Three reasons why Bennett’s dig of doctors at the UN has become the most important news

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett intended to use his first speech on the international stage to rise to the level of other world leaders. Instead, a slip of the tongue brought him back to where he was 13 years ago, as chief of staff to then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The day after his speech, one might have expected a frenzy over the way Bennett hammered Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. There should have been a discussion of whether his overtures (of which there were none) to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would advance the needle of peace.

Instead, for four full days, the post-UN headline on the country’s newspapers and websites was about the prime minister’s strained relationship with the chief of public health.

“While physicians are an important contribution, they cannot be the ones leading the national initiative,” Bennett said. “The only person who has a good point of view on all considerations is the national leader of a given country.”

Bennett ran for office in the wake of COVID-19, with a message to the public that he was the only leader capable of dealing with the pandemic in a professional manner. He put aside annexation and the fight against the legal establishment in favor of a unity government that could fight the virus and the havoc that an 18-month pandemic has wreaked across Israel.

SHARON ALROY-PREIS participates in a Ministry of Health video urging citizens to follow coronavirus regulations. (credit: REUVEN KASTRO)

In his first four months in office, the Delta variant canceled Israel’s successful vaccination campaign, leaving records of sick and dead.

As the virus burned across Israel, the opposition blamed Bennett. On Monday evening, there is expected to be another vote on the government’s “failure” to deal with the pandemic.

At the same time, many current ministers have chosen not to engage with COVID, so much so that senior officials have not even shown up to coronavirus cabinet meetings.

Bennett was not deterred. He bragged to the UN about personally leading Israel’s national COVID task force that meets daily to “bypass sluggish government bureaucracy, make quick decisions and act on them immediately.”

He did not belittle the doctors; he was getting stronger.

The prime minister and his party only won seven seats (and only had six when the government of national unity was formed). There are probably still many who question his legitimacy as leader of Israel and Bennett must know that. Thus, he strives to be the king of COVID.

Plus, Bennett comes from the high tech world and runs the country like he would a business – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Anyone who has worked in the corporate world, at least outside of Israel, knows that there is a corporate hierarchy and that the CEO is at the top.

The job of business leaders is to hear feedback from their staff and advisers, all of whom come with their own expertise and perspective, and to make the final decisions.

Bennett said that “running a country during a pandemic is not just about health; it’s about carefully balancing all aspects of life that are affected by the crown, especially jobs and education. “

The data shows he was right about it. The negative impact of the previous three closures and the shutdown of the school system have put tens of thousands of people out of work and left some of the country’s most at-risk youth even further behind than they were before the crown. Phantom pandemics in the form of domestic violence, declining mental health, food insecurity and more are rocking Israeli society.

Not all of these aspects are the responsibility of the Department of Health, but it is Bennett’s job.

Finally, the Prime Minister’s speech was lackluster – relatively featureless, with no sexy headline or takeaway. So the media had to find one.

The ironic part is that the line reporters focused on and then interviewed him in a subsequent briefing to further develop the story was not even in Bennett’s original transcript. He worshiped it while he was on the world stage.

Jerusalem post had a copy of Bennett’s speech before it was delivered. The 20-page, 18-point document was typed in Microsoft Word and included the ability to boast its “take on all considerations”. But nowhere does the word “doctors” appear.

Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz starred directly in the script, responding on Twitter. At the end of the vacation in Israel, he and the director general of the Ministry of Health, Nachman Ash, were talking on television about how hurtful the comment was for the medical establishment.

And the head of public health, Dr Sharon Alroy-Preis, spoke about it the next day with members of the Knesset as they were supposed to debate a recommendation that employees of the offices of health, recreation and well-being must adhere to the Green Pass plan.