The list of violators of corona restrictions was joined by Minister Gila Gamliel and member of the Corona Committee MK Miki Levy, who damaged public confidence in dealing with the plague • But this behavior can not justify violations of mass law and dangerous in demonstrations, prayers or weddings • Opinion
An ultra-Orthodox demonstration in Bnei Brak
Photography:
Coco
Demonstrations against the Prime Minister in Balfour
Photography:
Oren Ben Hakon
Gila Gamliel
Photography:
Israel Salem Soup
Minister Gila Gamliel and MK Miki Levy (Yesh Atid) are currently the latest in a long, shameful and abusive list of those found to have violated or harmed, in various and odd ways and varying degrees of severity, the strict restrictions of the Corona, the quarantine provisions and norms expected of elected officials: State Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, Education Minister Yoav Galant, MKs Avigdor Lieberman and Nir Barkat, two of Netanyahu's close advisers and more.
Israel is in a state of health emergency, and the corona is hitting us very hard, non-stop, and meanwhile the numbers of the hard, breathless and dead are growing.
Although Israel is in a state of medical-war emergency, blatant violations of corona directives by heads of state and elected officials are repeatedly exposed, and in most cases after the violations have been exposed most elected officials did not find it publicly and unequivocally to admit their mistake and apologize to the public. An anointed system of embarrassing excuses and faint explanations for violating the law and corona instructions was activated.
Dealing with the corona virus, which now has no significant cure and no vaccine, is not only medical but first and foremost also social, public, psychological and political.
Thus, public trust in the Ministry of Health and the government plays a critical key role in dealing with the epidemic, and public trust will determine the degree of our compliance and compliance with the Ministry of Health's guidelines that lead to reducing the epidemic and declining numbers of sick and dead.
In the rare case of a new and deadly epidemic, which occurs once every 100 years and spreads throughout the world, public trust is a real medical-health tool for treating an epidemic such as medications and tests in cases of known diseases.
Violation of a life-threatening law. Demonstration in front of the Prime Minister's House // Photo: Yoni Rickner
Closure is also a major and essential health-medical tool - such as medicine, hospitalization or testing - that is designed to reduce the spread of the epidemic, and has been used by mankind for thousands of years.
Prof. Sigal Sadecki warned about this in her letter of resignation from the Ministry of Health's public health services after the first wave of the corona, writing that "in the absence of vaccination and treatment of the disease, the only way to stop the spread of the corona is from person to person." "The histories that accompanied humanity and killed millions of people and sometimes entire populations, such as the smallpox epidemic that killed about a quarter of the Roman Empire and the Spanish influence that killed millions in the previous century."
There is no doubt that corona restrictions and regulations severely harm livelihoods and society, and are very difficult to implement continuously by any human being.
They are exhausting, and they are contrary to what we were all used to, including the need to be on holidays and in general with our family members.
But trust in decision-makers and their personal example are key means of complying with these restrictions, despite all the difficulty.
When elected officials, heads of state and MKs so blatantly violate the guidelines - this has, in the case of epidemics, a horribly inconceivable and unbearable price in human life.
In these cases of persistent and cumulative violations of corona regulations by elected officials and heads of state, the punishment is actually imposed on the entire state by accelerating the spread of the plague and terribly damaging human life and livelihoods of the state’s citizens and residents.
But it is not only the heads of state, ministers and Knesset members who violate the provisions of the Corona.
Massive and destructive violations occur all the time by large sections, even if not the majority, of entire publics in the country: from sections in the ultra-Orthodox community, through the conduct of some of the protesters against the prime minister, continued gatherings in sections of Arab society, to other sections of the public, including celebrities , Which blatantly violate the instructions for wearing the mask, maintaining physical distance and preventing crowds.
For some violators of the Corona's directives, the behavior of Knesset members and ministers or other Israelis (such as the ultra-Orthodox's excuses in demonstrations) serves as an excuse or justification for their outrageous behavior, but sometimes what should have been taken for granted is mass violations. Fatal to our family members, our parents and grandparents of all of us, and it would not be conceivable to accept or forgive the mass violations of the Corona's directives just because Gila Gamliel decided not to obey them or the president did not think then he must obey orders like the rest of us.