March 28, 2020

Israeli marathon runner Gazcho Fanta decided to continue his training regime while under a government-enforced lockdown related to the coronavirus by running a 26-mile race in his living room, Ynet reported on Wednesday.

Fanta, who holds the Israeli record for the 50-kilometer (31-mile) run, completed the marathon while running from one side of his living room to the other. He finished in 3:50:14 hours with some 5,349 laps around the room at an average pace of 5:27 minutes per kilometer.

He was inspired to take upon the challenge after seeing a video online of a man who ran a marathon on his porch.

“It was quite a challenge,” said Fanta after his run. “I wanted to show people that even if you can’t run outside, you can still do it at home … it’s all in your head.”

“The first 20 kilometers were crazy-hard, but I know I had to do it, and after a while got used to the furniture and the walls. What helped was that I had music playing in the background. I was starting to hallucinate, but I knew I had a goal. There were moments I told myself, ‘Why am I doing this?’ ”

Nevertheless, the athlete acknowledged not being satisfied with his completion time.

“At the marathon in Berlin, I crossed the finish line after 2:20:16 hours,” he said. “If the lockdown continues, I’m going to need to do this again to improve my time.”

Among the mysteries of the coronavirus is that some patients suffer and ultimately die from the disease while others experience the symptoms as akin to a mild cold.

Rabbi Daniel Nevins is in the latter category. The dean of the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Nevins was laid up for a few days earlier this month with a fever and some aches, and then recovered.

Nevins was tested for the coronavirus on March 12 and a week later got back a positive result. A week after that, he was tested again. Friday morning, he got the result: All clear.

Within hours, Nevins was hooked up to a machine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York to donate blood plasma. In the race to develop effective treatments for the disease, researchers are investigating whether antibodies from the blood of people who have successfully fought off the disease may provide treatment for people who with more serious symptoms.

Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration allowed doctors to treat critically ill coronavirus patients with plasma on an experimental basis. Plasma has been shown effective in treating other infectious diseases, like polio, measles and influenza.

“I felt fortunate that my mild case of this illness might turn into a blessing for people who are seriously ill,” Nevins told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The Torah teaches us not to stand idly by the blood of our neighbor. My Midrash [interpretation] is that no, instead lie down in a donor bed and give plasma.”

Mount Sinai was among the first hospitals in the country to figure out how to detect antibodies in the blood of people who had recovered from coronavirus, the New York Times reported. Whether or not those antibodies are effective remains to be seen.

“It’s kind of difficult scientifically to know how valuable it is in any disease until you try,” said David Reich, the president and chief operating officer of Mount Sinai, told the Times. “It’s not exactly a shot in the dark, but it’s not tried and true.”

Amazon is still selling editions of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, reversing a recent ban.

A spokesperson for the online retailer told The New York Times last week that the company enables “customers with access to a variety of viewpoints,” adding that “all retailers make decisions about what selection they choose to offer.”

Amazon had informed booksellers that they would no longer be allowed to sell Nazi-authored books on the website, including Hitler’s autobiography and children’s books that incite anti-Semitism. In one email sent by the platform, those selling secondhand copies of Mein Kampf were told that “they can no longer offer this book” because it breaks the company’s code of conduct.

However, a few copies of the controversial book appear on Amazon and “on Amazon’s subsidiary AbeBooks, which operates largely independently, hundreds of new and used copies of Mein Kampf are available,” reported The New York Times.

Leading Holocaust-education charities and Jewish groups have campaigned since the late 1990s to stop Amazon from selling Mein Kampf. The retailer formerly defended itself by advocating for free speech and the need for students to understand Hitler’s thought process.

A total of 50,000 people watched a prayer service online that took place at the Western Wall on Wednesday evening (29 Adar on the Jewish calendar), when dozens of worshipers prayed for the end of the coronavirus pandemic and a speedy recovery for those who are sick.

The service was streamed live on the website of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation and on the website Kol Haloshon, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The prayer was held on Yom Kippur Katan, “Little Day of Atonement,” a practice observed by some Jews on the day preceding Rosh Chodesh, each new month—in this case, the day before the month of Nisan in the Jewish calendar.

Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites, attended the ceremony along with Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion and Deputy Mayor Rabbi Yossi Deutsch.

The service was kept small to adhere to guidelines by the Israeli Health Ministry, with designated spaces for worshippers, The Jerusalem Post reported. People were also instructed to maintain a distance from each other before, during and after the service.

The Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip is making significant efforts to prevent a  full-scale outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19), while also threatening to hold Israel “responsible” if the virus does begin to spread. The threats imply rocket fire on Israeli cities if Hamas officials begins losing control of the situation.

According to a report released on Tuesday by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Gazan medical authorities have so far reported two infected patients who returned from Pakistan and who are now in isolation. They are said to be in good condition.

Hamas appears to have the situation currently under control, but that could change quickly due to Gaza’s poor living conditions and health-care system, cautioned Dr. Col. (ret.) Reuven Erlich, director of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.

