Until this pandemic, I had never thought that I would want a Spanish passport. I never took up the opportunity to get one, despite my family being entitled to do so due to the Spaniards' sense of guilt over their treatment of the Jews.
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The pandemic had to compare to many other challenges, and the race was close: the terrorist attacks of the 1990s, when we were not quite sure we would make it alive after boarding Bus 18 in the capital; the operations in Lebanon; the Second Intifada; the operations in Gaza; the rocket attacks that have gradually increased their range and paralyzed half the country.
Those episodes have never caused me to doubt my patriotism, and then the coronavirus happened. And perhaps precisely because it had nothing to do with Jews and the attempts of evil people to destroy us that our leaders have treated the average citizen as an afterthought, as not the most important thing
The citizens, who fund the public coffers, have become the suspects; they have to deal with tax issues. On the one hand, they have been promised relief, yet on other hand, the very tax authorities that are supposed to deliver it have wrapped it in so much red tape that even those who climb the Everest cannot overcome this hurdle.
Social media has been flooded with the joke, "Has someone been able to get relief?" And like many others, I have given up on getting it.
The disconnect between the state and its most loyal citizens is also evident in the fact that only a handful of its 30 plus ministers, some of whom have titles that are taken right out of science fiction books, have considered slashing their pay in solidarity.
But we, the citizens, on the other hand, are required to show solidarity. When the government came up with the disgusting idea of monitoring people using the Shin Ben security agency, we were asked to stay quiet in the name of solidarity.
It was not long before it turned out that the lockdown has become a political tool. Most people know what population had the biggest infection rates, but the flights from New York were stopped. A cop yells at four kids at a playground to stop playing, while his colleague stands helplessly in front of a yeshiva packed with hundreds of students. But we were required to stay silent in the name of solidarity...
When you went to get medical checkups but had to go back home because only coronavirus patients were given treatment, you had to stay silent in the name of solidarity.
When you sat at home alone during the Passover Seder and watched television as the president and prime minister hosted with their families and flouted the lockdown, you were asked to stay silent and show solidarity.
When the government refused to rethink its course, and the Health Ministry chiefs' serious-thinking big wigs continued their scaremongering with unsubstantiated data, trust began to crumble.
When they allowed, in a spontaneous act and with no reason, IKEA to reopen but refused to let the open-air markets do the same, trust crumbled. Trust just wants to die now.
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When there is no trust, the ground beneath you begins to collapse. When this happens, the search for a flight to take you out of the country becomes ever more real.
"In Israel, there are many charities and a lot of giving," someone told me. Well, I don't see any advantage in a country that discriminates its people, makes them get used to the idea of cutting corners and on the way gives them a small tax credit as an afterthought.
The exhausted citizen sits at home and sees what's happening in his country and starts wondering. The "Anyone But Netanyahu" party and the "Only Netanyahu" party have imposed on the law-abiding citizen a choice: He or she has to choose a side. But the citizens don't want to have to deal with these religious wars. They don't want to join the protests against Netanyahu or the celebrations and rallies honoring him.
This bipolar disorder in Israel is very dangerous. History has already proved that superpowers much stronger than Israel eventually collapsed. They didn't die as lean and modest. They died when their monstrous state bodies turned against the country and attacked the very underpinnings of the nation and its citizens. It is hard to get rid of such a plague. Even the Health Ministry will not get rid of this self-inflicting virus, despite the serious demeanor.
