Question

In column 300 (wonderful, it should be noted) you presented the absurd reality in which we live here in this country: a corrupt judicial system and a legislature passing personal laws tailored to the needs of the coalition; all the Basic Laws are at most nothing but a bad joke.
What we really have left is the people, who understand the basic and human principle of “each man helps his fellow”; here and there there are some rough edges, but in the end sound intuition overcomes every passing madness with time,
In the recent period we have been witnessing a real catastrophe, and it seems that even the last branch is about to be cut off, and everyone will do whatever is right in his own eyes.
Many times you have taken care to explain that there is a difference between expressing an absurd opinion, however absurd it may be, and instructing the public who listen to you.
I think it would be false to say that a politician heading a party with a not-insignificant number of mandates does not bear responsibility for his words and instructions, no less at any rate than a rabbi heading a community.
I will bring several examples:I will bring several examples:
A few weeks ago it was Liberman who called on the public to do whatever came into their heads.
At the beginning of the crisis it was all the leaders of the left who claimed that Bibi was creating panic for political purposes and that one should not obey dictatorial orders (Lapid, Bogie, there, there).
Yesterday it was Ofer Shelah, MK Ofer Shelah, who called on protesters not to pay the fines they received, called for increasing the protests contrary to the law
and justified it by saying that the judicial system would collapse in the face of thousands of protesters. And he promised to fight for that.
Eli Avidar was heard in a recording with one of the protest organizers calling to go out in violation of the law, and undertook to open a Headstart campaign for the benefit of lawbreakers, which is itself illegal.
Meretz of course published an antisemitic campaign in which they accuse the Haredi MKs of the blood of the coronavirus victims.
By the way, perhaps it will be said that they are protesting the damage to the economy. So I will bring an interesting figure published by Adam Gold: “By the way, at the height of stupidity and as part of the systematic campaign to normalize violation of the law, and amid yet another interview with a business owner warning that he’ll thumb his nose at the law, along comes Noga Nir Naaman and explains that because of the coronavirus already ‘1,000 businesses have already closed in the first half of the year.’
And what are the facts?
That because of the state support, in the first half of the year actually 33% fewer businesses closed compared to the number last year (by the way, 9,384 closed in total, but last year 14,100 closed)
Now, one can be for or against a lockdown and various restrictions. You know what, in a country with freedom of speech maybe one can even preach from a comfortable chair for anarchy and civil disobedience in the middle of a pandemic. Fine. But the ignorance, the shallowness, the populism, the flattening of the discussion to the height of plywood in the mainstream media—for that there is no forgiveness. Agents of ignorance in every respect. (By the way, this is from Finance Ministry data brought by Merav Arlosoroff, where the clear conclusion from the data is that in practice there are many businesses that in a normal year would already have shut their doors, and precisely in the coronavirus crisis year continue to exist thanks to the exceptional grants the state gave businesses. That is, absurdly, the grants artificially preserve quite a few businesses that were problematic even before the coronavirus. This certainly does not mean there are no businesses, sectors, and branches that were hit very hard by the coronavirus, but life is complicated, friends. Life is complicated)”
And more and more…
And I ask:
A. Is democracy in the category of “be killed rather than transgress,” or is it like a democratic positive commandment that overrides all the other prohibitions?
B. How is Bibi different—who, even if we assume he broke the law—from those who call to violate it in practice, with destructive social, health, and economic consequences?
(After all, deceit is the inheritance of every politician, see Blue and White and Amir Peretz who entered Netanyahu’s government; bribery, of course, is what actually brought them into the inner sanctum—whether it is Gantz with the dream of the title of prime minister or any other leper and his dreams; breach of trust, of course, needs no elaboration after the violation of every clause in the coalition agreement by every side, and of course breach of the public trust).
C. If we assume there is no direct harm from the protests from the standpoint of the coronavirus virus, but the damage to governability and the rule of law is proven beyond any doubt because of Israeli nosiness, where everyone asks, “Why can he and I can’t?”, is that not sufficient reason to refrain from destroying the state indirectly, let us say?
D. And what about the fact that almost half a million citizens have become freeloaders and thieves? I work in the field of accounting; the reports are as usual, only all the workers are on unpaid leave, people are simply working off the books. In the first wave there were no traffic jams because people really weren’t working; in the second wave the number of unemployed grew and the traffic jams remained… Miri Regev published that 400,000 more passengers travel by public transportation every day than during the first lockdown, and a kollel stipend of about 430 shekels a month for an avrekh drives people out of their minds and experts are concerned to explain that this will collapse our economy…
E. And lastly, has it not been proven that at the boiling point everyone has his own values or motives and there is no law and no judge?! So why is it that when it’s Haredim the criticism surges with full pathos, and when it’s others, dead silence? Doesn’t there deserve to be some follow-up column to column 300 about the fake democracy in which we live?!
(And I haven’t even addressed the discriminatory treatment between left-wing protests and right-wing protests, for example over the stealing of their homes and giving them to murderers, or for example over the Haredi protests; all the stun grenades, skunk water, mounted police vanished as if they had never been, a small injury to Huldai’s hand makes the headlines—we’ve gone crazy!!!).