200911 Lockdown and Atonement

 

200911

11^th of September 2020

 

Shalom dear friends. I hope you are well and ready to celebrate Shabbat and a good weekend – albeit without family gatherings but that will return.

 

Yes, we are headed for another lockdown over the High Holy Days. Starting next Friday we have stringent rules to ensure that our hospitals don't collapse under the wave of Covid infections. I'm tired of those who believe that masks and distancing are unnecessary; who babble on about dictatorship over the freedom of people to infect whomsoever they wish (people who have no idea what it means to live under a dictatorship); those who insist it is a problem of "the religious", the usual name for anyone who believes and finally the refusal of most governments to enforce the rules of engagement in this war on an enemy far more deadly than Iran.

 

Professor Ronni Gamzu has been against lockdown until now but seeing no option over the holidays he has presented the Covid Committee with as open a solution as possible. Of course it will not eradicate the disease from our land, but maybe it will prevent hundreds, or thousands of new cases which will swamp the hospitals which are in a state of near collapse because the government did not prepare for or infuse sufficient funds to sustain the influx of patients. If nothing else is learned from this pandemic it is which leaders are actually leaders and those who just want to keep their seats.

 

Zvi has an expression for the two major groups who ignore the Covid rules – "Those who believe in G-d and those who have no god" The maskless parties, full restaurants and bars, beaches and promenades, huge Hassidic weddings, the Arab weddings and celebrity weddings; street parties without any limitations and all of the above have caused people like us to fear every visit to a doctor, supermarket or even walk in the street. They, both sides of the religious divide, are the reason the system is collapsing and equally the reason that because they used their political clout to control the PM we are now in a situation which threatens the economy and our health. Interestingly enough despite fears, the demonstrations against the PM have not produced Covid positive people, probably because they tended to be very law abiding and mask wearing – trouble is they did not produce positive political results either. https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israels-govt-to-decide-high-holy-day-restrictions-today-641816

 

Diplomatically things couldn't be better! The Emirates, Kosovo, possible other links all of which are claimed by leaders while in fact they are the result of many years of hard work by the underpaid members of the Foreign Service! The fact that the PM is flying to Washington next week for the signing of the agreement with the United Arab Emirates has a bitter sweet taste when friends whose parents are dying are not allowed to come into the country.

 

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblitt was chosen for his position by Netanyahu because of his reputation as a fair and honest broker in all things legal and his long career in the Israel Defense Forces legal system, eventually serving as the Chief Military Advocate General. It fell to Mandelblitt to oversee most of the case against the Prime Minister who has consistently questioned the reliability of the police and judicial system claiming political sabotage as the reason for his indictment. His attitude toward the police and legal system have torn this country apart and delegitimised both in the eyes of the ordinary man on the street. Mandelblitt sees Netanyahu’s inability to juggle his positions as prime minister and criminal suspect as “essential incapacitation,” so similar to the words used by Netanyahu when he challenged Ehud Olmert. Olmert, however, had the moral intelligence to resign.

 

 

 

This has been a strange week personally. My family, spread all over the world, had to find a way to cope with our first major milestone since my son Daniel's tragic death. Monday was his birthday and each of us found a way to celebrate his life but accommodate our overwhelming sadness. Rachel and I went to the beach to watch the waves break on the shore, Gideon and Philip chose pensive quietude, and the New Yorkers went to Daniel's grave to allow the children to share their chocolate treats with Daddy. Each in their own way, we separated ourselves from politics and disease and thought only of a wonderful man.

 

Yesterday was a typical Israeli day. Our air conditioning has been "on the blink" for some time but since we will be moving within the next couple of months we really didn't want to buy a new one. We "managed". However the 40+ degree temperature in Jerusalem were not conducive to patient suffering and after the 2^nd bucketful of excess water we decided that the situation could not continue and through a dear friend Zvi called Mohammed, an airconditioning specialist. In the meantime I went across the road to our local minimarket to buy a few essentials, came home to put them into the fridge-freezer to find a lot of very soft ice lollies – yes, the fridge was also "on the blink"!! After racing with some still frozen fish and meat to the big freezer I called Yoel who promised to come immediately. 

 

So, here I was water leaking everywhere – from A/C and fridge – Yoel working to save our old fridge, when Rachel called and her harassed mother responded "I'm waiting for Mohammed" we giggled but then Mohammed arrived together with Zvi and he was not only a delight but incredibly efficient and solved the problem! As we sat together drinking lukewarm water on the veranda we discovered that the chances are he played with Zvi's boys when they were children – Mohammed in Juber Mukaber and Amiad and Leor in Armon Hanatsiv. In the days before the 2^nd Intifada the children used to share a playground and played together happily. Darned politics.