was delivered daily (except when it wasn’t and the water ran out), and electricity was spotty at best.
For electrical power, the community depended on a generator designed for a much smaller load. My husband Dov had charge of the generator, and this was a losing proposition from the beginning. The generator couldn’t handle our needs, and the power was always cutting out, plunging us into darkness, and depending on the weather, into extremes of heat and cold . I was always trying to decide whether or not the food in my fridge was still safe, after another hours’ long power-out.
As the community grew, the generator failed more often and the power-outs were a constant. This meant that Dov had to run out, sometimes several times a night, in all kinds of weather, knocking on doors to get people to turn off their heaters, and directing them to go to lights and refrigerators only.
Some people invariably cheated, and this meant that Dov couldn’t get the generator back up. Dov knew exactly how many heaters it would take to put us over the top and overwhelm the system. The cheaters meant that everyone suffered, most of all Dov, who would have to get out of bed, get dressed, go down to the generator, try to coax it into coming back on, and if that failed, he’d have to run from house to house, and beg people to obey his directive to go to lights and fridge only.
Now my husband is not a patient man, God bless him, and he would sometimes get quite angry and even yell at people. He was wildly underappreciated, and did not even receive a salary for his service to the community.
Dov begged the Jewish Agency to provide us with a generator able to handle a larger number of people, and they’d give him one, but the gears ground too slowly, so that by the time we’d get the new generator, our community would have already grown beyond its capacity, too. We were started off with a 44 KW generator for 18 families, then upgraded to 120 KW for 28 families with 70 kids, then once again to 230 KW for 35 families with 220 kids. As a result, we residents were often restricted to lights and a fridge, only, as we shivered and sweated in our asbestos/concrete/cum cardboard caravans.
In front of our caravan on Metzad.
Losing power, meantime, was not just about being hot and cold in the dark eating spoiled food. It meant also that we were unsafe. Metzad was surrounded by hostile Arab villages, one in particular known for the extreme cruelty and violence of the residents. We had to keep the lights on to keep us safe, to prevent those who might sneak in from murdering us in our beds.
Basic needs and safety aside, Dov and I had other challenges. We had a lot of babies during this time period. So neither of us ever slept. It was either the generator, a crying infant or toddler, or a sick elementary school child (sometimes all of these at once) interrupting our sleep. Add in two intifadas and the Gulf War, assorted terror attacks, and many difficult pregnancies, and you can see it’s a lot.
It was, however, a difficult time for me for personal and emotional reasons, as well. I didn’t fit in with the community, which left me feeling very isolated. I couldn’t just take a day to run into town to get away from it all, because we had no public or private means of transportation for much of the time we lived on that mountaintop. As for moving away, well, we had no money to leave and anyway, somehow, my husband didn’t want to. So there was that disagreement about where we should be. It was all very stressful.
The Susita was the only blue and white car ever made. The parts were Ford Anglia, but the body was Israeli fiberglass construction. The car was more a curiosity than an efficient conveyance. Israelis would constantly pull alongside us, motion us to roll down the windows and offer to buy it off of us (when it worked).
There were always terrible gas fumes wafting about us as we drove, and the ride was NOISY and ROCKY. I went into labor every time Dov started the motor and the contractions never stopped until he parked. I was always afraid I'd give birth in that crazy car.
But I learned things up there on that mountain. I learned to make do with very little, in a time and place where even water and electricity were undependable and sporadic. I learned that when people suck, like whether it’s hogging electricity or hoarding toilet paper, refuge can still be found in books and food.
I survived. You will, too. You hang on when things are tough, because something in you loves life, craves life, in spite of everything. So you persist.
A lot of this is coming back to me now, the feeling of that time, in our current situation of being in the midst of a global pandemic, this coronavirus COVID-19. This struggle is the same as that, where basic resources are undependable, the work, both physical and mental, is as hard as can be, the isolation almost total, the fear hanging over our heads.
But my old and ugly history is the reason I feel well-equipped to handle the coronavirus lockdown. I feel completely equal to the task of living through this crazy plague. It’s like I had a trial by fire, and I already know how to do this.
