What Next?

  

There’s too much drama going on in my life. First there’s the coronavirus and all its ramifications – seclusion, isolation, alienation, claustrophobia, agorophobia, to name but a few.

And on top of all that, there’s the political situation in Israel. First there were three general elections in rapid succession, with none of them producing a clear-cut result. Then one party managed to get its act together and tried to form a government, but the party that was in power refused to step politely aside, so that a lot of time was wasted in political machinations, maneuvering and juggling. When some kind of resolution seemed to be just over the horizon, the Speaker of the Knesset, apparently in cahoots with the prime minister, conducted a series of blocking actions, culminating in his downright refusal to accept the ruling of the Supreme Court that he had to convene the Knesset so that a new Speaker could be appointed.

And all this was going on in the shadow of the pandemic which has left thousands of Israelis – and people all over the world – in inadequately equipped hospitals or at home in isolation, as well as a general lockdown which kept most of the populace confined to home. Now penalties have been introduced for leaving home without having a sufficiently good reason, namely, to get food or medicines.

After a couple of days’ delay while the politicians discussed what to do next, we were suddenly confronted by a fait accompli in which Benny Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White party that had been challenging the Likud and Bibi Netanyahu for domination of the government, threw his lot in with the very man he had been denouncing as an indicted criminal. By accepting a post in his government Gantz caused a split in his party and its virtual disintegration. The compromise of a rotating premiership is supposedly the solution, but the general view is that Netanyahu’s undertaking to cede his position after eighteen months will never be met.

There are two schools of thought about Gantz. One says that he showed that he is inept and weak, and above all self-seeking, although he claims that he acted as he did in order to bring unity to the country and end the political deadlock. The other school claims that Gantz proved that he is a consummate politician in being able to break the promises he made during the election process and stab his colleagues in the back.

One way or another, it’s a conclusion of sorts to the political impasse in which Israel has been stuck for the last year or two, with some hope of a decent outcome somewhere in the future.

All that remains to be resolved is the issue of the coronavirus, and there’s no knowing how and when that will end. Meanwhile, we senior citizens continue to remain at home, trying to keep ourselves occupied and entertained with the various means at our disposal. Hurrah for the wonders of modern electronic communications.

Keeping Our Heads Above Water

The situation is going from bad to worse. Everywhere. In every country, every town and village, every house and every apartment. People who are lucky enough to have a home to stay in should be counting their blessings. I should be counting my blessings. But it’s getting harder with each passing day.

The nightly news programmes on TV here in Israel are full of gloom and doom, with predictions from health and financial experts of the awful fate awaiting many of us. The icing on the cake comes in the form of the almost-nightly harangue from our ‘beloved leader’ telling us of the latest restrictions and attendant penalties awaiting us on the morrow. Each such harangue is peppered with supposedly casual references to that person’s wonderful relations with foreign leaders, great achievements in Israel’s general situation and transparent digs at his political opponents.

The fact that Israel’s current political situation is a mess is due in no small measure to the manipulations and shenanigans of that particular leader. I’m reminded of Dickens’ Artful Dodger, who is both clever, sly and dishonest while presenting a front of being kind-hearted. Another fictional character who comes to mind is one from a satirical series on Israeli TV from several years ago, ‘Polishuk,’ which portrays a politician who is initially out of his depth in the murky waters of Israeli politics but eventually becomes as corrupt and self-seeking as the rest of the pack.

But enough of this Bibi-bashing. The sad fact of the matter is that after having held three general elections within a year Israel is still without a government, so that the acting prime minister is in a position to use his powers to manipulate the political situation, paralyse the parliament and the system of due legal process, control the air-waves and even introduce an emergency order permitting the government to snoop into citizen’s private phones. Hasn’t he ever read or at least heard of George Orwell (‘1984,’ ‘Animal Farm’), Aldous Huxley (‘Brave New World’), or even our own Arthur Koestler (‘Darkness at Noon’). Each one of those seminal works, not to mention many others, provides an object lesson in what happens when the democratic process is undermined or even overthrown because ruthless, ambitious politicians have set their minds to it. The situation they describe may be fictional, but the world has seen it happen more than once.

In Israel’s case, all those anti-democratic actions are compounded and in fact justified by the current coronavirus scare. It provides a convenient weapon for setting aside all the processes by which Israel’s democracy has been sustained throughout the seventy-two years of its existence.

As we watch the dissolution of due legal process and total disregard for democratic institutions we are obliged to remain confined to our homes, but it feels as if we are drowning and the lifeguard has taken leave of absence.

We can only hope that somehow, someone will come to our rescue and enable us at least to keep our heads above the water.

 

Splendid Isolation

I’m ready. I had no need to stock up on toilet paper, pasta, tins of food or any other staple, as I am always certain to have good supplies of those items. Anyone, like myself, who has lived in Israel, and especially Jerusalem, for over fifty years, has learned to always be well supplied with good stocks of foodstuffs.

It probably started with the siege of Jewish Jerusalem in the framework of the 1948 War of Independence, when the single road to Jerusalem was cut off from the coastal plain by the Arabs whose villages dominated the surrounding hillsides. Many young lives were lost when the armoured convoys bringing food to the beleaguered city were attacked and routed. The rusting wrecks of the burnt-out vehicles in which they died still stand along the side of the road, reminding us of the price that was paid to liberate the capital.

My first experience of having to stockpile food was in the run-up to the Six Day War in 1967, and I’m not sure I was fully aware of the potential gravity of the situation. In the event, the fighting was mercifully brief, and the resulting victory meant that the small grocery stores of the time (there were hardly any supermarkets then) could resume normal business fairly quickly.

