Home » Coronavirus » Page 2
→ 8 July 2020
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

Israel thought it had crushed COVID-19. Then cases surged — and restrictions were reinstated | JTA

Benjamin Netanyahu

It was just two months ago that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared victory over the new coronavirus.

Ten weeks after recording its first cases, Israel had imposed a series of draconian restrictions, causing the number of new cases to plunge. Fewer than 250 people had died. A contact tracing system was up and running.

So Netanyahu felt confident about suggesting that the danger had passed. Israel, he said in a press conference from his office on May 4, is “a model for many countries, and the world is learning from us.”

That hasn’t changed. But now, with a second wave of infections surging across the country, the world may be taking different lessons from Israel: what happens when a society relaxes its guard too early.

After recording more than 1,000 cases in 24 hours, Israel reimposed steep restrictions on its population on Monday, just a little over a month after fully lifting a nationwide lockdown that saw much of the population stuck at home.

Read more

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,
→ 6 July 2020
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

Being Jewish in New Zealand is lonely, but in quarantine, it’s better | Forward

Tanya Thomson

I live in New Zealand, which has many advantages. It’s beautiful – green hills, dramatic mountains and spectacular water — mostly safe, run by a sane government and still has a semblance of egalitarianism. But we are also a small island nation at the southern tip of the Pacific Ocean, removed from the centres of Jewish life. Our access to Jewish events, learning and culture is limited.

Bridging that gap has been a big part of my life, most significantly with the creation (along with a few dedicated others) of Limmud NZ, the New Zealand version of the worldwide Jewish learning community/event. Through Limmud we have been able to bring amazing presenters to New Zealand and feel more connected to the Jewish world. But distance, cost and numbers constrain our opportunities. Almost every Israeli I have ever approached to come here has said to me — as if I might not have noticed — “But it’s so far — it’s two 12-hour flights!”

The lockdown imposed due to coronavirus changed my place in the world. I didn’t move very far physically – in fact lockdown here was quite restrictive, with no physical contact outside our own household (termed our “bubble”) and no travel beyond our neighbourhood. And so, for seven weeks, the only people I physically interacted with were my husband and kids, with a couple of waves to friends from our front door.

Read more

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: ,
→ 5 July 2020
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

‘Stuck’ Israeli family gives New Zealand lockdown five stars | Times of Israel

The Shabtai Family just before lockdown

Though a dream trip turned into a plague-cation with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the Shabtai family says NZ government’s response was better than anything they’d get at home

By IRA TOLCHIN IMMERGLUCK4 July 2020, 2:48 pm

This past December, Noa and Ilan Shabtai, small business owners from Ramat Gan, embarked on their dream vacation to New Zealand along with their three children. They had planned an extended trip with lots of travel, but things quickly changed with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, after spending months in New Zealand during lockdown, the family has no small appreciation for their host country. In early June New Zealand’s government announced that the virus has been effectively eradicated locally.

“So long as that last infected person hadn’t been given a certificate of health, the entire country remained under restrictions,” Noa Shabtai said on a video call from New Zealand with Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site.

“Even with zero new sick people. Wherever we went, we had to first register with the COVID-19 app, so that the authorities could track us. It was incredible to see how, up until the very last minute, everyone adhered to the 2-meter [6-foot] distancing rule in public spaces and followed all of the directives,” said Shabtai.

Read more

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,
→ 9 June 2020
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

Israel hits “emergency brake” on reopening as coronavirus cases rise | CNN

Israel will “hit the emergency brake” on its reopening plans as the number of coronavirus cases rises sharply, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday during a meeting of the coronavirus cabinet.

“There has been a very steep increase in morbidity. It could be that we are already seeing the doubling of the rate of infection within ten days. I very much hope not, ” Netanyahu said during the meeting.

For the past eight days, Israel has seen approximately 100 new infections a day, up from approximately 20 new infections a day a week earlier.

According to the Ministry of Health, 298 people have now died as a result of coronavirus in Israel.

