Apr 1, 2020

Yossi Cohen, head of Israel’s Mossad, has learned a very interesting lesson over the recent weeks: It is easier to “steal” the Iranian nuclear archives and transfer them to Israel than to procure medical ventilators and bring them to Israel’s hospitals. Cohen, who orchestrated in 2018 the unbelievable operation in which Mossad agents went off with the Iranian files under the noses of the regime in Tehran, now heads the unprecedented effort to bring to Israel ventilators, medical equipment and more in the war against the coronavirus. Cohen now heads a secret undercover operations room that was created in the Sheba hospital. Hundreds of his people are combing every corner of the globe for vital equipment and technology. They don’t have a limit on their budget, and the order they received was to do everything and anything to guarantee that Israel will be able to cope with the virus under optimal conditions.

Israel correctly responded to the coronavirus early in the game. The initial decisions to close Israel’s airspace and limit entrance to people from China and other places were made just in time. This gave the country some breathing space before the virus actually erupted. But almost nothing was done with regard to anti-coronavirus equipment until the virus inhabited the country and began to spread. The Israeli health system was caught unprepared; it had been subject to ongoing budget cutbacks, as well as general neglect, in the last decade.

The Israeli health system as a whole is viewed as successful and efficient. Israel has a National Health Insurance Law that provides free health coverage to all its citizens and a network of family and community clinics that are among the world’s most developed. On the other hand, the numbers of nurses and intensive-care beds per capita are among the lowest in the West. The rates of death from infection within the hospitals are increasing and viewed as one of the highest in the West.

The coronavirus caught Israel with less than 2,000 ventilators and a chronic shortage of protective clothing, surgical masks, N95 masks, coronavirus test kits, special swabs and more. The Health Ministry’s worst-case scenario talks about a million coronavirus carriers in the month of May; this translates into about 10,000 patients in serious condition who will need ventilators. Netanyahu’s nightmare is to see thousands of coronavirus patients die due to a lack of ventilators.

The prime minister, who has an anxious temperament and often exaggerates threats and invents worst-case scenarios, is afraid of Israel becoming the Mediterranean version of Italy where the health system collapsed in light of the plethora of people in serious condition. He knows that pictures of Israeli coronavirus sufferers dying due to a lack of ventilators would mark the end of his political career. That's why it was inevitable that he appointed Cohen to the job of procuring the necessary equipment. The Mossad is Netanyahu’s secret weapon — it is very popular in the Israeli public. In addition, as opposed to the defense system and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — which are under Defense Minister Naftali Bennett — the direct commander-in-chief of the Mossad is Netanyahu. This allows him to take public and political credit for the Mossad’s success.