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Dr. Naftali and Mr. Bennett: The book written by the Prime Minister casts a shadow over his treatment of Corona
About a year ago, Bennett tried to determine how to overcome an epidemic: resisting closure, opening air routes and setting up a functioning information headquarters.
Now that he is in power, he uses exactly the tactics he underestimated and criticized, and is forced to discover that the reality is not so simple.
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Naftali Bennett
Corona virus
Living Room Fellow
Friday, 06 August 2021, 08:45
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In one of 1989's best-selling books, Bill Cosby wrote his autobiographical memoirs of hormone-filled parties in high school: "In those basements I fingered girls like watermelons, to see which one was ripe enough ... But most of the other girls I managed to keep away from the bustling crowd just sat like statues, hoping the moment would pass and they could go on with their lives "(" Love and Marriage ", Matar Publishing, from English: Sarit Percol). This passage joins other parts of the book in which the famous comedian and rapist writes that "boys practice violent acts, which are part of their development for men" and notes that he hopes the guys who go out with his girls are not "knock hunters" like him. More than thirty years have passed since these words were written, and it can be said with confidence that they have aged almost as badly as the reputation of the man who wrote them.
There are a lot of old books that have aged badly. The wonderful "Gone with the Wind" includes a stereotypical reference to African-Americans, for example it is written there about freed slaves in the Restoration period who have less intelligence, "like monkeys"; In the "end of history and the last man" of the Prosper Francis Fukuyama the theory emerges that following the fall of the Communist bloc, all the countries of the world will move to the form of a liberal regime; In the book "Terrorism: How the West Can Win" from 1987, the young author Benjamin Netanyahu claims that he knows how to defeat terrorism.
It's hard to remember an example of a book that ages so badly, so fast, like "How to Beat a Plague" by Naftali Bennett. In fact, two weeks after it was published, in August 2020, it could be stated that the book was embarrassing and detached. In fact, this is exactly what was written in a review posted here on the site: "This is a bad book, on the verge of being pathetic. "No one is arrogant enough to declare himself a person who knows how to defeat this virus, which still has a hidden power over the visible in everything related to it.
The book, which was published exactly a year ago, found Naftali Bennett in opposition, trying to preserve the little reputation he had gained for himself in the Ministry of Defense during the Corona period.
Of the 133 (small) pages of the light-hearted book, 84 pages are devoted to Bennett's pompous self-glorification.
Among other things, Bennett claims that he ordered his office in the Kirya in Tel Aviv to give every new patient who comes to the Corona hotels a beautiful red flower to make the stay "pleasant, fun and normative."
Undoubtedly, this is a leader who knows how to speak to his public in flowers.
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To the full article
A book that has aged badly and quickly.
Naftali Bennett (Photo: Knesset Spokeswoman, Noam Moskowitz)
A year has passed, and Bennett is no longer a warrior oppositionist criticizing the government, but the prime minister himself. The one chosen in part following the failures of the previous government in dealing with the Corona. Even if one ignores the awkward cover, even the few passages in the book that constitute a sort of abbreviated pocket guide to the war in Corona, we have aged just as badly as any Cosby book.
Take, for example, Bennett's reference to Ben Gurion Airport in the book. While Bennett's prime minister has not yet opened the country to inbound tourism, he has even decided to close the airlines to many countries, while passengers to "orange" countries (almost all countries allowed to fly) have to return to home isolation - Bennett The amateur writer vehemently opposed the damage to air transport.
"Since the hijacking of the plane to Entebbe or the attack on the Twin Towers, we know that every passenger on the plane could pose a security risk. Did we shut down all air transport because of this fear? Of course not."
Bennett explains that flights do not incubate Corona due to the ventilation systems installed in the planes, and calls for a full opening of the Israeli skies, subject to checks on entry and exit from the country.
"We can deal well with the risk involved in increasing morbidity, and the benefit this will have for the Israeli economy is enormous. This is the most important thing," Bennett wrote a year ago.
It should be remembered that these words were written even before most Israeli citizens were vaccinated against the corona and reduced the chance of infection or serious illness by tens of percent.
