Schools expected to open in full on Sunday
Fauci: Israeli study on South African variant misleading on vaccine effectiveness
After more than a year at home, Israel’s children are expected to return to full-time frontal learning on Sunday.
After a meeting between the prime minister and the health and education ministers, a decision was made for the Health Ministry to bring a plan to the government late Monday night that would allow students to return to their classrooms without capsules. The cabinet meeting was slated to begin at 10 p.m., and the Health Ministry’s proposal was expected to pass.
“The natural place for students is in school,” Education Minister Yoav Gallant tweeted Monday evening. “These are our children and the future generation of the State of Israel.”
LEAKS
comes from,” he added, “but I know where it is not coming from. I know that the prime minister has great experience in the diplomatic-security field, and am not belittling it. I think that all other consideration should be pushed aside, and I hope that this is what he is doing.”
On Monday Gantz and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Nevatim Air Force Base – the home of the IAF’s F35 squadrons – and the secretary was briefed by IAF commander Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin.
The secretary was presented with new developments, cutting edge technologies and systems, including new innovations on the F35, the Iron Dome missile defense system recently acquired by the United States, the Arrow anti-ballistic missile, David’s Sling and the Trophy military active protection system, among others.
Gantz later said that the visit should not be taken for granted, and that it illustrated the deep friendship between the two countries. “I have a years-long acquaintance with Secretary Austin, and his visit also shows the importance of the security relations of the countries, and how the Biden administration sees them.”
The defense minister said that the duo discussed Israel’s strategic challenges, including the JCPOA, the Iranian entrenchment efforts throughout the Middle East, normalization with Arab countries, the conflict with the Palestinians, the need to strengthen ties with Jordan and Egypt, and Chinese activity in the region.
“We talked about how we see the right nuclear agreement, and the way it should be treated,” Gantz said. “We believe that the old agreement isn’t good enough, and the pressure on Iran should be kept. And that an agreement – without an expiration date and with the proper ability to oversee it – should be reached.
“We found a listening ear, and there’s an American commitment to cooperate, even if we don’t always agree 100% on all different topics,” he added.
Gantz also said that Austin received a presentation on the way Hezbollah and Hamas build their power and their combat doctrine – and that one of its essential foundations
is operating from densely populated areas.
“[We talked about] the implications of this topic on the ICC trial,” Gantz said. “The Americans support us on this issue.”
ANGRY
According to the JPPI’s new survey, 81% of Jewish Israelis agreed with the statement: “The behavior of the haredim/ the Arabs during the coronavirus pandemic undermined Israeli unity.”
Haredi respondents mostly said the behavior of the two sectors did not undermine civic unity, while Arab respondents tended to say the behavior of both sectors did have a negative impact.
The study also found that 62% of Jewish Israelis believe Israeli and Diaspora Jews have a shared future, and 72% feel an “attachment” to all Jews in Israel and abroad.
Regarding Jewish-Arab relations in the State of Israel, about 58% of Jewish Israelis said the two communities have a shared future, and 44% said there is an attachment between the groups.
About 58% of Arab-Israelis said there was an attachment between Jews and Arabs in Israel, and 52% said both groups had a shared future.
The survey also looked at attitudes to Israel’s Jewish character and religious life.
Some 40% of Jewish Israelis said the country should remain “about as Jewish as it is today,” 37% said “more Jewish,” and 23% said “less Jewish.”
About 1% said they would prefer Israel to cease being a Jewish state.
Right-wing Jewish Israelis supported giving legal preference to Jews over non-Jews, the study indicated.
Some 61% of those defining themselves as right-wing and 51% of those defining themselves as Center-Right supported the assertion that “a Jewish state must give legal preference to Jews over non-Jews.”
Nevertheless, large majorities of the public back policies that provide increased choice in religious matters, the survey found.
Seventy-one percent of the Jewish Israeli public believes there should be some form of public transportation available on Shabbat, according to the survey.
Sixty-six percent of Jewish Israelis support providing for civil marriage in the Jewish state, with 75% of them defining the issue as “important,” it found.
Among the 34% of Jewish Israelis who oppose civil marriage, some 60% believe the issue to be “important.”
Eighty percent of the Jewish Israelis said they support IDF enlistment of yeshiva students,
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He wrote that he “welcomes the fact that the healthcare system has finally woken up and understood the importance of classroom learning for students and their families.”
Gallant and the heads of the local authorities had been pushing to reopen schools in full after Independence Day, which takes place on Thursday.
“It is good that our position has been adopted to cancel the capsules for all ages as early as this coming Sunday,” Gallant wrote. “Better late than never.”
The Health Ministry’s model, deemed the “Adjusted” Defending Education program, will provide a wide range of testing and monitoring across the country’s educational system to detect coronavirus outbreaks. When a student tests positive, the entire class and teaching staff will be tested for coronavirus before returning to their classrooms, in addition to obligatory isolation.
The move comes after Israel’s students stayed at home for the better part of the last year and amid declining infection rates in the country and the school system.
