Medical workers in Sweden threatened strikes and resignations late last summer, after losing all summers: Given the large load of Corona patients in hospitals, some were asked, in exchange for monetary compensation, to shorten their summer leave from four weeks to three and keep the extra week another busy month.
The doctors were furious.
Letters were written, threats threatened, headlines heralded a "national crisis in hospitals" and head nurses fearing to be left without staff.
The Israeli reader needs to rub his eyes to be convinced that he is reading correctly.
Are they on strike?
Three weeks vacation instead of four?
And in the middle of an epidemic?
But a glimpse of what is happening overseas can remind us of something important: what normalcy is.
The normal situation is one in which the employee has reasonable working hours, and any deviation from them - even if there is an urgent need for the system - is done with consent and adequate compensation.
Pushing a person to the edge of the limit of ability and beyond is not worth it, and hours of rest and vacation are not seen as an unfounded privilege.
So what's the story with us?
After all, no sane person really thinks there is a medical value to 26-hour internships.
Bus drivers, for example, whose lack of concentration at work can cost human lives, are prohibited by law from continuing to drive if 12 hours have passed since they began their first trip that day.
Drivers do not, and doctors do?
What is the difference?
We Israelis love those who go to the end.
We admire the sacrifice, and a little contempt for those who refuse to get under the stretcher at any cost.
The slogan "Do not ask what the state can do for you - ask what you can do for the state" was said by US President John F. Kennedy, but the Israelis adopted it with both hands. If we do not become strong, says the collective unconscious Ours, and if we do not give all we have to give - we will not survive here.
This conception, no doubt, enabled the establishment of the state, the absorption of aliyah, the flowering of settlement, and it enriched our national lives with inspiring people.
But we must not confuse an emergency with a routine.
Machoism is so deep in our culture, the one that says "come on come on, wipe away the tears and do what is right", true perhaps when there is an enemy to win, and not true at all when there is life to lead.
We came here to advance a country, not a training camp.
There are certainly other sides to the discussion, and not all system constraints can be resolved in one day.
But without going into the question of how effective a 26-hour internship is effective, there is a matter of principle here: a stable, value-based and democratic state is meant to serve its citizens, not the other way around.
New doctors should not be sacrificed on the altar of the system, and should not agree to work non-human hours just "because there is no budget to change it."
A reformed state does not try to push its doctors to the wall so that they will agree to give up more, but does an economic home inspection, cuts where necessary and reduces where necessary, and finds the budget that will allow a basic and acute system like the health system to work best.
For the benefit of us all.