Likud Slams Comptroller After Report Omits Netanyahu’s COVID Vaccine Effort

The newly released State Comptroller’s report on Israel’s response to the coronavirus pandemic triggered a backlash from the Likud for overlooking the previous government’s efforts.

A senior Likud official said on Tuesday that “the report only deals with decision-making and procedures, but not the substance.”

The official lamented that “not a single word has been written on the only solution for coronavirus, which is the vaccines that [former] Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu brought to Israel before every country. This is very much like the report on the 2010 Mount Carmel fire, which lacked any mention of the aerial firefighting squad that Netanyahu brought.”

The comptroller report cites a long list of shortcomings in the decision-making process, which in some cases also led to major adverse effects because, according to the comptroller, “at no point did the government declare an emergency.”

The report also faults the government for not properly addressing the threat posed by coronavirus variants.

Netanyahu’s actions to secure vaccine doses to Israel helped make it a model for others around the world but this had only a short-term effect as the Delta variant took hold.