Benjamin Netanyahu is not just some crazy head of government who nobody listens to anyway. He apparently had considerable influence on the design of the European corona strategy. More on that later. First, his proposal.
The Jerusalem Post reported on May 8 on the criticism of Netanyahu’s proposal of May 4. At issue, as it is presented by the newspaper, are the dangers of equipping all children with microchips for distance control before they return to school. The critics had their say in the magazine ynet, which only publishes in Hebrew.
In its statement for the Jerusalem Post, the government responded to the ynet report by stating that Netanyahu was proposing only a voluntary solution and that data protection would of course be guaranteed.
This is the statement of a government whose police, according to the same report by the Jerusalem Post, had just been caught having recorded the movements of all vehicles in Israel and storing them in a huge unregulated database. The police then told the public that there were no standard procedures for this database yet, but once would they have some, they would keep them secret. So much for privacy protection.
The fact that Netanyahu spoke of “every child” does not really support the idea of genuine voluntariness.
Netanyahu had suggested using new technologies to accompany the return to normality after the lockdown, and had expanded on this:
“That is, technology that has not been used before and is allowed under the legislation we shall enact, I spoke with our heads of technology in order to find measures Israel is good at, such as sensors. For instance, every person, every kid – I want it on kids first – would have a sensor that would sound an alarm when you get too close, like the ones on cars,
Remarkably, according to the Jerusalem Post, the government did not deny the microchips in its statement on the ynet report, although the critics quoted there explicitly spoke of microchips. The “cyber expert” Einat Meron, for example, was quoted as saying: “microchipping children will not pass any test – both practically and legally.”
The lack of denial is remarkable, because a week later Israel Today tried to dampen the outrage by pointing out that Netanyahu had not spoken of microchips, but only of “sensors”.
That is correct. But even if it makes only a gradual difference whether microchips or, for example, sensors integrated into clothing or bracelets are used, it is astonishing that ynet is talking about microchips and the Jerusalem Post is doing the same, even after obtaining a statement from the government.
Netanyahu convinced Austrian Chancellor Kurz of the lockdown
In Europe, Austria was a pioneer in terms of fear strategy and lockdown. That the country got into this frontrunner position was not due to the experts who advised the Austrian government in the relevant bodies. As documents available to the Austrian news-outlet Falter show, the Kurz government initially ignored the warnings of its experts.
When things got bad, the experts pushed for targeted measures to maintain distance, as in Sweden, and warned of the great economic, social and health damage that a general lockdown could cause. Again, the government ignored its experts and chose the lockdown. The reason, as Prime Minister Kurz himself stated (in German), was a telephone conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu. He quotes Netanyahu as urging:
“You underestimate that in Europe, wake up and do something!
Kurz acted accordingly and set the pace with an immediate and rigorous lockdown for most of Europe, including Germany.
Kurz did not say whether Netanyahu had called him as Israeli Prime Minister or as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). (As a small aperçu let me mention that the German Wikipedia article on the CFR still lists Jeffrey Epstein as a current member).
Translated by the author with support of www.DeepL.com
