By every measure, Israel’s war against the coronavirus pandemic has been a miserable failure; it’s a stark turn after what appeared to be an initial success during a strict lockdown earlier this year. Last month, it was the first country in the world to go into a second general lockdown, just four months after the first one ended. In recent weeks, it has had one of the highest rates of COVID-19 deaths per capita in the world. Crisis management has been beset by confusion and petty politics, for which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deserves most of the blame.
But there’s another factor behind Israel’s stunning failure: While Israelis have generally abided by the lockdown rules, the ultra-Orthodox Jews known as Haredim who make up about 10-12 percent of the population have generally not, due their unique and jealously guarded lifestyle. The result is that they have accounted for as much as 40 percent of new daily confirmed cases.
