Netanyahu is willing to take unprecedented measures to beat coronavirus, but his rivals are using it against him
By Tsvi Sadan
Israel Today
March 17, 2020
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s newly-announced measures to combat the coronavirus include the use of classified technology, thus far reserved for fighting terror.
This extraordinary measure will allow the government to surveil every Israeli citizen in its effort to track down anyone with whom the carriers of this virus were in contact. The use of this technology will also allow the tracking down of renegade virus-infected individuals and force them to enter self-quarantine.
The Corona crisis also compelled Netanyahu to call for an immediate national emergency government that would include all the Zionist parties of the Knesset, from Left to Right. The only other time such a government was formed was just before the 1967 Six Day War. The response of Blue and White leader Benny Gantz was that all parties should be included, even the anti-Zionist Joint Arab List.
If Israelis were for a moment deluded into believing that the crisis would make our political differences subside, the reactions to Netanyahu’s new restrictive measures show that even the coronavirus is now being used to discredit him.
Influential journalist Rina Matzliach said on a Friday night newscast that “one can’t avoid the thought that Netanyahu wants to take the most extreme measures for the sake of his own personal-political survival.” She said this prior to Netanyahu’s decision to used advanced surveillance technology.
Another influential journalist, Raviv Drucker, tweeted that “the use of such technological means is true madness. This is the Big Brother on steroids. We shouldn’t allow the government to take such a dictatorial measure.”
And in case anyone thinks these are just the opinions of two biased left-wing journalists, Moshe Yaalon, head of the Telem party that is part of Gantz’s “Blue and White” faction, was even more explicit. “Those who criticized us for warning about [Israel under Netanyahu] becoming Erdogan-style Turkish dictatorship should now acknowledge the clinical use of the Corona crisis for political and personal gain of the accused before trial,” he tweeted.
Mickey Rosenthal, a former Member of Knesset with Labor, is echoing the same concern that Israel under Netanyahu is becoming a dictatorship. Netanyahu’s use of classified surveillance technology, he tweets, “is a dangerous measure that should not be approved … this is a dramatic measure that endangers our privacy and our democracy.”
Two days earlier, the same Rosenthal addressed a personal tweet to Benny Gantz, in which he called on the “Blue and White” chief to reject Netanyahu’s call for an emergency unity government. “The coronavirus will go away in a week or two,” asserted Rosenthal, “but the shame of sitting in a government with one accused of bribery would remain forever.”
Gantz seemingly took this advice seriously.
Ignoring the immediate dangers of the coronavirus, Gantz took the 61-seat backing provided by the Joint Arab List and Yisrael Beiteinu and is now willing to spend the next three weeks trying to cobble together a minority government.
Many political analysts say his chances of success are slim. But should he succeed, Israel will enter a new era unlike any other. Gantz’s post-Zionist government that prioritize anti-Bibi sentiment over beating the coronavirus will face a civil protest the magnitude of which has not been seen in history of modern Israel.
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