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Dec. 30, 2020
The truth has to be told: Israel did not really enter a third lockdown this week. What’s actually been shut down is retail, especially small businesses. Day care centers and schools have remained open, public transportation is operating as usual and businesses that are not public-facing can operate as long as staffing is at 50%. People are supposed to remain within one kilometer from their homes, but there are many exceptions and in any event the rule is practically impossible to enforce.
What there is is a detached government that decided to shut small businesses. There is no way of making that pretty. The third lockdown is a death sentence for 7,500 businesses, most of them small- and medium-sized, that are expected to fail during the lockdown and join the 70,000 others that already have this year. That’s 7,500 families whose worlds are being destroyed.