Page 16 - Issue 14

measures that no other democratic country, has
taken.

But Israeli citizens are used to obeying quickly and
sheepishly orders from the state, especially when
security and survival are at stake. They are used to
security serving as the ultimate justification for
erosions of the rule of law and democracy.

…In Israel, such respected commentators as
Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev see in Netanyahu’s
handling of the crisis an example of just such
cynical exploitation of chaos and fear. Thus, Israel
is going through a crisis that has no parallel
elsewhere in the world: Its crisis is at once a
medical one, an economic one and a political one.
In times like this, trust in public officials is crucial.
Unfortunately, a significant part of the public has
lost trust in its officials, whether in the Health
Ministry or in any other branch of the executive.

What compounds the sense of crisis is the fact that
the pandemic requires a novel form of solidarity,
by way of “social distancing.” It is a solidarity
between generations, between the young and the
old, between someone who does not know he
may be sick and someone who may die from what
the first person does not know, a solidarity
between someone who may have lost his job and
someone who may lose his life. But it is also a
terrible solidarity, one that lets people die alone,
as we have seen in reports from Italy and the
United States.