Netanyahu said that Israel would freeze further reopening measures that were supposed to take place in the coming days, reevaluating the situation in one week.

Though schools, malls, and restaurants reopened under certain health restrictions, the resumption of train service and the reopening of theaters, music halls, and other cultural venues will now be delayed.

Read more

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,
→ 3 June 2020
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

Etihad makes first commercial flight between UAE and Israel | Stuff

The UAE cargo plane being loaded before its flight to Israel

An unmarked Etihad Airways cargo plane flew aid to help the Palestinians fight the coronavirus pandemic from the capital of the United Arab Emirates into Israel this week, marking the first known direct commercial flight between the two nations.

The UAE, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai on the Arabian Peninsula, has no diplomatic ties to Israel over its occupation of land wanted by the Palestinians for a future state, like all Arab nations except Egypt and Jordan.

Yet the flight marked a moment of cooperation between Israel and the UAE after years of rumoured back-channel discussions between them over the mutual enmity of Iran and other issues.

Etihad, the state-owned, long-haul carrier based in Abu Dhabi, confirmed it sent a flight Tuesday (Wednesday NZ time) to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport.

Read more

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,
→ 18 May 2020
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

Coronavirus: Brothers who survived Holocaust die weeks apart in New York | Stuff

The Feingold brothers in 2015: Alex (left) and Joseph (right)

The brothers didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.

As young Polish Jews, each came out of World War II with scars that forever shaped how they viewed the world, and each other.

One survived Auschwitz, a death march and starvation. The other endured cold and hunger in a Siberian labour camp, then nearly died in a pogrom back in Poland.

Alexander and Joseph Feingold chose New York City as the place to start over. It is where they became architects, lived blocks from each other and lost their wives days apart. It was there that they died four weeks apart, each alone, as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the city.

Read more

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,
→ 14 May 2020
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

New Zealand Couple and Community Bring in Lag BaOmer | Chabad

Rabbi Mendel and Esther Hecht with their daughter.

After last Yom Kippur, as the community members of Chabad of Auckland, New Zealand, gathered together to break the fast, one congregant rose, telling those gathered: “If it weren’t for Chabad, I wouldn’t have been at synagogue today. I would have been at work.” Another remarked that while he’d been going to synagogue for 83 years, this year’s service was better than all the others combined.

Fast-forward seven months and one coronavirus pandemic later to Lag BaOmer. With the approach of the holiday, which is traditionally celebrated outdoors—a gorgeous time of year in New Zealand, with the warmer weather stubbornly clinging on, and the trees beginning to shed their red and orange leaves—Rabbi Mendel Hecht, director of Chabad of Auckland, was determined to celebrate with the community, social-distancing-style.

While encouraging everyone to stay in their own backyards for kosher Kiwi barbecues and roasted marshmallows, the young rabbi—who arrived with his wife, Esther, to far-flung New Zealand just a year-and-a-half ago, their young daughter in tow—and the Auckland Jewish community took part in a first-ever trans-Tasman Lag BaOmer celebration at the start of the holiday on Monday evening, May 11, with their Australian counterparts across the ditch.

As with every Shabbat and Jewish holiday, New Zealand Jews have the privilege of being the very first Jewish community in the world to usher in the holiness of the day.

Read more

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,
→ 8 May 2020
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

Incitement amidst cooperation | AIR

Abdul Azim Salhab

By all accounts, cooperation between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli government and military to deal with the coronavirus crisis has been very good. Amos Harel, the veteran military correspondent and defence analyst for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper recently wrote that “Cooperation with the Palestinians is at its tightest ever.”

This is all the more notable because as recently as February, Israeli-Palestinian relations seemed to be unprecedently precarious. In the wake of the release of the Trump Administration’s peace plan in late January, PA President Mahmoud Abbas promised to withdraw all cooperation with Israel, including the vital security cooperation. While similar threats had been made before, this time Palestinian anger seemed more palpable and serious. Israeli government plans to annex the Jordan valley or other parts of the West Bank, as the peace plan allowed, looked set to deepen the crisis in relations. 

