11:59 A.M. Israel delivers 2,000 COVID vaccines to Palestinian Authority
Israel delivered 2,000 coronavirus vaccines to the West Bank on Monday, the first batch of 5,000 inoculations intended for Palestinian medical staff.
The decision to dispatch vaccines to the Palestinian Authority came after a recommendation from the Defense Ministry and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories.
The Moderna vaccines were delivered via the Beitunia crossing in the West Bank.
(Yaniv Kubovich)
9:50 A.M. Experts warn against uncontrolled exit from third COVID-19 lockdown
A team of experts who advised the National Security Council at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis is warning that an uncontrolled exit from the third lockdown could lead to a severe outbreak of the virus in Israel.
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Jan. 18, 2021
The cries at the funeral Sunday in Elad filled the air as Shmuel Yodlovich eulogized his wife, Tzipi, a 40-year-old woman with no underlying conditions who died over Shabbat after contracting the coronavirus. “When we were singing ‘A Woman of Valor’ [on Friday night] the angels were leading you to heaven,” he is heard saying on a recording of the eulogy that was circulated.
Similar eulogies have been heard over the past several weeks at cemeteries in many ultra-Orthodox communities. The rate of infection in the Haredi community during the current wave of the pandemic is breaking records. The bulletin boards in Haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem are seeing death notices pasted over each other daily and the mourning pages on Haredi websites are being updated at a dizzying pace. Many members of the community are hospitalized in serious condition.
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A few weeks after Avichai Mendelblit replaced Weinstein, he instructed the police to upgrade the investigation against Dery. The main suspicion was that the minister had taken bribes and that his brother had acted as an intermediary between Dery and interested parties. The police also suspected that charitable organizations run by Dery’s wife Yaffa, which took in millions of shekels from philanthropists and the state, had gone to line the family’s pockets using sophisticated tricks.
At a fairly early stage in the investigations, law enforcement officials realized that those suspicions would not hold water. However, a joint investigation by the police and the Tax Authority turned up other alleged offenses by Dery, such as systematic cash deposits in his bank account and various allegedly dirty tricks in real estate deals that Dery concocted with his brother. His actions, a person familiar with the details of the investig
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Dery served 22 months in prison after being convicted of bribery and fraud in 2000, and regained leadership of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party a decade after his release.
Dery decried the charges as false, releasing a statement on Twitter: After five years of tough investigations, I thank God for the decision to clear all the slanderous charges against me, and I am convinced that this hearing will lead to the cancellation of the tax case, after all the facts are received by the attorney general.
Dery s lawyer, Navot Tel-Zur said in a statement that Mendelblit s decision comes after five years of torturous investigations, and expressed hope that the appropriate answers given in the hearing will make the attorney general reconsider the draft indictment.
Carried by Sheldon Adelson’s private jet, the American who spied for Israel Jonathan Pollard and his wife Esther landed at Ben-Gurion Airport early Wednesday morning. They were greeted on the tarmac by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, cabinet secretary and acting Prime Minister’s Office Director General Tzahi Braverman and the office’s spokesperson Shir Cohen.
Not present was Interior Minister Arye Dery, who had been asked a few days prior to issue an identity card to the new immigrant. Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz was also absent, of course, as were Immigration and Absorption Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata and Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog.