The struggle between those for and against the judicial reform has let the genie out of the bottle, and the words "civil war" have returned to haunt us.
Three years ago today, the Israeli government made one of the most dramatic decisions in its history: imposing a nationwide lockdown on Israeli citizens and extreme limitations on their movements and gatherings all over the country – right before the Passover Seder. The circumstances were not those of security. This was another attempt to fight the spread of COVID-19, which wreaked havoc during those days and threatened the collapse of even the world's strongest healthcare systems. There was little information on the pandemic, even less so on the measures against it. Its vaccine had yet to be developed. Humankind has never suffered from so little certainty in a world with so much information. Connections and contact between people became a world-class healthcare challenge.
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At dusk on the fourteenth day of the month of Nissan, everyone in Israel holed up in their homes with their immediate nuclear families: Passover Eve became Lockdown Eve, the holiday's atmosphere was diluted with sadness, the Haggadah with worry. That day's sights will forever remain engraved in our memories: Ayalon Highway lanes empty, the Western Wall abandoned, and the outskirts of Bnei Barak filled with IDF Home Front Command soldiers hurrying to distribute food and provide essential relief for quarantined people and their families. And the city – closed and sequestered. Not a soul leaving or entering it.
During a fleeting moment of respite from the pandemic, in between countless phone calls with the prime minister, government secretaries, the Health Ministry, authorities, and organizations that participated in the nationwide efforts, all while being quarantined me because of being exposed to someone confirmed to be diagnosed with the virus, I wrote to my people at the National Security Council: "This year, we do not need to seek answers to the Haggadah's question 'Why is tonight different from all other nights?. When we read about the ten plagues of Egypt, we will not need to be imaginative… we are in the midst of something we have never known. We were turned against our will into statistics people, knowledgeable in epidemic curves. But under no circumstances will we forget that behind those statistics are people. Those whose worlds were destroyed in front of their eyes and those who do not even know they are on their way there. The rapid plummet from our high mountaintop down into a deep ditch, the uncertainty, and the ruin that many people are in hammer away at us. The world became completely unrecognizable within the space of four months. We can learn many lessons from this: about the humility required by us, about the world that has placed us all in the same boat, about our health that is our existential foundation, about our ability to cease our wars when faced with a common enemy. And another important lesson we quickly forget is how difficult it is to separate us from one another. The virus succeeds in spreading because we are connected to each other."
Thank God the pandemic was eradicated. Some of us are still paying the toll it took on us. Above all else – the loss of life and the pain of families whose loved ones did not survive. The arguments regarding the pandemic will continue for many more years, but the pandemic is no longer in the headlines. The taste of freedom has returned to our lives.
The scars of the past are a glimmer of hope.
COVID-19 has left us with a bitter residue of pain and a surge of conflict. The struggle between those for and against the judicial reform has let the genie out of the bottle and, for the first time in years, has brought the words "civil war" into public debate. In this crisis, as in other crises, reflecting on our past can give us a glimmer of hope for our future.
We are a nation captive to its history. Everything we believe we are making new has, in fact, already happened throughout our nation's existence. Our history books describe bitter wars between tribes and kingdoms, Pharisees and Sadducees, Karaites and Rabbis, Hasidim and Misnagdim, and the Zealots and moderate leaders. The scars of these fights are borne by our nation's body and have harmed its soul. And after all this – the People of Israel live. One of our most prominent startups is using conflict as a lever for society's advancement. Thanks to the characteristics instilled in us from the dawn of our existence as a nation and throughout history, we knew how to use conflict to unite us.
Passover seats us all together at the table, returns us to our past, and obligates us to remember and recount our journey so far. No less important is that Passover renews our optimism and hope. We made it past the Pharaoh. We made it through crises, conflicts, and separations. We will make it through this too.
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