“The density of the population, the difficult conditions, the refugee camps, the sanitation—it means there is a danger of the virus spreading. The Hamas regime could lose control,” he told JNS. “Hamas is aware of this and making major efforts, though it has not gone as far as the Palestinian Authority and imposed a full closure. That might be what Hamas ends up doing.”

Gaza’s hospitals are stretched in normal times and experience shortages of beds, medical equipment and doctors, meaning that any new virus outbreak would be highly problematic and would lead Hamas to quickly demand assistance from Israel.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh attends a groundbreaking ceremony for the Rafah Medical Complex in the southern Gaza Strip on Nov. 23, 2019. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.

The way that Hamas usually demands such help is by threatening to fire rockets at Israeli cities. Expressions by Hamas representatives saying that they would view Israel as being responsible in the event of an outbreak are already sending this message to Jerusalem, noted Erlich.

A Gazan Health Ministry spokesperson said that Israel would be responsible for any deterioration in Gaza’s medical situation, while Hamas deputy chairman, Khalil Al-Haya, echoed that pronouncement.

“Such statements could end up in rocket fire to pressure Israel. If Hamas reaches the scenario of facing sick people who are dying and a shortage of beds, they will demand assistance. This is the set formula for doing so,” said Erlich.

The Israel Defense Forces is continuing its routine security operations on all borders, including Gaza, and is continuing its combat training for field units as usual. Maintaining readiness has been defined by senior IDF command a top objective throughout the pandemic.

Last Wednesday, Israel’s Coordination and Liaison Administration for the Gaza Strip coordinated the passage of hundreds of kits for detecting the coronavirus into the Gaza Strip, as well as equipment for medical protection.

The coordination was performed on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO), which had asked the head of the unit for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Kamil Abu Rukun, to coordinate the entry of the detection kits and protective equipment for the sake of the Gaza Strip’s health system.

Common work with the Palestinian medical teams

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, unlike Hamas in Gaza, has no clearly defined border with Israel, said Erlich, adding that Palestinians can more easily bring the virus “into Israel from Judea and Samaria, and back the other way.”

Hamas has taken a series of steps to prevent the spread, including closing all border crossings, disinfecting public institutions, sending 400 prisoners home on vacation and building hundreds of isolation structures.

Its military wing, under orders by Hamas leader Yahya al-Sinwar, has launched an ambitious program to rapidly construct 1,000 quarantine units in Rafah in the southern Gaza, as well as to the north. The project is advancing rapidly.

Hamas is also cooperating with Egyptian authorities to battle the virus, the Meir Amit Center report said.

Hamas medical officials have placed several people who came into contact with the infected patients into isolation, including the commander of the national security forces and his deputy. Both are continuing to work from their isolation center, said a Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman.

Hamas officials have also warned the public against stockpiling food and have arrested three people for spreading false rumors about the virus.

In the West Bank, the P.A. has imposed a closure after 57 people tested positive for COVID-19..

On Tuesday, Israel’s Civil Administration, a civil-military body under the Defense Ministry, held a professional coronavirus training session for West Bank Palestinian medical teams at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer in Ramat Gan.

Professor Elhanan Bar-On, director of the Israel Center for Disaster Medicine and Humanitarian Response at Sheba Medical Center, said “the coronavirus does not recognize geographic boundaries, and, therefore, we are all in the same boat with a common goal—defeating the virus. At Sheba, we believe that the public health is of paramount importance, and, therefore, I welcome the opportunity that is afforded to me to give of the knowledge and experience that we have accumulated during the last month, and I commend the fruitful discussion and common work with the Palestinian medical teams.”

Dalia Basa, the Civil Administration’s Health Coordinator, said, “During the last few weeks, the Unit for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories has been working hard to stop the spread of the coronavirus in Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip, to protect the health and welfare of the public in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Our unit will continue to work in full cooperation with the Israeli Health Ministry and the Sheba Medical Center in conjunction with the Palestinian authorities with the purpose of eliminating the spread of the coronavirus.”

In-depth reports on how the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are responding to the coronavirus pandemic are available at the website of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center: https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/.

A friend of mine this week shared with me an exchange about the coronavirus on an online bulletin board that serves the suburban New York community where she lives.

It began with a message from a local woman who had been walking along the town’s main drag accompanied by her children. With a “heavy heart,” she said, she wanted to alert her neighbors to the fact that during her walk, she had spotted a group of “Chinese people wearing masks” on the other side of the street. Out of caution, she didn’t approach them, she explained, but she had still felt a powerful urge to go tell them to “go back to where they came from.”

What struck my friend was that not a single one of the many replies to this message called out the crude, bigoted assumption that Asian-Americans in New York are spreading the coronavirus more than anyone else. Instead, questioners wanted to know the details: Where exactly had the Chinese party been seen? How many were there? And had anyone called the police?

That these racially charged notions have a real world impact is painfully clear. A March 27 analysis from the FBI’s office in Houston forecast that “hate crime incidents against Asian Americans likely will surge across the United States, due to the spread of coronavirus disease … endangering Asian American communities.”

