Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel and MK Mickey Levy (Yesh Atid) are the latest on a long, shameful list of public figures who have violated – in varying ways and to various degrees – the nation's COVID regulations as well as the norms for elected officials. It started back in April with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin, and so far includes Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, Education Minister Yoav Gallant, MKs Avigdor Lieberman and Nir Barkat, two of Netanyahu's advisors, and many others.
Israel is in the midst of a public health emergency, and COVID is pummeling us non-stop, with the number of seriously ill, patients on ventilators, and dead rising steadily. And even though Israel is in the middle of this crisis, we are seeing national leaders commit repeated and egregious violations of the rule. In most cases, after these violations come to light, the elected officials don't even admit to any wrongdoing. The opposite: most times, a well-oiled excuse machine goes into operations and flimsy explanations are issued.
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Right now, there is no real treatment or vaccination for coronavirus, and it must be dealt with not only medically but also – and primarily – socially, publicly, psychologically, and politically. The public's faith in the Health Ministry and the government plays a major role in the country's ability to battle the virus, and that faith will to a large extent determine to what extent we follow the ministry's instructions.
In this rare case of a new and lethal pandemic, which happens once every 100 years, the trust of the public is nothing less than a medical tool. So is a lockdown, which is designed to stop the spread of the virus. This is a tactic humanity has used for thousands of years.
There is no question that the restrictions and regulations put in place to combat COVID have seriously hurt society and people's livelihoods, and are hard for anyone to follow for an extended period of time. They are tiring, and go against what we are all used to, especially our need to spend holidays with our families. When elected officials and heads of state flagrantly ignore these rules, they do so at a heavy cost in terms of human lives. In cases in which elected officials and public leaders do wrong, the entire country is punished because the spread of the virus is expedited.
But it isn't only our leaders who aren't following the rules. Large sectors of the public, if not the majority, are doing the same: some sub-sectors of Haredi society; some of the anti-government protesters; some groups in the Arab sector; and other pockets – including celebrities, who disregard rules about wearing masks in public, social distancing, and the ban on events.
For some of the rule-breakers, the conduct of MKs and ministers serves to justify their own actions. But we also need to state what should be obvious – mass disregard of the public health regulations hurts us all and could be lethal to our parents and grandparents. We cannot even consider accepting or ignoring these violations merely because Gila Gamliel decided not to follow the rules or the president didn't think he had to follow the same regulations as the rest of us.
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