The government decision to implement a "closure" the eve of the Jewish New Year is riddled with contradictions and the "closure" itself has more holes than Swiss cheese.
The term "closure" is used here in quotation marks because this is not a real closure but rather a temporary and mild tightening of existing restrictions on gatherings.
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Security forces operate a roadblock in Tel Aviv during the Passover lockdown in April
(Photo: AP)
Ben-Gurion International Airport is not closed, houses of worship are not closed, public transport is not suspended - and this is just the tip of the iceberg of a long list of exemptions and exceptions.
For starters, permission to travel to and from work contradicts the restrictions on movement more than 500 meters from the home. It is a contradiction that makes effective enforcement impossible and why countries that reopened workplaces abolished restrictions on personal movement.
When the British government recently decided to restrict gatherings to no more than six people, it did not call it a "closure."
n the most basic aspect of the decision – the physical distance we can move - is ill-defined. Is it 500 meters as the crow flies, is it on foot or by car? Who knows.
Equally ineffective is the threatened "civil rebellion against closure" by business owners in industries that will be directly affected - restaurants, hotels, health and beauty centers and more.
They are threatening to ignore the directives and stay open - which is pure bluff given that there would be no customers anyway.
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An Israeli woman wears a mask to shop at Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem
(Photo: AFP)
Instead of making idle threats, they would do better to demand that the state provide an immediate, well-defined economic assistance plan, which learns from the failures of the current plan.
Meanwhile, the media is busy giving prominence to those denying the severity of the pandemic, who in democratic nations are being pushed to the margins (unless they are president of the United States or Brazil).
These deniers sin against the truth and create distrust in the facts when they insist that the official data on the extent of the morbidity is exaggerated in its severity. It is not.
The true picture of the pandemic in Israel can be seen in the number of new cases, the rate of positive test results, the geographical distribution of outbreaks, the relatively huge number of critically ill and the rising fatalities, all of which should be greatly alarming to the public.
The decision to tighten restrictions is an unambiguous sign that the Netanyahu-Ganz government, which was supposedly leading us in the struggle against coronavirus, has been an unforgivable failure.
Giving into populist politics and narrow electoral considerations, the government dodged necessary health decisions until the last possible minute.
Tighter measures became a derogatory term, presented as punishment and not as a way of preventing a national disaster.
This is why Israel is under partial closure for the High Holidays. Every single one of us should pray for good fortune and widespread adherence if we want it to have any hope of success.