I remember what seems like a distant past, back in the spring, when Israelis came on to their balconies and clapped at the health personnel on the front lines in the fight against corona. This was when corona was extremely low and well-managed here.
I thought it was a pretty meaningless gesture at the time - it would have been better to pay nurses, doctors et al decent wages rather than clap at them - and in hindsight, it really was. Because it has turned out that a significant portion of the Israeli populace - across ALL population sectors - really could not care less about our nurses, doctors and all the other health personnel who have risked their lives and got infected and even died.
People here do not wear masks properly or at all, they do not keep their distance and a shocking number even claim that corona is a "hoax" or a "political tool".
That the government has played politics with corona nobody will argue. The government has failed tremendously in containing this virus, but it could not have failed so categorically without the dedicated cooperation of large parts of the populace who went out of their way to show everyone that they would be nobody's "frier" (sucker) and play according to the rules.
In the process, it made suckers of all of us. It is probably the best example of "shooting oneself in the foot" that you could ever find. In the process, they also managed to show that the idea that life comes before everything, even one's own comfort, doesn't play nearly the role here that we would like to think it does.
More than 100,000 people became unemployed in the past week due to the current lockdown, which has a million loopholes and which so many still blatantly disrespect. At nearly 7,000 new cases per day, however, among the world's highest, the government has now decided that it is closing down the entire country, except for some vital functions. This is not least because people here still aren't adhering to the rules of masks, social distancing, no gatherings etc. The government's measure is draconian and it will cause tremendous damage. But at the same time, people here, at this point, mostly have their own behavior to thank for this state of affairs.
Ironically, all this is playing out during the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the days when Jews are supposed to contemplate the justice of their actions towards their fellow man. I am afraid that the irony is lost on too many.
Judith Bergman is a writer and political analyst.