The same analysis listed several incidents of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans across the country during the last month. In one particularly awful episode, noted the FBI analysis, on March 14 in Midland, Texas, “three Asian American family members, including a 2-year-old and 6-year-old, were stabbed. … The suspect indicated that he stabbed the family because he thought the family was Chinese, and infecting people with the coronavirus.”

Now, my purpose here is not to revisit the “Chinese virus” row sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump’s deliberately provocative use of that term to describe the pandemic—other than to state my thorough opposition to his doing so, for all the reasons outlined above. I want instead to focus on another, no less important issue that I fear we are losing sight of because of the widespread media tendency to turn every policy challenge into an argument about Trump’s mindset.

That the ugly racism directed against Asian Americans needs to be aggressively combated with the tools of law enforcement and civic education should be obvious to everyone. What is much less obvious, at least to me, is why this aim should preclude a proper public inquest into the Chinese Communist Party’s part in enabling the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the auxiliary role of international bodies like the World Health Organization (WHO) in covering up the Beijing regime’s culpability.

It cannot be stated often enough that governments are one thing, and the nations living under them something else. In China, the Communist Party is the state in its totality—it controls the army, the courts, the police, the media and that enormous economy—while the people are merely the state’s subjects. That millions of Chinese people want to overthrow the party’s yoke can be seen from Hong Kong, where student-led democracy protests unseated the pro-Beijing legislature, to the northwestern province of Xinjiang, where the party where the party operates its own brutal version of Soviet gulags, laogai or “re-education centers,” within which up to 1 million Muslims, mainly members of the Uyghur minority, have been incarcerated. To speak of the party’s responsibility for the coronavirus while shedding light on its broader human-rights outrages isn’t “racism”; if anything, it’s an act of solidarity with the people of China.

Dr. Jianli Yang, a veteran of the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square who now heads the U.S.-based NGO, Initiatives for China, put the problem well in a recent op-ed for The Hill. “The Chinese people—who are among the primary victims of this crisis—are subjected to collective guilt because of the malfeasance of their rulers,” he wrote. He observed, too, that China’s “international reputation is plummeting, which lamentably tarnishes citizens and civil society along with the government,” before concluding that “while the leaders and civil society of democratic countries must hold the Chinese state to account for the global pandemic and its economic consequences, we owe the people of China our sympathy and solidarity.”

That political battle has now begun on Capitol Hill. Rep. Michael McCaul, the lead Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week urging a multilateral investigation by democratic countries into the Chinese Communist Party’s cover-up, which, we should recall, began with the arrest of two respected epidemiologists in Wuhan—Ai Fen and Li Wenliang—at the end of December, when they spoke publicly about the virus three weeks after the first case was reported.

“By causing a local outbreak to become a pandemic, their system, which is designed to censor anything that could be a threat to the regime, is putting millions of American lives at risk,” wrote McCaul. Because of the same system, millions of lives elsewhere are at risk too, not least in China.

Ben Cohen is a New York City-based journalist and author who writes a weekly column on Jewish and international affairs for JNS.

A 56-year-old woman in a New York Jewish community has been arrested for allegedly posting a threatening Facebook comment last week in response to a picture of “a school bus with Hebrew writing on the side, and the underlying title ‘Coronavirus Surges in Hasidic Brooklyn as Schools Remain Open and Weddings Continue,’ ” announced the Ramapo Police Department on Thursday.

The same title and picture also appear in an article in the Brooklyn-based outlet Brownstoner. It is unclear if the unidentified female responded to a Facebook post that had a link with a preview to the article featuring the school bus.

According to the Ramapo Police Department in a Facebook post, “On March 24, 2020, the Ramapo Police Dept. Investigations Division was made aware of a Facebook comment that was posted on March 18, 2020.”

“The nature of the comment was in response to an apparent social media picture of a school bus with Hebrew writing on the side, and the underlying title ‘Coronavirus Surges in Hasidic Brooklyn as Schools Remain Open and Weddings Continue.’ The defendant’s comment does not appear to be directed at any particular sect in Brooklyn, nor any particular village or Hasidic community elsewhere,” continued the police department. “The comment does appear biased in nature and falls within the definition of the NYS Penal Law section of Making a Terrorist Threat, a class D Felony. Facebook has since removed the comment from the post at our request. The incident being investigated (comment to post) occurred within the Town of Ramapo’s jurisdiction.”

In an update to its Facebook post, the police department stated that it is declining to release the actual comment, citing that the investigation is ongoing, and that “the release of such information may only further incite more inappropriate comments.”

“While we support everyone’s First Amendment rights, we ask that you kindly refrain from hateful speech towards any individuals or groups of people based upon their race, color, religion, sexual orientation, etc,” said the department.

The Chassidic community in the New York area has been subject to criticism for not adhering to government guidelines and orders in response to the coronavirus outbreak. Weddings and other events have been broken up by local authorities due to the lack of social distancing.