About a year ago Bennett recommended opening the air routes fully.
Queues at Ben Gurion Airport (Photo: Reuven Castro)
Some of Bennett's recommendations in the book, such as setting up a staff of experts and increasing the number of daily tests, were carried out during Netanyahu's time. Another part becomes irrelevant due to the vaccines that have swept Israel. But still, at the core issues there is a large gap of view between Dr. Naftali who wrote the book and Mr. Bennett who runs the country today. For example, regarding the opening of private competition testing market, where today there are companies that produce testing Corona speed and efficiency, but the state refuses to recognize them, but only in tests performed by HMOs or MDA.
The recommendations of Bennett's book, it is not clear on what they are based Stipulates that home isolation does not work and Corona carriers must be sent to hotels as "defaults", unless there are "special family circumstances that do not allow the family member to be separated." In practice, only new immigrants, foreigners and foreign workers entering Israel The corona.
Another word that is mentioned negatively in the book is "closure." Indeed, Bennett vehemently opposed Netanyahu's real-time closure policy, saying a closure is proof of an unmanaged state. In his book he was a little less determined, but did suggest a number of ways to avoid locksmithing. "It's not rocket science, it's simple logic," he explains, detailing how to live with the plague until a vaccine is found. Among other things, he tells how the state thwarted an initiative of Prof. Gabi Barbash and the Weizmann Institute to conduct corona tests at the entrance to food chains. "Against my logic no counter-arguments were presented. No explanations, no data. Just a monotonous repetition of one word: closure, closure, closure."
Today, the only country in the world that distributes to its citizens a third vaccine, which bypasses almost the entire world in the number of vaccines per capita, capable of performing tens of thousands of free tests a day - is also one of the only countries in the Western world where the possibility of closure is discussed.
If one believes the voices coming out of the Bennett government's corona cabinet, the question is not whether there will be a closure, but when it will be held.
The same possibility presented in Bennett's book as a "solution with devastating consequences."
The failed propaganda cracks public confidence.
Naftali Bennett (Photo: Government Press Office, Haim Tzach)
One of the recurring points in the book is the slowness and conservatism of the health care system, and its inability to provide answers to questions that arise from the public. More than once Bennett explains how he caught his head when he came up with an innovative idea for treating a plague, and encountered a refusal. This is peculiar to a man who simply continues to deal with the corona crisis in the same sleepy and conservative way his predecessors in office.
The same is true of the information front, which, according to Bennett, did not exist at all in the first and second waves of the corona. In his book, he accuses the heads of the health system of "that whoever listened to their words [in the new editions] was expected to understand that the end of days is near." Bennett calls for the establishment of a central information body that will replace the prime minister's speeches in the newscasts and reflect the reality of dealing with the plague in real time. "Time and time again, decisions were made too close to their implementation and did not allow the public to prepare for them - until the public's trust in public relations cracked, and cynicism and contempt for regulations and those who set the regulations penetrated the cracks."
Meanwhile, the propaganda remained disparaging as it was. How much do you underestimate? At a press conference hosted by Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz this week, reporters were asked not to ask questions about the corona. At the same time, the public continues to plan its vacations and holidays according to leaks given to journalists from cabinet meetings and the Corona Cabinet, while Prime Minister Bennett continues to scatter confused statements about whether or not the closure will come.
In one thing Bennett was right, the failed propaganda does crack public confidence and causes disregard for restrictions. Just yesterday it was reported in News 12 that 70% of citizens sent to solitary confinement do not come for the second test while 90% of citizens who returned from abroad did not come for a test that allows them to shorten the solitary confinement period. .
It is likely that the imposition of a full closure on Israel will also receive the same contempt from the "regulators."
The truth is, it is not inconceivable that the opposition Naftali Bennett who wrote the book that ends with the words "should give the mighty forces inherent in our people room for maneuver, with few prohibitions and restrictions" (before there were vaccines, yes?) Also belittles Naftali Bennett, the leader who seems so powerless in the face of crisis Which is far from being managed "by the book".
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