Bnei Brak mayor: 'The city must not become a ghetto'
Abraham Rubinstein spoke from his isolation about the possibility of a lockdown of the entire city: "we can't build a prison; the people won’t be able to handle it"
By MAARIV ONLINEHAREDIM GATHER en masse in Bnei Brak. Is their leadership’s political model sustainable?(photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN / REUTERS)
Bnei Brak Mayor Abraham Rubinstein, spoke on Tuesday for the first time from his self-isolation about the option of putting the city under lockdown."We can’t build a new prison. Bnei Brak prison. Reality will not allow it," he said. "The citizens won't be able to handle it and it will only create the opposite reaction. We must not turn Bnei Brak into a ghetto, a lockdown will not cure the disease"Prof. Gabi Barbash referred to the spread of the coronavirus on Channel 12 news and criticized haredi cities."We're seeing a steady decline over the last few days in the rise of new patients every day. We're at 12%, which means the number of people sick is doubled every eight days, instead of every three days, which is the good news. The infection rate is much higher in haredi cities. The infection rate was around 20-25%, now it's 12%. [However], when we look at cities with a large haredi population [such as Bnei Brak], that number is growing. They've tested 1,500 people, of which 570 tested positive, which is truly an impressive rate of infection and an ill-omen"He continued: "We have to test Bnei Brak systematically, and we're not doing that right now. What's happening in Bnei Brak will happen in other places. We saw the tests held in Bnei Brak in the beginning. A third of them were positive... when compared to the rest of Israel, that's massive," he explained."If we're assuming that the rate of infections in Bnei Brak is the same as it was in the rest of Israel the week before, by next week we'll have 1,500 patients in Bnei Brak, meaning we'll have six to 80 people from Bnei Brak being treated at ICUs in three area hospitals, and in Elad and other such cities. There's a decrease in infections in Israel, and this is putting that data at risk."Prof. Barbash added: "We've missed the train in Bnei Brak. It's evolving at a rate of I assume 1%, or 2%, or 3% – it's massive and will evolve even if we don't want it to. The only way to stop it is to go all in, and I don't see that they are doing that."
