Independence Day and the vaccine

The role of the coronavirus vaccine in Israel's Independence Day celebrations.

PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, sit next to Transportation Minister Miri Regev during the Independence Day ceremony on Mount Herzl last week.  (photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH 90)
PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, sit next to Transportation Minister Miri Regev during the Independence Day ceremony on Mount Herzl last week.
(photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH 90)
Surprisingly enough, on the eve of Independence Day, I found myself watching the complete ceremony on Mount Herzl on TV, followed by the fireworks, which I can see from my veranda.
I usually give up halfway through, either from boredom, or because I do not particularly enjoy pompous ceremonies, or because in recent years I have felt excluded. But this year’s ceremony was a mixed experience.
On the one hand there is no doubt that the ceremony reflected the heterogeneity of Israeli society with a certain measure of success, and included some enjoyable moments.
However, it also reflected some very peculiar choices, including the excessive glorification of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in whose direction the cameras kept turning for no particular reason, and whose role in purchasing millions of coronavirus vaccinations kept being alluded to – directly and indirectly – by Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, the hapless uniformed soldiers who participated in an impressive standard bearers’ formations spectacle, which included an embarrassing formation in the shape of a syringe, as well as a video by Netanyahu himself, in which – as usual – he praised himself, even though traditionally it is the Knesset speaker who is supposed to stand at the center of the Independence Day ceremony, as the representative of his office.
Why the Greek Dr. Bourla, a veterinarian and son of Holocaust survivors from Saloniki, deserved to feature in Israel’s Independence Day ceremony is rather curious, despite his welcome role in selling Israel millions of COVID-19 vaccines, apparently at an exorbitant price, which Israel is having difficulty paying for.
It would have been much easier to justify the glorification of Ness Ziona’s Israel Institute of Biological Research, which at the beginning of the pandemic was expected to develop a blue-and-white vaccine, and was warmly supported by Netanyahu and then-defense minister Naftali Bennett. But alas, the institute’s vaccine appears to have vanished into thin air, and it is very difficult to get any reliable information on what is actually going on.
What do we know? We know that the institute is a body engaged in biochemical means of warfare, and is subject to the Prime Minister’s Office administratively, and to the Defense Ministry professionally. Only once did the institute engage in the production of a vaccine – against Anthrax, for the US Army – but it was not involved in its development.
We know that the institute received NIS 175 million in the last year to start developing a COVID-19 vaccine, and heard from the institute that it was engaged in such development, but we received no information about what type of vaccine was being developed, its advantages, or a clear strategy or timetable for production.
We also know that the institute mobilized around a thousand volunteers to participate in the tests of the vaccine, but that it recently fell out with many of them because the state never officially approved the vaccine, and refuses to grant those who were vaccinated with it a green passport. Among those who agreed to participate in the experiment was Prof. Zeev Rotstein, the CEO of Hadassah Medical Center.
We know that the institute’s director, Prof. Shmuel Shapira, is retiring next month, prematurely, but we do not know why, and who will replace him. We also have no information about whether the development of the vaccine is continuing, and if so, under what conditions.

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It is not surprising that the moment several different vaccines were approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration, and started to be distributed worldwide, the work of other developers of a vaccine would enter a dilemma. But did anyone in Israel ever calculate the cost of purchasing vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and other producers, compared to the cost of developing an Israeli vaccination, and actually starting to produce it, in Israel or abroad?
 
Another question that comes to mind: did Netanyahu desert the idea of a blue-and-white vaccination because of any promise he made to Bourla?
Another question that is unlikely to receive an answer – unless someday a commission of inquiry will be established to investigate the total pandemonium around the way the government in general and Netanyahu in particular managed the pandemic, including the purchase of vaccines from Pfizer – is how much money went down the drain in the random purchase, by all and sundry, of ventilators and other equipment required to fight the pandemic and save its victims, which were totally useless?
BUT LET us return to other parts of the Independence Day ceremony. Take the colorful, 102-year-old Yemenite Mori Ya’ish Giat, who owns a spice shop, where he concocts natural medicaments, and was selected to be one of the 12 beacon bearers. Certainly, the old Yemenite added color and life to the ceremony, but what exactly does he represent that is connected to Israel’s 73rd Independence Day and to the central theme of the ceremony, which was Israeli fraternity?
As I watched him, I couldn’t help thinking how great it would have been if someone from the Yemenite community could have borne a beacon to celebrate the closure of the controversy around the disappearance of the Yemenite children back in the 1950s.
I do not believe that thousands of Yemenite children were kidnapped for the purpose of adoption or medical experiments. I know that the attitude of the authorities toward the Yemenite and other Mizrahi immigrants in the 1950s was condescending and frequently degrading. I know that Yemenite mothers of many children in the ma’abarot (transit camps for new immigrants) were offered adoption for their newborn babies – and there might have been cases where children were given for adoption without the parents’ knowledge. However, it is a fact that there was much sickness among children in the ma’abarot, and that, sadly, many died, and were buried occasionally without the parents being informed in real time. There might have been cases of malice, but there was especially a lot of disorder and confusion.
It is not a good story, and it deserves an honest and honorable closure. In my opinion nothing would exemplify Israeli fraternity better than a sincere closure of this bleeding, superfluous controversy, and nowhere better than the Independence Day ceremony.
There are many other situations in our history and existence that require such closure, including the murky relations between the political Right and Center/Left; the nonexistent dialogue between Orthodox Judaism and other forms of Jewish religious practice; the racism and bigotry that stand between Israel’s Jewish and Arab populations.
Unfortunately, the sort of government that Netanyahu hopes to form in the next few weeks is not the sort of government that is likely to address any of these issues. Perhaps a government of change, with the active participation of right, center and left parties and the support of some of the Arab parties, will lead us in the desired direction.
What sort of ceremony will we have to celebrate Israel’s 74th Independence Day?
The writer was a researcher in the Knesset Research and Information Center until her retirement, and recently published a book in Hebrew, The Job of the Knesset Member – An Undefined Job, soon to appear in English.