By Alexander Maistrovoy

What we see is essentially a creeping coup under the pretext of “defending democracy”

Despite the pervasive pandemic, the Blue and White leaders rejected a proposal for a government of national unity (exceptional case in the history of Israel in emergency). Moreover, they, together with Lieberman and the Arab list, took control of the Knesset commissions and together with the Supreme Court removed the Knesset chairman Yuli Edelstein.

There are two questions:
–       Do they act on their own behalf?
–       What their goals?
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If Israel doesn’t control the rate of coronavirus transmission, tens of thousands of people could get infected in the next two weeks

By Ran Balicer, HAARETZ

Israel was one of the first countries to respond well to the coronavirus. Every step adopted by the Health Ministry was considered scandalous at the time, and within a week or two became the standard in well-managed countries.

The cessation of flights to China, placing those returning from a lengthening list of countries into quarantine, “closing the skies,” including to those returning from the United States, an epidemiological investigation surrounding every patient, limiting contacts, social distancing and finally – home quarantine for everyone. All of these steps, except for the last one, were adopted in Israel long before they were in European countries. With these decisive actions, we have received the greatest possible gift in this predicament: time.

According to estimates, Israel has gained 14 days compared to European countries and the United States. If anyone thinks this is a short period of time, you should be aware that in “epidemic time,” this means Israel has 10-15 times fewer patients than we would expect to see now.
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Current estimates about the Covid-19 fatality rate may be too high by orders of magnitude.

By Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya, WSJ
March 24, 2020 6:21 pm ET

A line at an emergency room in Brooklyn, N.Y., March 19.

If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.

Fear of Covid-19 is based on its high estimated case fatality rate—2% to 4% of people with confirmed Covid-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization and others. So if 100 million Americans ultimately get the disease, two million to four million could die. We believe that estimate is deeply flawed. The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases.

The latter rate is misleading because of selection bias in testing. The degree of bias is uncertain because available data are limited. But it could make the difference between an epidemic that kills 20,000 and one that kills two million. If the number of actual infections is much larger than the number of cases—orders of magnitude larger—then the true fatality rate is much lower as well. That’s not only plausible but likely based on what we know so far.
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General lockdowns aren’t enough, experts say, without systematic testing and quarantining of carriers

By Jeremy Page, WSJ, March 24, 2020 2:36 pm ET

The intensive-care unit at Wuhan pulmonary hospital on March 19.
Photo: Xiao Yijiu/Xinhua/Zuma Press

BEIJING—U. S. and European leaders are looking at China’s progress in curbing the coronavirus pandemic to guide them on how to beat the virus within their own borders.

They may be drawing the wrong lessons, doctors and health experts say.

The cordon sanitaire that began around Wuhan and two nearby cities on Jan. 23 helped slow the virus’s transmission to other parts of China, but didn’t really stop it in Wuhan itself, these experts say. Instead, the virus kept spreading among family members in homes, in large part because hospitals were too overwhelmed to handle all the patients, according to doctors and patients there.
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Israel\s healthcare system is underfunded, understaffed, and lagging behind in crucial areas.

By Yochanan Visser, INN

Preparing new ward to receive coronavirus patients

This is a true story. The reason I have decided to write it up is that the coronavirus crisis in Israel is spinning out of control, and not only because of misconduct by segments of the Israeli population who ignore government guidelines which are meant to prevent the plague from spreading.

Currently, 1,656 Israelis have contracted the COVID-19 virus while three Israeli citizens died from it.

Compared to other countries, especially in the West, Israel is doing a better job in containing the crisis. But over the past few days the number of coronavirus patients sharply increased and experts think that a nation-wide curfew is now the only solution to the disaster.

“There is only one solution: a dramatic reduction in the number of those infected, starting tomorrow, in order to halt the multiplication. Otherwise, within two weeks Israel could reach tens of thousands of people infected, and a week later 5 percent of them would fill up all the country’s ICU beds,” wrote Professor Ran Balicer, Director of Health Policy Planning for Clalit – Israel’s largest healthcare organization.
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By Ebony Bowden, NY POSTS

WASHINGTON — An emergency stimulus package to bailout the U.S. economy amid the coronavirus pandemic will total $6 trillion — a quarter of the entire country’s GDP, the White House said Tuesday.<
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Trump administration economist Larry Kudlow said the package would include $4 trillion in lending power for the Federal Reserve as well as a $2 trillion aid package currently being hammered out by Congress.

“This package will be the single largest main street assistance program in the history of the United States,” Kudlow said at the White House coronavirus task force briefing on Tuesday evening.
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“Fifty former senior European politicians have published a letter against the Trump peace plan in the Guardian. Many signatories can be characterized as veteran anti-Israeli inciters. Some can even be labeled antisemites. All have held positions in countries where antisemitism is endemic. In 2019, even before the Trump plan was published, a similar letter was published by former EU officials.”

By Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, BESA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Fifty former senior European politicians have published a letter against the Trump peace plan in the Guardian. Many signatories can be characterized as veteran anti-Israeli inciters. Some can even be labeled antisemites. All have held positions in countries where antisemitism is endemic. In 2019, even before the Trump plan was published, a similar letter was published by former EU officials.

On February 27th, 2020, the Guardian published a letter under the headline “Grave concern about the US plan to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.” It was signed by 50 former senior European politicians, including many previous prime and foreign ministers. The signatories called themselves “Europeans dedicated to promoting international law, peace and security worldwide.” In their letter they warn that if the Trump peace plan goes ahead, Israel will be an apartheid state. Read more…

Sets optimistic target date in effort to restore tattered national economy

By Tom Howell Jr.- The Washington Times – Tuesday, March 24, 2020

President Donald Trump speaks with Fox News Channel Anchor Bill Hemmer during a Fox News Channel virtual town hall, at the White House, Tuesday, March 24, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) 

President Trump said Tuesday that he wants the U.S. open and “raring to go” in less than three weeks, proposing an optimistic end date to the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as he pushes to reinvigorate an election-year economy that has been turned on its head.

“I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” he told a Fox News town hall on the pandemic.

As doctors and scientists call for greater limits on public interaction, Mr. Trump said the country was not built to shut down and that economic aftershocks could kill more people than the pathogen itself.

“We can destroy our country this way by closing it down,” he said. “You’re going to lose more people by putting the country into a massive recession or depression. You’re going to have suicides by the thousands.”
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By John Hannah, FDD

The March 17 nomination of Adnan al-Zurfi as Iraq’s prime minister-designate highlights the extent to which Iran’s stranglehold on Iraqi politics could be eroding. As such, Zurfi’s nomination holds out both the promise of a restoration of Iraqi sovereignty that aligns with U.S. interests, as well as the danger of escalating violence by an Iranian regime desperate to prevent such a strategic defeat.

Zurfi’s nomination by Iraqi President Barham Salih came on the heels of the failed effort of Mohammed Allawi earlier this month to replace the caretaker government of Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi. Abdul-Mahdi was forced to resign in late November under pressure from a mass protest movement demanding an overhaul of Iraq’s post-2003 political system.

Allawi’s February 1 nomination was almost entirely engineered by Iran, operating in conjunction with its Iraqi allies and Lebanese Hezbollah. It reflected a concerted effort by the Islamic Republic to shore up its position in the face of two fundamental challenges: first, the January 3 U.S. drone strike that killed both Qassem Soleimani, the mastermind of Iranian strategy in Iraq since 2003, and Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, Soleimani’s most powerful Iraqi agent; and second, the anti-government protests that have roiled Iraq since October, centered in the country’s Shiite heartland and propounding a distinctly nationalist narrative deeply resentful of Iranian interference. Read more…

By Evelyn Gordon

March 16 was the deadline for filing briefs on whether the International Criminal Court should recognize Palestine as a state. But important though that question is, the ICC prosecutor’s decision to open a criminal investigation against Israel poses a much bigger problem: Contrary to the court’s stated mission of trying to reduce the harm caused by war, it may well result in even higher casualties and more extensive property damage.

Like all Western countries, Israel makes great efforts to uphold customary laws of war, including by trying to minimize civilian casualties. As a group of high-ranking Western military experts wrote in a report on the Hamas-Israel war of 2014, Israel “met and in some respects exceeded the highest standards we set for our own nations’ militaries.” In fact, Israel has historically caused fewer civilian casualties and less property damage than other Western armies.
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Justices issue damning unanimous ruling an hour after Netanyahu ally rebuffs its earlier position; if Edelstein says no again, Israel will be in constitutional crisis

By Raoul Wootliff, TOI 23 March 2020, 10:55 pm

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right), Blue and White leader Benny Gantz and Chief Justice of Supreme Court Esther Hayut at the memorial ceremony for the late President Shimon Peres, at the Mount Herzl cemetery in Jerusalem, on September 19, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Israel’s top court on Monday night ruled unanimously that the speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, must hold a vote by Wednesday to elect a successor. In a devastating ruling, it accused him of undermining democracy by refusing to do so.

The court issued its ruling barely an hour after Edelstein had rebuffed the justices earlier non-binding stance that such a vote must be held.

Were Edelstein, an MK from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, to again defy the court, Israel would be plunged into a constitutional crisis. Israel’s Justice Minister Amir Ohana, also a Likud MK, earlier Monday intimated that Edelstein should indeed stand firm against the justices. Read more…

By Jon D. Levenson, JEWISH REVIEW BOOKS

Allan Bloom. (Illustration by Mark Anderson.)

