When this is all over, the sight that will be remembered is the scene of riot police in Meah Shearim -- not the masses breaking lockdown to saunter along the Tel Aviv promenade.
ell done, Israeli media.
After the deluge of negative headlines over the last two weeks, when Covid-19 is finally beaten back, it will be the scenes of police ringing Bnei Brak to quarantine it like a medieval plague city, that will define the corona crisis for most Israelis.
Accompanied by condescending voiceovers on chareidi isolation from media and slavish adherence to rabbinic leadership, the sight of riot police in Meah Shearim, not the masses breaking lockdown to saunter along Tel Aviv’s promenade or frolic in the parks, will be remembered.
Headlines in national newspapers like “Israel heads to full shutdown – because of the chareidim”, or “Optimistic note: Corona will send the chareidim into the 21st century” have become the norm. Now that it’s open-season on the chareidim again, Channel 12’s Rina Matzliach was able to accuse the entire chareidi public of close to one million people of mass tax-evasion, and keep her job.
It’s an indictment of the media coverage that the breathless stories of schools that refused to close are well-known, but the fact that 12% of infections came from restaurants, most of which are not frequented by chareidim, and only 7% from yeshivas, was barely mentioned.
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