In April 2019, I accompanied my mother to her polling station and took pictures of her from every possible angle. Behind the screen, in front of the screen, inside the screen. The fear with parents is that they are not eternal and – I'm not much of an original here, I'm afraid – I love my mother very much.
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I thought to myself, how many more times will she go to the polls? But in the meantime, Israel has become an Italy of sorts, and my mother doesn't understand how it is that there are mornings when people wake up and don't go to vote.
My mother has gone through a difficult year, as we all have. Her health has deteriorated. The loneliness that came with lockdowns did not agree with her, and then, despite how much the children wanted to visit her, but it is precisely because we love her that we refrained from doing so. These are times of coronavirus, after all.
But while the relatives in Paris continue to be under lockdown, my mother is actually quite fine. She has been vaccinated and can receive visitors as well as visit others, but as we have said – only on days when one doesn't go to the polls.
This morning, I will accompany my mother to the polls for the fourth time in two years. Elections are said to be a celebration of democracy. We have democracy but the celebration will have to wait until we finally learn that we have a stable government and one political camp that has won for everyone. Coalition-building efforts begin the day after the elections and the prime minister-elect becomes everyone's premier.
This is seemingly simple, but we have managed to complicate it. Israel in 2021 may rank 12th in the global happiness index, but it ranks first when it comes to political boycotts. We have turned from the chosen people to the excluding people – and it begins with political camps.
The boycott campaign continues from one election to the next. Undoubtedly an easy choice, because it allows the "Anyone but Netanyahu" camp to make no effort and evade presenting a real and concrete alternative to the prime minister.
However, if you truly think about it, you see that beyond the shallow "Netanyahu, yes or no" confrontation lies the very character of our country: a Jewish state versus a state of all its citizens. A Jewish state that provides guarantees future generations, or a state like any other nation for a people like any other people, that in three generations-time will find it difficult to justify its existence to a world that has never missed an opportunity to strike us as a people.
In other words – these elections are crucial.
But these elections are different from the three that preceded them because of the coronavirus. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be judges for his crisis management, even if he did everything with a parity government – one that functioned more like a Knesset, with internal strife between coalition and opposition.
Just between us, the first outbreak, when the transitional government was in place, was much easier to manage. Either way, like US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Netanyahu has emerged as a true leader who understands national priorities.
Even after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt did not change his strategic choice: Germany first. In retrospect this proved crucial to victory. Netanyahu also chose to go after the vaccines first and that was before the game changer in the real campaign: one world against a virus and its variants.
True, many lovely mothers were among the 6,000 Israeli lives claimed by the coronavirus. Our hearts go out to the families of the victims – grandparents, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. But we must also think of the countless lives that were saved thanks to the vaccination campaign, which is going to be the tiebreaker of the 2021 election.
Many have been dismissive of this effort, saying that "any prime minister would procure vaccinations. That is not the case. The fact of the matter is that some would-be candidates who thought that chances of developing vaccines so quickly, or alternatively, getting enough of them, were slim.
Just ask the German people, or the French, or Italians, or the Poles – but make sure to use Zoom in, because a lot of them are still under lockdown.
The four peace agreements Israel signed this year – in the midst of a pandemic no less – with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan did not simply appear out of thin air.
Not the agreements, not their tremendous economic potential, not the political horizon they open, and not the huge advantage they give Israel in the fight against Iran. No, this, too, is not something that every prime minister could achieve, especially not those who did not believe that normalization was possible without concessions, and especially those who spoke vociferously about Netanyahu no longer understanding how diplomacy works.
Well, the US administration and the moderate states in the med beg to differ. They believed in the vision.
My mother will go vote for the fourth time in two years today. Her memory isn't what it used to be. Something she even forgets the name of her beloved caregiver, or confuses between grandson and granddaughter. But she remembers who she wants to vote for. I'm just not sure how much of it stems from conviction and how much is habit. Probably something in the middle.
And finally only one request: if my mother can go vote, so can you. Vote. Don't relinquish ability to influence the results. All indications are that this race is going to be very close and that every vote could be the clincher.
I hope that the fourth election will yield a clear result and that we can finally like one another more and boycott each other less or, in fact, vote less often.
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