That doesn’t mean I like it, but I can totally cope. We can do this. Even if it gets very hard.
None of us like it. Who wants to be tried by fire? But all of us know the truism: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That has to be the aim right now, not to be killed, so we can all come out stronger, even better for our travail.
And while we feel incredibly isolated, we are doing this all together, almost the whole world, at one and the same time. For me, at least, it’s hard not to contemplate that the messianic era may be coming quite soon. After all, we’re in the home stretch: the final 300 years of the world’s existence.
Things could get bad. They may get scary. But the main thing is not to let the fear become overwhelming.
Humor helps a lot. I mine the internet for funny corona memes and videos and share them with my friends.
Humor aside, it also helps to remember that young people will still be here, even if we are not, to find a vaccine and a cure for COVID-19. I try to be productive, to keep busy and so should you.
And should that involve reading trashy novels while eating potato chips and ice cream, I promise that your secret, will always be safe with me.
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A survey just done by the respected Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (not online as of this writing), performed between March 12-15, asks, ”Do you believe that a foreign power/other force is deliberately causing the spread of Coronavirus, or do you think that it is a natural mutation?”
51% answered “No,nobody is behind it, it’s a natural mutation” - but 47% said "Yes, it is deliberately spread” by a foreign power.
68.3% of Palestinians did support cooperation between the Palestinian and Israeli authorities in managing the crisis.
Over 70% of Palestinians said that they had already been personally impacted economically by the coronavirus.
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The Health Ministry on Wednesday morning said that five people have now died in Israel in the coronavirus pandemic.
Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer announced the death of a 76-year-old man, Israel’s fourth fatality from COVID-19.
The man reportedly had serious health issues before he contracted the virus. He was not immediately named.
According to Hebrew media reports, the fifth victim was an 87-year-old man who arrived at the Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak on Tuesday with breathing difficulties. He was tested after he died and diagnosed with the coronavirus.
The Health Ministry announced Wednesday afternoon that the number of people diagnosed with coronavirus in Israel is now 2,170, an increase of 240 since Tuesday, which had seen the largest single-day jump in cases since the crisis began.
According to the ministry, 37 people with COVID-19 are in serious condition, and 54 are in moderate condition. Another 1,876 people have mild symptoms.
There have now been 58 Israelis who have recovered from the virus.
Health Ministry Deputy Director-General Itamar Grotto said on Monday that although the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Israel keeps climbing steadily, the figures match the ministry's "more optimistic" predictions.
"There are no exponential leaps [in numbers of cases]," Prof. Grotto told Ynet. "I hope we will maintain this level of new cases. This is how we know that the steps we've taken are starting to be effective."
"We'll have to wait a couple of days to see whether these steps are working. In another two weeks, they will start affecting the rate of severe illness and mortality rates."
Grotto said that the number of coronavirus tests conducted by health authorities, which stands at a few thousand a day, is increasing and will even double by next week.
"I think we've definitely reached our goal," Grotto said. "Now, our next goal is to maintain these figures for the next couple of days and then reach 7,000-8,000 tests a day."
"We hope to reach at least 7,000 this week and then double that figure by next week."
The Health Ministry's official goal is to reach 5,000 tests a day until next week and 10,000 within two and a half weeks, but according to the ministry's data, only 3,230 coronavirus tests were conducted in the last 24 hours. Professor Grotto estimates that over 30,000 tests for the pathogen have been conducted in Israel so far.
Grotto repeated his earlier estimate that up to 20,000 Israelis could die from the coronavirus if the spread of the disease spins out of control, but that number would be still a negligible number out of the total mortality rate.
The government on Wednesday announced a raft of new restrictions that came into effect from 5 p.m. for a seven-day period, including a prohibition on people venturing more than 100 meters from their homes, apart from under certain circumstances, and the shuttering of synagogues.
