Our country is ranked 12th in the world in the happiness index, but goes to the fourth election with a shallow campaign of "Only Bibi" or "Only not Bibi" • Prime Minister Netanyahu will be examined on crisis management, but the vaccination campaign is going to be the tiebreaker of the 2021 election • Opinion
2021 Election: It's going to be borderline
Photo:
Arik Sultan, Yossi Zeliger and Oren Ben Hakon
In April 2019 I accompanied my mother to the polls and photographed her from every possible angle.
Behind the curtain, in front of the curtain, inside the curtain.
The fear with parents is that they are not eternal, and my mother - what to do, I am not original - I love very much.
And I thought to myself how many more times will she go to the polls.
But in the meantime Israel has become a kind of Italy, and my mother does not understand how it is that there are mornings when you wake up and do not go to vote.
My mother went through a difficult year.
like all of us.
Her condition deteriorated.
The loneliness did her no good.
God forbid we liked her less and the kids wanted to visit.
But precisely because it would happen to us, we avoided coming.
Corona.
But while the relatives in Paris continue to be in quarantine, my mother is actually quite fine.
It is resilient and may host and be hosted - but as we have said - only on days when not going to the polls.
This morning I will accompany my mother for the fourth time in two years.
Elections are said to be a celebration of democracy.
We stayed with democracy.
It is a celebration when we finally know that we will have a stable government and one camp wins for all of us.
The day after the election, a coalition is formed, and the prime minister becomes Kovulam's prime minister.
It's seemingly simple, only we managed to complicate it.
Israel 2021 may be ranked 12th in the happiness index, but it ranks first in boycotts.
We have become from the chosen people to the people of tomorrow.
And it starts with political camps.
The boycott campaign continues election after election campaign.
Undoubtedly an easy choice, because it allows the non-Bibi camp not to strain and evade presenting a real and concrete alternative.
But if one really thinks deeply, one sees that beyond the shallow yes-bibi-no-bibi confrontation lies the identity of our country.
A Jewish state versus a state of all its citizens.
A Jewish state that provides a guarantee for future generations, or a state like all other states for the people as the other peoples, that in three generations will find it difficult to justify its existence in the face of a world that has not missed an opportunity to strike us as a people.
In other words - the campaign today is of crucial importance.
But these choices are different from the previous three systems mainly because of the corona.
The prime minister will be examined for crisis management - even if he did everything with a parity government.
A government that functioned more like a Knesset, with internal strife between the coalition and the opposition.
Between us, the first wave, the one with the transitional government, was much easier to manage.
Either way, just like Roosevelt, Netanyahu has emerged as a true leader who understands what is at the top of a nation's priorities.
Even after the attack on Pearl Harbor Roosevelt did not change his strategic choice: Germany first.
In retrospect this has been proven to be a factor in victory.
Netanyahu also chose vaccines first and foremost and this was the game changer in the campaign we are experiencing today: one world against a virus and its variants.
True, many lovely mothers among the 6,000 victims of the corona, and they will not go to the polls today.
The heart of us all goes out to the families of the Corona victims, grandparents, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers.
But we also think of those who survived thanks to the vaccination campaign, which is going to be the tiebreaker of the 2021. Election.
Any prime minister would do that.
well no.
It is a fact that there are some prime ministerial candidates who thought that in the first place there was no chance of developing vaccines so quickly or getting enough of them.
If my mother can, so can you
Ask Merkel in Germany or Macron in France.
Talk to Italians and Poles.
Just zoom in, because many of them are still locked up.
Even four peace agreements, with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan - and more during the Corona year, are not something that has landed from heaven.
Not the agreements, not their enormous economic potential, not the political horizon they open and not the huge advantage they give Israel in the fight against Iran.
No, this is also not something that every prime minister would bring, especially not those who did not believe that normalization was possible without withdrawal, and especially those who spoke angrily about Netanyahu no longer understanding how diplomacy is conducted.
Well, the US administration and the moderate countries of the region thought differently, and believed in the vision.
My mom is going to vote today for the fourth time.
Memory is no longer something.
Sometimes she even forgets the name of her beloved caregiver, not to mention the confusion between grandson and granddaughter.
But for whom to vote she actually remembers.
I'm just not sure how much it's out of faith, and how much it's out of habit.
Something in the middle.
And finally only one request: if my mother can, so can you.
Go vote, do not give up your ability to influence.
All indications are that this is going to be borderline.
That every voice can decide whether it is here or there.
I wish the fourth act would lead to a clear decision that we could finally like more and boycott less — or, in fact, vote less.