Now, that is all gone. No one is talking about the Trump plan or annexations. Coronavirus has swept all such issues aside, as the two sides seek to manage the pandemic which threatens both Israelis and Palestinians who live intermixed with each other. There is even reportedly an Israeli-Palestinian “joint operations room” to oversee the shared response to the pandemic threat. 

Amid the pandemic doom and gloom, this at least is good news, right?

Yes. However… why is it that even in this shared medical emergency the PA cannot stop its official media from engaging in ongoing incitement against Israel?

Read more

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: , ,
→ 5 May 2020
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

Mayor de Blasio and ‘the Jewish community’ | RNS

Hundreds of mourners gather in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Tuesday, April 28, 2020, to observe a funeral for Rabbi Chaim Mertz, a Hasidic Orthodox leader whose death was reportedly tied to the coronavirus. The stress of the coronavirus’ toll on New York City’s Orthodox Jews was brought to the fore on Wednesday after Mayor Bill de Blasio chastised “the Jewish community” following the breakup of the large funeral that flouted public health orders.(Peter Gerber via AP)

Jews went a little bit nuts this week.

Not because two and a half thousand of us turned out for a funeral at the epicenter of this country’s coronavirus pandemic but because after the cops broke things up New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted:

“My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.”

Whereupon the Twitterverse exploded.

“Hey @NYCMayor,” tweeted ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt, “there are 1mil+ Jewish people in #NYC. The few who don’t social distance should be called out — but generalizing against the whole population is outrageous especially when so many are scapegoating Jews. This erodes the very unity our city needs now more than ever.”

“This has to be a joke,” tweeted New York City Councilman Chaim Deutsch, a Brooklyn Democrat who is an Orthodox Jew. He added, “Every neighborhood has people who are being non-compliant. To speak to an entire ethnic group as though we are all flagrantly violating precautions is offensive, it’s stereotyping, and it’s inviting anti-Semitism. I’m truly stunned.”

“So, as has been true with moral ciphers from time immemorial, you decided to seek your jollies by attacking Jews,” wrote John Podhoretz in the “New York Post.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)

Really?

An old (Jewish) friend of mine likes to say that Jews consider any statement by a non-Jew that begins with the words “Jews are” to be anti-Semitic if it’s not followed by something like “a community that puts a high value on learning and supporting the arts.” In other words, just about whenever a gentile lumps us all together it’s (for historically understandable reasons) a trigger — one that de Blasio certainly pulled.

But there’s more to it than that.

Read more

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: , , ,
→ 28 April 2020
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

Israel briefs UN Security Council on COVID-19 co-operation with Palestinians | NY Times

Israel’s Permanent Representative to the UN

…Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon nor acting U.S. deputy ambassador Cherith Norman Chalet mentioned annexation in their briefings to the council, instead focusing on the fight against COVID-19 in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

Chalet said the United States “has been heartened to see signs of good will, humanity and unity between Israelis and Palestinians,” highlighting Israel’s training of four teams of Palestinian health care workers on the COVID-19 response and establishment of a control room by Israeli and Palestinian leaders to enhance coordination and communications.

She said urged the council “to help the parties choose true leadership over politics as usual, and to work together to ensure that the prospect of peace remains within reach.”

Danon said that “Israel has chosen to put aside politics” and has strengthened cooperation with the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority to mitigate the effects of COVID-19.

Israel is helping fund a U.N. emergency plan, has granted permits allowing thousands of Palestinians to work in Israel and has donated large amounts of equipment to the Palestinian Authority, he said. “In the past weeks, over 600 tons of medical supplies, 25,000 tons of food and 60,000 tons of building materials have entered the Gaza Strip.”

But Danon accused the Palestinians of accepting aid while it “spreads lies and incites against Israel in the media and in official letters to the council.” including blaming Israeli soldiers for the virus.

Addressing the Palestinian ambassador, he said, “The Palestinian Authority must decide if incitement against Israel is more important than the fruitful cooperation intended to save Palestinian lives.”

Read more

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »