We are gradually losing faith in our leadership, local authorities and public service providers. These bodies regardless exist in a state of perpetual crisis. When isn't there a "school crisis" or "crisis in the healthcare system?" When haven't we been fed up with the corrupt, and when have they thought about anything but their own seats? These chords being played now, justifiably, are all too familiar to us.
Although, to be honest, I'm not sure whether decisions in Israel are susceptible to pressure and extortion as is being portrayed, or are simply the result of attentiveness to public mood swings and realization that imposing restrictions and bans comes with limitations. I also can't conclude that the problem is indecisiveness and lack of organized policy, or whether this is just the impression created by an incessant stream of leaks and rumors accompanying the decisions as they're being made.
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By nature, this process is an endless sequence of proposals and counter-proposals, opinions and contradicting viewpoints, drafts, appeals, negotiations, media spins, muscle flexing, elbowing, a little more negotiating, and only then, in the end, a final decision. When every phase of this process comes out as a quote in a newsflash, the impression we get is one of endless zigzagging, kowtowing and amateurism.
In their essence, war rooms are enclaves of chaos, and we sit and watch this frenetic bedlam unfold on live TV. It's amusing that many of those who objected to Benjamin Netanyahu's solo performances during the first wave of the pandemic ("he doesn't consult," "doesn't answer reporters' questions enough," "doesn't include all the ministers") and declared his policies a failure − now yearn for the decisiveness and authoritarianism of old.
And yet, we are within our right to have lost faith in the leadership, which should know we are exhausted, torn apart, barely treading water, and feel deceived. But we absolutely should not lose faith in ourselves.
Yes, the impression in recent weeks is one of dissolution, waning individual discipline, displays of sectorial egoism. Every group is fighting for "benefits," every stream insisting on having its rights met. It's as if we managed, as a society, to quit smoking cigarettes yet one day succumbed to temptation and smoked one more (because what's the worst that could happen?) and then another, and another, until poof − we were back to a pack a day. We took off our mask here, jammed into a packed pub there, went out to eat, attended events, did everything we only could, exploited every breach in the dam, and then we began fighting for our place in line. We transitioned far too quickly, shortly followed by the opinion pieces eulogizing Israel solidarity.
Our sense of common fate disintegrated, mutual responsibility fell apart, it's everyone for himself, every sector for its constituents, brother against brother. I suggest we take this rhetoric of our social demise with a grain of salt. Some of it is based on superficial analysis, much of it is tendentious.
The atmosphere of dissolution is in many ways a natural, almost obligatory response to the shock of the first wave. An air of permissiveness prevailed, following months of unprecedented anxiety and tension, as this unknown, amorphic threat loomed over us.
Some of this stress had to be relieved by reverting quickly, almost jarringly, to our old habits. We must not forget, however, that the irresponsible reveler inside all of us, as individuals and groups − behaved in exemplary fashion during the first wave. And that was under a transition government, at the height of a deflating and seemingly perpetual political impasse. Arabs, the ultra-Orthodox, the secular − there was neither Ramadan, Passover nor Independence Day. This wasn't blind obedience or the restraint of frightened subjects. It was fundamental social solidarity.
And this wasn't that long ago, certainly not enough time to justify eulogizing our solidarity. It is far more a part of our Israeli DNA than the corrosive egoism and extortion here and there. It hasn't just vanished into thin air either: just look at the aid groups, the young men and women volunteers, the doctors and nurses, the police, army, the Home Front Command, local authorities, welfare services, the teachers. It will also be rehabilitated regardless, and perhaps despite of the anger and disappointment over our leadership. Even reading between the lines of our most acerbic polemicists, one can still detect the warm signs of friendship. We are, after all, in the same boat, for worse − and for better.
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