Over 10,000 20-something-year-olds arrived at eight Eilat hotels on Thursday, embarking on the summer vacation fiesta for students called "Funjoya".
Almost every university student in Israel has heard the term "Funjoya" — an organized event of back-to-back parties for a weekend during the summer between semesters. Usually, Funjoya celebrations are fully booked months in advance, and the organizers host multiple events on different weekends to accommodate thousands of students from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, IDC Herzliya and more.
This year, the Funjoya was scheduled for September, in the hopes of a normal summer after the 2020 hiatus, but from mid-June Israel has been seeing a rapid spike in coronavirus numbers and is deep in its fourth wave of the pandemic. While the government attempts to postpone the option of lockdown, some regulations have been put back in place. Citizens must wear masks at outdoor gatherings, which are limited to 5,000 people, and indoor gatherings such as concerts are restricted to 1,000 people and necessitate a Green Pass to enter.
WATCH: Funjoya pool party in 2018
Several students who had purchased tickets to the Funjoya back in May — tickets which include hotel rooms and party lines with concerts and pool parties — expected the event to be cancelled and their tickets be refunded. When they learned the organizers intended to go through with the festival, many wanted a chance to get their money back and avoid the crowds for fear of infection before the holidays, but received no such option.
In a rare move, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of the ministry's Public Health Service, wrote a letter to the organizers on the eve of the event, expressing her fear that the festival is a public menace and health hazard.
"The risk of a mass infection is high, as is the risk for substantial continued dissemination of the disease throughout the country once the students return to their homes," wrote Alroy. "Students are expected to come from all over the country... when mass parties are held for several days, and the participants move from party to party, it's not enough to consider every party a separate event, but rather look at the whole picture and the risk it poses."
But the government did not step in to officially cancel the parties. Instead, the police imposed a number of conditions for the event, such as having a person in charge of monitoring regulations per every 200 guests.
Photos of the parties have been cropping up on social media since Thursday afternoon, angering many about the lack of adherence to regulations.
But apparently, the stinted parties left some of the guests themselves very frustrated.
"Hundreds of students wandering aimlessly," writes Hadar Eliazrov on Facebook. "No policeman around to issue fines, unlike the swarm of police that entered the parties that took place between 1700 and 1900." Pictures describe students wearing masks on their chins, or not wearing masks at all. "If only they would have canceled the Funjoya and given us back the money we put on this debacle, we would be feeling a lot better."