But then came the massive, unexpected snowstorm that winter, and once again supplies were limited. The thrill of being snowbound soon wore off, and anyone, like me, who hadn’t learned her lesson in June was made to learn it in January.

There have been other wars and snowstorms since then, but by now I’m an old hand at the business of making sure I always have well-stocked kitchen cabinets, as well as plentiful supplies in my freezer and fridge.

So I was not among the masses who rushed to buy toilet paper and other necessities when the coronavirus scare hit us. However, I did venture out to the supermarket early one morning to make sure I had a sufficient supply of chocolate biscuits (imported from the UK), good chocolate (imported from Switzerland) and wine (both local and imported). As a matter of policy I did not take a trolley (handles full of germs), put the few items I had bought into my shopping bag and proceeded to the express checkout, where there were fewer customers.

So I’m not worried. Moreover, the idea of self-isolation is not totally alien to me. We Brits aren’t used to all the hugging and kissing that goes on in social interaction in the warm countries of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. We may go along with it in order not to stand out like a sore thumb, but it doesn’t really come naturally to us. After all, the term ‘splendid isolation’ originated in British diplomatic policy of the nineteenth century, and served the country very well at the time. Social interaciton in the UK is usually limited to a cool handshake, and it is no great sacrifice to forgo it.

In addition, anyone like myself who has spent many years working from home as a free-lance translator must have either a natural or an acquired inclination to working in isolation. So all in all, the idea of self-isolation suits me fine as long as I’m sure I’m well equipped with the basic necessities of life: chocolate and wine. If I’m left alone and have the things I need I can self-isolate for a year, if need be.

OH, AH, CORONA!

The Corona virus, also known as COVID 19, is spreading steadily throughout the world. At first it seemed to be confined to one region of China, then to other places in the Far East, but now it’s getting closer every day, appearing first in Italy and then in the rest of Europe, the Middle East and now even Israel.

The unfortunate Israelis who happened to be on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, commonly known in Israel as the Corona Ship, were first confined to their cabins for a fortnight, then isolated in Japan, and when finally allowed to return to Israel (not all of them though, as a few were found to be carriers before being able to board the plane bringing them to Israel, so had to remain behind), only to be subjected to another two weeks of isolation in a hospital in Israel. One sad result of this was that one couple had to be separated, the wife returning to Israel and the husband remaining in isolation in Japan. Those two happen to live quite near to me in Mevasseret, though I do not know them personally. I’ve read about them in the local paper, and my sympathies certainly go out to them.

Meanwhile, a group of tourists from South Korea who visited various holy places and sites in Israel were found to be infected with the virus on their return to Korea. Unfortunately, several classes of middle-school pupils happened to have been visiting the same sites just then, and several hundred of them are now in isolation in their own homes. Israelis returning from Italy and various countries of the Far East have been told to remain in self-imposed isolation in their homes for two weeks following their arrival, though no controls are imposed on how they are supposed to reach those homes. Obviously, they should not use public transport, but who can control that? Henceforth anyone returning from any of those countries will have to go into voluntary isolation for two weeks at home, and in fact flights to and from those countries have been banned. Many people have cancelled flights to anywhere and everywhere.

At the recent general election special isolation polling booths were set up in various parts of the country, manned by people in protective suits. These provided special double envelopes into which the unfortunate individuals were supposed to insert their ballot slips. How they could be removed without risk of infection beats me, but it appears to have been done, to everyone’s satisfaction.

Some twenty or so Israelis who have returned from Italy have been found to be infected, and some of them have already infected others, so there’s no knowing how far the disease will spread. We are assured that the disease is not much worse than influenza, but people over the age of sixty-five are apparently particularly vulnerable and are liable to die as a result of contracting the virus. Help! That’s me, and a lot of my friends. The remedy would seem to be to stay at home, but that’s rather a lot to ask of people who are anyway fairly cut off from the world.

Every now and again the radio broadcasts the news that another Israeli has been found to have caught the virus, and that he (or she) recently returned on a flight from Italy, and all the passengers who happened to be on flight XYZ are requested to remain at home for the next two weeks.

At a recent family celebration to mark the arrival of a new baby I declined to kiss and be kissed by any of my relatives. I felt terrible doing this, and explained it by pointing out that I’m in a high-risk group. Even shaking hands is supposed to be potentially dangerous, but I couldn’t bring myself to refrain from doing that.

We have attended a concert and a performance of an opera (Rossini’s ‘Barber of Seville’) in the last couple of weeks, and didn’t see anyone wearing a mask. In the ‘Barber of Seville’ one of the characters feigns illness, and in the Hebrew translation of the Italian libretto the reference to someone having been ill was changed to read that he should have been in isolation. That brought a smile to everyone’s lips, and even some very restrained laughter.

Someone I know was due to return to Israel from the USA with a stop-over in Italy. This would have meant staying home for two weeks with no ability to work, go shopping or see anyone. His friend, a relative of mine who is now based in the USA, spent over an hour on the phone with the airline to change the stop-over destination. Eventually he succeeded, though I’m not sure whether this incurred an extra cost.

One thing is sure, however, and that is that an increasing number of people are curtailing their visits to the cinema, sports events, and even going to the supermarket. I’ve been told to take disinfectant wipes with me wherever I go so that I can attempt to clean any surfaces, e.g., supermarket trolley handles, airplane armrests, hotel light switches and remote controls, etc.

All this is having a deleterious effect on the domestic and global economy, and it only remains to be seen how long this train of events will continue to batter us all.