Some of the ministers in the Bennett-Lapid government are privately pointing fingers and expressing sharp criticism of the coalition’s coronavirus management in the wake of the continuing surge of coronavirus cases and seriously ill virus patients, along with the burgeoning death toll since the beginning of August, Yisrael Hayom reported on Wednesday. “We fell down on the job. We made decisions too late,” ministers are saying in closed discussions. Some of them place the blame on Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, others on Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton, and others on the entire coronavirus cabinet. One minister says that the government members are disconnected from the details of the coronavirus situation because decisions aren’t presented to the government. “Most of the ministers were totally not aware of the morbidity data and were totally shocked by the latest data,” she said. “No one talks to us or updates us. We don’t know what the government’s strategy is and where we’re heading.” Another minister mentioned the absence of Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Finance Minister Avigdor Leiberman from coronavirus cabinet meetings, saying: “Their conduct weakens the government’s ability to implement its policies, which require the cooperation of the public.” But one of the ministers’ main grievances is the haphazard planning (or lack of planning) for the beginning of the school year. “The school year is about to begin but the government is acting as if it’s going to be a regular year,” one minister said. “It isn’t allocating budgets, it’s not thinking about capsules – there’s no preparation.” “What we’re doing now, we should have done a month ago, and what is clear we need to do now will probably only get done in another month, when the situation will be unbearable,” another minister said. “Contrary to the previous government, the current one decided that the relevant indicator is not the number of cases but only the number of patients who are seriously ill in order to ensure that hospitals don’t collapse due to the number of patients,” the minister continued. “This is the correct thing to do and in my opinion, the previous government was mistaken in not acting according to this criterion. However, the discussion on how to how to expand the capacity of the coronavirus wards was held by the prime minister and health minister only this week, instead of three or four weeks ago. How can you decide on a strategy but not do anything to execute it over such a long period of time? They could have prevented a lockdown if they would have acted in time.” Below is a video of Bennett’s now-infamous speech during Netanyahu’s term as prime minister, slamming the government’s management of the pandemic, yelling: “People are dying, it’s pikuach nefesh!” אַל יִתְהַלֵּל חָכָם בְּחָכְמָתוֹ, אַל יִתְהַלֵּל הַגִּבּוֹר בִּגְבוּרָתוֹ, ואַל יִתְהַלֵּל עָשִׁיר בְּעָשְׁרוֹ pic.twitter.com/4w6szTcqo8 — יענקי פרבר | Yanki Farber (@yankihebrew) August 11, 2021 (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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