Only 877 students were infected with coronavirus out of more than 2.4 million children, the Education Ministry reported. In addition, there were 99 members of the educational staff infected, it said.
Total morbidity in the educational system has been concentrated in 10% of schools, the Education Ministry reported Monday. Of those schools with infection, the majority (70%) have only one verified case.
Out of 5,200 schools, none of them are closed because of infection. There has been a 95% drop in isolated children in the last month.
On the other hand, the impact of distance learning has taken a toll on the country’s youth.
According to the same Education Ministry report, there has been a 30% decrease in basic skills among first- through third-graders, and a gap of about 30% has developed in the core subjects, such as math and English, among students in grades 7-10.
Students have decreased motor and physical skills, and school counselors reported that one in three students was suffering from emotional distress and that there is a 25% increase in risk assessments for suicide by educational psychologists.
About 30% of students do not participate in their distance-learning courses on a consistent basis, the report said.
Parents reacted to the news that school would resume with mixed emotions.
“On the one hand, I am happy because they are going to go back to see their friends and learn together,” said Nitza Raymond, a mother of three
from Jerusalem. “On the other hand, there is still a fear of coronavirus – especially since two of [our children] are not yet vaccinated. We are high-risk, and there are children who do not really put on their masks and who behave less carefully.”
Another mother, Yonina Libin from Jerusalem, told The Jerusalem Post she was just “really looking forward to some routine.”
There are only two months left in the school year, which usually ends for middle schoolers on June 20 and elementary schoolers on June 30.
Shortly before the March 23 election, the government reviewed a NIS 2.5 billion fourstage plan for bridging the educational, social and emotional gaps plaguing students.
The first stage involved extending the school year through the end of July.
However, the budget for the plan never passed, and it is still unclear if the school year will be extended.
Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, on Monday said an Israeli study on the effectiveness of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine against the South African variant was misleading, Reuters reported. He recommended caution for drawing conclusions about the vaccine’s efficacy against the variant.
The coronavirus vaccine’s efficacy is often described based on its ability to prevent people from contracting the virus. However, a key factor in evaluating its effectiveness is its ability to prevent serious disease, hospitalization and death.
The South African variant is more likely to break through the vaccine’s protective effect, even after two doses have been administered and more than a week has passed, according to a study conducted by Clalit Health Services and Tel Aviv University that was released on Saturday. However, the study referred to the ability of the vaccine to prevent infection and not from serious symptoms.
The Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines appear to be effective at preventing serious illness and death, Fauci said in an interview with FOX News on Monday.
“So what might happen is that when you get these new variants, some of them may not be protected against when you’re talking about mild to moderate disease,” he said. “But at the same time, people are not going to get severely ill and wind up dying.”
Rossella Tercatin and Idan Zonshine contributed to this report. •
building a right-wing government,” Bennett said. “We will continue to work strenuously to prevent the disaster of a fifth election. There are creative ways and ideas to do it, which require rolling up sleeves and beginning to work.”
Bennett said the blocs in Israel are no longer Right and Left or for or against Netanyahu remaining in power.
“Now there are only the camps of those who are responsibly trying to form a government and those in the camp of anarchy who are torpedoing it,” Bennett said. “They should come down from the tree.”
Sources close to Bennett said he put in the second category Religious Zionist Party head Bezalel Smotrich, who continues to refuse to sit in a government backed by Ra’am (the United Arab List).
Earlier, Monday, controversial Labor MK Ibtisam Mara’ana revealed that she would be willing to vote for a government formed by Bennett.
Netanyahu’s mandate to form a government ends on May 4. It is likely that Rivlin will pass the mandate to Bennett if Netanyahu fails to build a coalition.
On February 17, Yamina cast the deciding vote when the Central Elections Committee voted to accept petitions by the far-right Otzma Yehudit Party to disqualify Mara’ana from running. The Supreme Court overturned the decision.
Bennett later vowed that he would not form a coalition with Mara’ana. But she said she would not return the veto if Labor leader Merav Michaeli made that decision.
“I will follow whatever my party chairwoman is doing to save Israeli society from the economic and socioeconomic depths it hit after a year of the coronavirus,” Mara’ana said, when asked by KAN Radio host Aryeh Golan if she could vote for a Bennett-led government.
In the interview, Mara’ana said she would honor the sirens for Remembrance Day and think about the fallen. One of the reasons for her disqualification was a post on Facebook from a decade ago in which she boasted about joy driving on empty streets during the siren.
In faction meetings of Labor and Meretz, party leaders Michaeli and Nitzan Horowitz accused Netanyahu of purposely publicizing security operations for personal reasons. Michaeli said Democratic leaders in the US have told her that they no longer know if Netanyahu represents Israel when he makes decisions on Iran, or represents his own personal situation.
“Netanyahu cannot be trusted on security issues, because he can make decisions on the basis of his political and legal problems,” Horowitz said. “The parties in the change bloc should negotiate, because every day he remains in office is dangerous for Isra