Israel Daily News, Wed. Feb 3, 2021

Knowledge is the best weapon.

Thousands come out for funerals around the country; 1 minister out and 1 minister comes in & Teslas comes to Israel and they’re surprisingly affordable.

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1. Israel will be opening the door for people 16 and up to get the vaccine in Israel. That begins Thursday. Israel is the fastest moving country in the world when it comes to vaccinating their people. A third of the population has already received one dose. As of this morning, Israel has provided a first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to just over 35% of the country.
2. According to a Channel 12 report on Monday, at least two of Israel’s medical services (Clalit and Meuhedet) are finding it increasingly difficult to get people to come in to get vaccinated. On Monday, the Clalit health provider discarded approximately 1,000 expired doses as a result of people not showing up to receive the shots. Israel primarily uses the Pfizer vaccine which expires five days after being removed from deep freeze. Both Clalit and the Meuhedet services are sending out notices to all clients in areas where there are excess doses to come in for vaccination including anyone outside of the approved age, which before this week was only those groups of 35 and older. While the Health Ministry is expected to formally open the vaccination campaign to all ages within the next week, health services are sending notices to people through Facebook and text message calling on people to come on in early to get vaccinated. Netanyahu says his plan is to have 90 percent of those over 50 vaccinated within the next 2 weeks. The idea is to offset the fast-spreading mutations of COVID-19 that is sweeping Israel.
3. About 10,000 people gathered in the Arab Israeli city of Tamra on Tuesday night for the funeral of a 22 year old student who was killed by a stray bullet during a gunfire exchange between police and suspected criminals. Witnesses reported that many in attendance were wearing masks, but very few people were distancing. This funeral follows a current trend in Israel of funerals being held in complete defiance of the national Covid restrictions. The current law states that there shall be no outdoor gatherings of more than ten people, but that has clearly been disregarded. On Sunday, funerals were held in Jerusalem for two Haredi rabbis, both of whom died of Covid. Thousands attended, with little to no precautions taken. Many have criticized the police for not intervening, and some say they are losing faith in the Israeli public. One of our listeners wrote in saying, “With people being so irresponsible and with the virus mutations, I see no end to this…” I am sure she is not the only one. Disregard for rules and restrictions has continued to be a very divisive issue in Israel. A recent report from channel 13 says 155 fines per 10,000 people were administered in Tel Aviv where the mostly secular population has low rates of infection while 59 fines per 10,000 people were given out in the Orthodox city of Bnei Brak just outside of Tel Aviv. This community struggles with much higher infection rates and death rates, but has received fewer fines from authorities.
4. Welfare Minister Itzik Shmuli is dropping out of government and politics for the time being. Shmuli was a part of the Labor party and e made this announcement just recently on Facebook. He says it was his mistake that he ever joined Prime Minister Netanyahu to begin with. He writes that he wants to consider his future path forward. He became a member of Knesset in 2013. This comes after the new Labor Party leader Merav Michaeli announced last week she was pulling her party out of the current government coalition and demanded that Shmuli and the economy minister amir Pertez choose to leave the party or resign from government. After having disputes with the political leaning of the party. It seems Shmuli has chosen the latter. Tough town.
5. One comes out and one comes in. A council member from Jerusalem named Ofer Berkovitch is joining Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope Party. Sa’ar has had a number of top ministerial positions in government but has not been in the arena in a handful of years. 37-year-old Berkovitch ran for Jerusalem mayor in 2018 but lost against the current mayor Moshe Lion. The announcement for Berkovitch’s entrance came out just today. He has rejected opportunities to join parliament in the past when the invitations had come from other political figures.
6. Haaretz is celebrating a win this week. Following a report they conducted in January on Israeli high schools, The Education Ministry announced , that students in Arabic-language high schools could not only submit their final papers in Arabic, which was always the case, but that they could submit their proposal in Arabic as well. That begins in the 2021–2022 school year. Even though final papers meant for matriculation or graduating from high schools are allowed to be written in Arabic, the proposal for it, which counts for a big part of the whole project had to be submitted to the education ministry in Hebrew. That has now been changed. In additional news, the Investments authority of Israel has announced it is allocating about 13 million shekels or 4 million dollars to incentivize tech employers to hire students or new graduated from the Arab sector of Israeli society. That includes Israeli Arabs, Druze community members and Bedouins. For the first time, engineers will be added into this mix. 40 percent of the salary will be paid by this new government relief. The salary must be over 6,890 shekels per month, but the max amount of money per employee is 115,000 shekels or about 35,000 dollars. Tech companies will be able to use those benefits for up to 18 months. SO that would alleviate the cost for businesses and of course, make hiring an Arab person more attractive.
7. Tesla, which is an American electric car company is launching today. Tesla has a new website in Hebrew and says customers can start to order in March. We know what you’re thinking. They must be SO expensive. Well actually, it’s not that bad for a brand new electric car. The model 3 is 180,000 shekels or just under $55,000 or and the model S starts at 420,000 NIS or about $128,000 starting in November. The prices are listed with and without the cost of taxes, since taxes on cars in Israel are thousands and thousands of dollars. The tax for a model 3 is 10,000 shekels. But Tesla warns the fuel savings can reach 23,600 NIS over 5 years time. Cool!