Israel is closing in on half a million COVID-19 inoculations, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said Monday night. The Jewish state entered its third national lockdown on Sunday in an effort to lower infection rates while the vaccination campaign ramps up.
A record 99,000 people were vaccinated on Sunday, bringing the national total to 379,000. Edelstein has indicated that a new record of over 100,000 citizens were given shots on Monday. Israel is currently leading the world in vaccinations per capita.
The country began its inoculation drive last week, focusing on healthcare workers, people over 60, and groups considered to be at risk.
Provided that Israel maintains this week’s rate of daily inoculations, it will see a dramatic easing of the coronavirus crisis next month, said Eran Segal, a biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science who has been mapping and analyzing the impact of the pandemic.
These promising developments come as 5,449 new cases were reported on Monday, the largest daily infection tally since the beginning of October. The Health Ministry stated on Tuesday morning that 5.6 percent of COVID-19 tests had returned positive.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has set a goal of having some 2.25 million Israelis — more than a quarter of Israel’s 9.2 million people — vaccinated by the end of January.
Rocket sirens blared in southern Israel early Tuesday morning for the second time in under a week as a projectile was fired from the Gaza Strip. The Israel Defense Forces said: “One launch was identified from Gaza that did not cross into Israeli territory.”
On Tuesday, Palestinian terrorist groups launched a large-scale military drill in the Strip. Twelve armed militias are participating in the exercise, which “comes in the context of enhancing cooperation and joint action between the resistance groups to raise their combat readiness permanently and continuously,” according to a statement by the Gaza-based Joint Operations Room, which is comprised of various terrorist factions.
“The main message [of the drill] is that the Palestinian resistance groups are ready to respond to any Israeli aggression,” a Hamas official in the Gaza Strip asserted.
Hamas — the group that rules Gaza — along with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Fatah are all expected to take part in the joint military exercise.
The situation in Syria and other Middle East security issues were at the top of the agenda of a phone call on Monday between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A statement from Netanyahu’s office said that the two leaders spoke about “…actions necessary to increase stability in it [the Middle East].” The Kremlin stated that Netanyahu and Putin, “discussed topical issues of Russian-Israeli relations in various spheres and reaffirmed their mutual intention to promote comprehensive bilateral cooperation…”
Netanyahu and Putin have maintained close contact in recent years, including several face-to-face meetings, particularly since the Russian military intervention in Syria’s civil war began in 2015.
A 6.5 magnitude earthquake is expected to strike Israel and its surroundings in the near future, a new study warns.
Conducted by Tel Aviv University researchers and published in the Science Advances journal, the report states that there exists a pattern of destructive earthquakes that hit the region every 130 to 150 years. As the last earthquake rocked the region 93 years ago, another one is likely to shake the Jewish state in the next few years.
In 1927 a tremor rattled the Dead Sea area, killing some 250 people and injuring hundreds more. Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jaffa and the Jordanian city of Amman sustained serious damage as well.
On December 10, Foreign Policy published a piece about Sudanese in Israel that gave the inaccurate impression that all members of this cohort are refugees.
HonestReporting contacted the American news site to point out that while the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention guarantees that refugees not be sent back to their countries of origin if doing so would put them in harm’s way, the intergovernmental organization also clearly differentiates between what constitutes a “refugee” as opposed to a “migrant.”
As such, not everyone from Sudan presently residing in Israel is, by definition, a refugee. Accordingly, the title of the Foreign Policy article is misleading.
In response, the outlet accepted HR’s suggestion to insert the United Nations’ definition of refugee into the body of the piece. Foreign Policy also added the link to the UNHCR status definition page provided by HonestReporting.
- Those We Lost in 2020: Remembering the Rabbis, Pioneers, Innovators and Family Members (Gabe Friedman, Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
- The Powerful Implications of Israel’s Successful Missile Defense Test (Jacob Nagel and Jonathan Schanzer, Newsweek)
- Amid COVID-19, Aliyah to Israel Continues (Jerusalem Post Editorial)
- Red Cross Calls Out Israeli Hit ‘Fauda’ Over Fictional Human Rights ‘Violations’ (Algemeiner)
- Work Already Under Way on Wonder Woman 3 (i24News and Israel Hayom)
