37-year-old arrested, confesses to murdering wife
Domestic abuse reports doubled amid virus restrictions
A 37-year-old man was arrested by police early Wednesday morning for the alleged murder of his 31-yearold wife in Holon.
The man arrested was named Alaza Mandparo. His arrest has been extended for 10 days by the Tel Aviv Magistrate Court. He confessed after being caught by police, explaining that he attacked his wife because he suspected that she was cheating on him with his friend.
Police investigations show that during an argument in the presence of the couple’s children, the woman, named Mastuel Elaza, attempted to flee through the stairwell, where she was stabbed repeatedly by her husband. Varying reports claim that either their 14-year-old son or the next door neighbors called for help, but Mandparo had already fled the scene.
“In the building, in the stairwell, we found a woman with signs of severe injury to her upper body,” one police officer told the press. “MDA declared her dead. According to eyewitness reports, this was an attack by her partner, who
last 24 hours – their distribution across Israel and their condition. Some 115 patients were in serious condition on Wednesday, according to the Health Ministry, including 90 who were intubated. So far, 215 people have died from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
An 11-year-old with coronavirus who was intubated is now breathing on her own, Rambam Medical Center in Haifa has reported. At the same time, a 16-year-old with multi-systemic failure and a heart condition was admitted to the center. He tested positive for coronavirus, causing some medical personnel to enter isolation.
Known coronavirus hot spots are showing positive trends. Although Jerusalem and Bnei Brak continue to have the highest infection rates – 3,421 and 2,813 respectively – the number of new patients per day is declining. Bnei Brak only saw a 1.2% increase in the number of sick patients in the last three days; Jerusalem saw a 2.9% increase.
But Barbash said there are suspected red zones that are not being properly monitored and that if enough resources are not dedicated there, Israel could be surprised.
“It is an illusion to think you are secure if one of these communities is not secured,” he told the Post.
He mentioned east Jerusalem, a handful of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) neighborhoods and Bedouin cities and towns as potential hot spots, adding that Israel is failing to test its migrant workers.
Singapore saw a rapid spread of coronavirus among migrant workers and was forced last week to quarantine 20,000 of them – people who were living in close and unhygienic quarters.
“It caused a recurrence,” Barbash said, and questioned why the Health Ministry was not learning from the Asian country.
To date, some 360,000 people have been screened for the novel coronavirus and 15,782 (4.4%) have tested positive. The ministry reported that it had conducted around 10,500 tests each day for the last two days, despite an ability to do 15,000 per day. The ministry defended the discrepancy, saying that people are not coming to get checked.
Barbash said that the resources should be re-allocated rather than wasted.
In Jerusalem, for example,
a report by the municipality showed that there were 6,400 people screened between April 21 and 27, but only 1,100 (17%) in east Jerusalem. Arab Israelis make up 38% of Jerusalem’s population. So far, 150 residents of east Jerusalem have been diagnosed with the virus.
Several Bedouin towns showed a sharp rise in cases in the last 72 hours: Hura, for example, showed 128% growth from 29 infected people to 66; Ararara in the Negev: 15 to 17: 13% growth; Sakhnin in the North: 15 to 17: 13%; and Tayibeh in central Israel: 42 to 47: 12%.
Barbash said that he is “quite worried about the monitoring capability of the Health Ministry,” which decided to move molecular testing from Magen David Adom to the Health Funds on May 1. Although Barbash called the move “sensible,” he said that, “I would not dare to do something like that, to transfer the torch exactly when we are taking such a big step in the community and we need to continually follow up. This, in my mind, endangers the whole process.”
The country was put on a 27-hour Independence Day lockdown. Police set up 43 checkpoints and patrolled the streets to ensure that the public adhered to Health Ministry guidelines. Police fined more than a thousand people for gathering illegally in public spaces, close to 150 for being in forbidden places and more than 120 who were not wearing masks.
On Thursday, the restriction of doing sporting activity more than 500 meters from home is expected to be lifted, although there continues to be confusion around this point. People can leave their homes to shop, go to the hairdresser or even exercise, but there is still technically a prohibition against journeying more than 100 meters for any other reason. The Health Ministry is expected to discuss lifting travel restrictions entirely by the weekend.
The government is already discussing the upcoming Lag B’Omer holiday and has announced it will limit the number of bonfires across the country, including on Mount Meron where tens of thousands of Jews traditionally flock each year to pay tribute to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai at his gravesite.
The government decided that only three bonfires will be lit on Mount Meron: One each for Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews and one for the Religious-Zionist community.
The government is also considering opening shopping malls under certain restrictions, including limiting the number of people per meter and requiring shoppers to download an application that will track their whereabouts so they can be informed if they come into contact with a sick person.
Health and government officials
will also finalize those decisions in the coming days.
“We have to be very careful in the next 10 to 20 days to see what is going on and if there is a response to the steps we took,” Barbash told the Post, who said that the country has gone from “panic to complacency” and he thinks it needs to be somewhere in between.
“We know we will have an increase in the number of patients,” Barbash said. •
would react. “We only have one president at a time,” he said. “So it is important, at least for me as a serving member of the Foreign Relations Committee, to express my views clearly and strongly, but to also be measured about putting any constraints on what a Biden administration would look like.” •