Watch Allan Bloom in a 1987 interview.

Thirty years ago, a book was published that hit, in the words of its New York Times review, “with the approximate force and effect of what electric shock-therapy must be like.” A professor at the University of Chicago, previously known to those outside that institution principally for an annotated translation of Plato’s Republic, suddenly found himself the author of the top-selling work of non-fiction in the country—and the center of a firestorm of public controversy of a sort rarely seen among scholars of the humanities.
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Analyzing the specific data of each country separately suggests that there is a light at the end of the tunnel – and that the tunnel is not that long.

By RAN NAMERODE, JPOST    MARCH 23, 2020 19:12

A medical employee presents a smear taken at a special corona test center for public service employees such as police officers, nurses and firefighters during a media presentation as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Munich, Germany, March 23, 2020
(photo credit: REUTERS/ANDREAS GEBERT)

It has been four months since COVID-19 hit the world. The virus, which caused major global disruptions to public health, economies and societies, planted massive worldwide panic of the unknown. Now, after several months, I believe a closer look at the numbers provides real ground for optimism with regard to how long this storm will last.

Despite being engaged in the medical equipment business for decades, I do not claim any expertise in biology, immunology, microorganisms or infectious diseases. Numbers, however, can provide an explanation to natural phenomena even in places where the relevant science cannot. After investigating several sources of statistics about the disease, its rate of spread, the rate of new cases, the death rate and more, a certain pattern emerged.
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FOX NEWS

A cover-up and clampdown by the Chinese government in the early weeks of the coronavirus’s emergence is raising questions over whether the communist superpower can be held legally accountable.

“Generally countries like China have sovereign immunity and governments cannot be brought to regular courts or held liable regardless of their conduct,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Israel-based attorney who has long specialized in suing terrorist regimes and state sponsors who orchestrate human rights abuses on behalf of victims, told Fox News.

“However, an argument could be made that just like support for terrorism, which is legally actionable, a government that engages in such reckless disregard and negligence and covers up an epidemic which has the potential to spread worldwide could be held legally liable ,” Darshan-Leitner said. “Cover-ups and deliberate acts to conceal a deadly medical crisis are not [among] the protected acts of a sovereign state or of responsible leaders.”
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Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Chairman Mark Levenson, Esq. released the following statement:

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is thrilled to announce that a clear majority of the American delegates elected to the World Zionist Congress (WZC) are devoted right-of-center, clear thinking, proud Zionists. Our fabulous partners in Israel are also excited by these positive election results. And thanks to the hard work of everyone on the ZOA Coalition, and all who voted for us, the ZOA Coalition received almost four times the number of votes it received in the previous (2015) election, and will receive double the number of seats. ZOA was the number one non-synagogue slate, receiving the largest number of votes of any non-synagogue slate. Our fabulous Israeli partners were also excited by these very positive results

The voting results mean that the ZOA Coalition will be in a much stronger position to continue leading the efforts at the World Zionist Congress to champion our critical platform over the next five years, including: prioritizing Aliyah of Jews endangered by global antisemitism and the safety of Jews around the world; combating BDS and antisemitism; united Jerusalem under Israel sovereignty; strengthening and defending Israel including the Jewish people’s rights to our land including the Jewish people’s right to live in Judea & Samaria; saying no to an Iran-proxy Palestinian-Arab terror state; and promoting love and respect for Jewish tradition and Torah values.
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The Russian government has been confident to the point of boastful in ensuring its citizens and the world that the coronavirus is virtually nonexistent within its borders. But the Russian people are skeptical, with good reason.

By Ariel Bulshtein, ISRAEL HAYOM 03-22-2020 15:13

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the Navy Day parade in Saint Petersburg, Russia July 28, 2019 | Photo: Reuters/Sputnik/Aleksey Nikolskyi/Kremlin

Ever since coronavirus became an epidemic and spread beyond the borders of China, the state of the virus in Russia has remained a mystery. On one hand, official government figures are so optimistic they border on arrogance. According to reports, only a small number of people in Russia have contracted the virus (slightly over 100 in a country of 150 million?), whereas Russia has more testing kits than it needs.

“We are ready for worse scenarios,” say Russian government officials and spokespeople for the state media, claiming that they have about 40,000 ventilators – a veiled comparison to European countries like Italy, where a shortage of that piece of medical equipment has doomed hundreds.

The Russian government’s promises should have calmed the population, but the opposite is occurring: The more the official channels promise, the more ordinary Russians worry, and sometimes start panicking. Talk on Russian social media is markedly distrustful of the political system, and horror stories are spreading about thousands across Russia who contracted the virus in the past few months without getting appropriate medical treatment or even being diagnosed. Read more…