Why is Israel ignoring the pleas of Jews cut off from their families?

With reporting by Ariella Schiller and Eliezer Shulman

Almost two years after becoming the first state to wall itself off from the world as Covid burst out of China, Israel is once again the country that dwells alone.

“The Omicron strain is here, doubling infections every two to three days, and the fifth wave has begun,” warned Naftali Bennett in a Sunday night press conference, urging masks, social distancing and a vaccine booster campaign on a weary public.

For tens of thousands of families both in Israel and worldwide for whom Covid has normalized a once-unthinkable separation from friends and loved ones, the die was cast a day later. Ministers added a slew of Western countries including Belgium, Canada — and for the first time since the onset of the pandemic, the United States — to a no-travel “red” list that already featured England and France.

But as Israel walls itself off from almost the entire Jewish Diaspora, a mix of anger and despair at the latest draconian travel ban is growing among the hundreds of thousands of people affected. From Jerusalem’s English-speaking chareidi community to French olim, lone soldiers, and secular immigrants up and down the country — all suffering from family absent at special occasions or the sight of grandparents — the same refrain is heard.

“Of course, Israel needs to take precautions because of Covid, but what’s going on here is a chutzpah,” says former Shas MK Yossi Tayb. “I get dozens of calls a day from people who have been turned away from the Exceptions Committee with no reason given. A man whose daughter had a first child after 12 years applied to come from America and was refused. A family whose son is getting married was turned away with the same answer: ‘You don’t fulfill the criteria.’ There’s no one to talk to.”

Every previous round of entry restrictions stirred resentment and debate about the balance of public health measures and normal life. But as the Omicron variant spreads with alarming speed across Israel’s population, it’s not just the health policies that are under fire, but the oblivion to olim’s needs that seems to underpin it.

“This is a country of immigrants,” says Michal Cotler-Wunsh, who served as an MK for the Blue and White party in the last Knesset. “We left everything behind on the assumption that we are just a flight away from our families. So two years into Covid, entry for first-degree relatives should not be on a humanitarian case-by-case basis, but rather should be recognized and prioritized as the rule, subject to public health requirements.”

And for Rabbi Nechemya Malinowitz, co-founder of the Igud, a body formed to represent foreign yeshivah and seminary students in Israel, the emphasis on citizens doesn’t take into account Israel’s unique place in global Jewry.

“Every single Jew has a connection to this land,” he says. “It can be immediate — their married children live here, their spouse is buried here, they’ve been coming every January for the past 30 years. And for others, the connection is a spiritual one. Either way, that’s the key factor the government is missing. They’re creating policy as if Israel is just another country.”