The Political Situation in Israel
The emotional experience of Corona, described above, consisted mainly of a sense of surprise, of a dreamlike existence, uncertainty, loss of control, anxiety, loneliness, and the unraveling of one’s beliefs, relationships, and roles. This unique emotional state is also accompanied by economic hardship and social and political frustration. These three dimensions — emotions, finance, and politics — feed into and intensify each other. As noted in the introduction, the eruption of the Covid-19 pandemic in Israel coincided with a period of political instability after a series of three national elections without a decisive outcome. The Prime Minister continued to serve as a result of what was either a brave, naïve, or ill-advised decision by the leader of the second largest political party (which received the majority of votes in the election yet was unable to compose a coalition government) to work with the Prime Minister in a unity government rather than bring the country to its fourth elections during the pandemic.
The Prime Minister is serving under a cloud of controversy and is accused of grave criminal acts of corruption, while his partner, the alternate Prime Minister, is the target of bitter criticism from his supporters for his decision to cooperate with the Prime Minister, a decision they consider to be betrayal. The government’s measures to address the pandemic incited public anger and frustration due to their lack of consistency and the suspicions that they were based on political rather than health-related consideration, and triggered a grave trust crisis in which all population groups feel injured by the government’s disregard of their needs and values. Ilan accurately described the situation:
We are in a wild trust crisis between citizens, residents, individuals — and everyone else who is higher above on the chain. And there is some kind of feeling that decision making is not being handled professionally, and in the best-case decisions are based on political considerations, and in the worst case – they are merely whims…
At the other end, Daniella and Orna reported the feelings shared by their group of older women, who had many complaints against the regulations and especially the obligation to wear masks. Orna and Daniella, the facilitators, decided to use the masks for creativity and elaboration, and in the following session proposed that group members would use their ordinary COVID masks to create festive masks with which they performed a masquerade:
To settle the score with these masks or what they represent. The mask is a representation of what they have been going through recently … one of the women in the group designed a mask that clearly referred to the political situation in Israel. [Her mask represented the feeling] of not being heard, and they [the authorities]don’t even want us to voice our concerns, and she created the mask according to that. With x’s and … the colors were very dark. I am saying it’s not only … Covid, it’s also what’s happening around us in the environment. By the way, certainly some of the themes that arise and recur in many sessions concern the political situation in Israel. Uncertainty, anger, yearning for a place that once existed and is gone. And then, everything mixes together…