The regulations permit Israelis to leave their homes only for the following activities:
1. Going to work and coming back, within previously specified regulations on who is allowed to work;
2. Stocking up on food, medicine and necessary goods and to receive essential services;
3. Receiving medical care;
4. Donating blood;
5. For legal proceedings;
6. To attend a demonstration;
7. Going to the Knesset;
8. Receiving care in a social work framework;
9. A short walk of no more than 100 meters from one’s home either as an individual or with others from the same residence for an undefined “short period of time”;
10. Helping a person with a medical problem or other difficulty that requires support, such as old age or physical infirmity;
11. Going to an outdoor area for prayer, a wedding, funeral or circumcision with fewer than 10 people at a distance of two meters apart. A woman can go to immerse in a mikveh provided that she has coordinated her arrival in advance;
12. Taking children to educational frameworks for those whose parents are essential workers (in accordance with previous orders);
13. Taking children whose parents do not live together from one residence to another;
14. Transferring a child whose sole caregiver is required to leave for an essential purpose.
In addition, public transportation was reduced to around 25 percent of services and taxis will only be permitted to take one passenger unless the second is an escort for medical reasons. All passengers must sit in the back seat of the vehicle with the windows open.
I wrote yesterday about Baitulmaal, the Hamas-linked charity that Linda Sarsour is raising money for to supposedly help ready Gaza for a coronavirus outbreak.
I included this photo from their website of Baitulmaal members on the ground in Gaza, apparently aiding a disabled man.
This photo seems to be a staged photo of a healthy man who is posing with crutches.
A reader who has had nine separate leg and foot injuries and who has had to re-learn how to walk each time saw a number of issues with how this supposedly disabled man was holding his crutches.
The Crutches- the crutches are way up in the man’s armpits. Unless he is much taller and really leaning forward (he isn’t) no one has ever fitted the crutches to his height. Now Palestinian medicine is not so hot but one has to assume when he was given the crutches they fitted him for his height. Note too they are angled forward, which is common when you stop and want to rest but if the crutches were directly lined up with his feet, they would be higher than his armpits and would have to be angled outward. They are 6-7” in front of his feet meaning they would be at least 2-3” higher up his armpits if they were vertical.
The Arms- the man’s arms are bent such that if he straightened his arms, his feet would be 6’ off the ground. His arms are thin and do not show the biceps and shoulders from extensive use of crutches, definitely a rookie.
Fingers and Handle The Right Hand- no one has 2 fingers off the handle around the vertical bar. Some like me will use one finger for better control, most people, especially first time users have all their fingers on the handle. Left Hand- has one finger looped, why one finder on one hand and two on the other? This makes no sense. I get that he has stopped so they can take his picture but one does not hold crutches like that if you need them to balance (which is the whole point of crutches).
Conclusions: the man using crutches appears to be pretending to use the crutches or he has just recently gotten them and no one has bothered to fit them to him. It is possible the image distorts his posture but his feet are not that far back from the forward position of the crutches. It is possible this is a healthy man posing with crutches.
This all rings true. The man is putting virtually all his weight on his supposedly injured legs.
If Baitulmaal is faking photos of its own accomplishments in Gaza, it is probably lying about many other things.
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Syria's Ministry of the Interior has threatened to arrest anyone who says anything about the coronavirus that doesn't come directly from the government.
Up until this week, Syria denied having a single case of Covid-19 in the country. In reality, reports indicate that the epidemic is in full swing. Apparently, the government realized that its denial of any cases caused people to not take the threat seriously, so they announced a single victim - a 20 year old woman who traveled from another country - and with it a set of sweeping measures to quarantine areas of the country,
Even pro-Syrian commentators have expressed skepticism at the official Syrian position. Everyone knows that many people are still crossing between Syria and Iran where the virus is widespread and also severely underreported.
Threatening to arrest anyone who admits that the epidemic is already out of control in Syria is a classic honor/shame move. To Syrian leaders, appearing strong and impervious to a virus is literally more important than the health and safety of millions of people, and Syrian insistence that it does not need outside help will kill tens of thousands - all to maintain a sense of "honor" that no one believes.
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Last night I livestreamed a point by point rebuttal of a Twitter thread by the hate group IfNotNow.
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Thursday, March 26, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
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.
