Euphoria, an increasingly rare feeling in a world beset by pandemic, made a brief appearance with the Jewish year 5781 three days away. Smiling broadly and displaying the freshly signed peace agreements between Israel and two Arab states, US president Donald Trump, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the foreign ministers of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were celebrated as bearers of a great diplomatic gospel.
Now, as 5781 makes way for 5782, the sense of gospel with which 5780 ended is long forgotten, as that moment of political sunshine made way for a year of twilight, a continuum of setbacks on multiple fronts, both locally and internationally, that felt as if the sky was painted red and the sun refused to rise.
THE PANDEMIC that dominated 5781 much the way it shaped 5780 again seemed for a moment like a spectacular Israeli success. Back when the coronavirus first struck, Israel’s decision to impose lockdowns was taken sooner, and executed better, than in most other countries.
The political self-congratulation which that impression produced proved premature, as infection rates climbed to other countries’ levels soon after Israel began relaxing its lockdown. That was back when the plague began. In 5781 this pattern repeated itself, after the emergence anti-coronavirus vaccines.
The success was in Israel’s vaccination drive, which was astonishing in its reach and speed. Owing to the professionalism and efficiency of its unique healthcare system, which insures every citizen through a set of competing health maintenance nonprofits, Israel vaccinated two-thirds of its population in hardly half-a-year, thus becoming the world’s leading vaccinator.
The consequent sense of victory, however, proved premature, as the vaccine’s effect proved to decline within six months. Israel’s consequent decision to deliver a third vaccination was also the first in the world, but that distinction could not offset the fact that the pandemic disrupted life in Israel much the way it did elsewhere in the developed world.
Disruption was particularly harsh in the school system, which has seen 2.4 million students ages 6-18 go through a Hebrew year of extended lockdowns, capsuled classes and lectures by zoom, all of which resulted in a widespread concern that 5781 was an educationally lost year.
As 5782 approached there was no sign of breakthrough, only a new resolve to “live with the pandemic,” meaning to vaccinate teens and kids, even in the schools, even against the opposition of the teachers’ unions and also the minister of education, who think the vaccinations should be injected outside the schools.
The same oxymoronic quest for “pandemic normalcy” underpinned the state of the economy.
Yes, there was some good news. The most frightening figure that reflected the sudden recession’s first months, 27% unemployment, plunged toward the end of 5781 to 7.6%, while the budget deficit, which had crossed 12% of GDP, declined to 10% and is now well on its way back to single-digit territory.
Most tellingly, the overall economy, which in the pandemic’s first year shrank by 2.5%, rebounded in 5781, registering a breakneck 15.4% growth between the recent January and June.
What these numbers mean is that the abandonment of the lockdown policy quickly sparked economic rehabilitation. They also reflect the hi-tech industry’s resilience even under adverse conditions.
However, the macro-economy’s statistical rehabilitation does not mean an imminent return to the pre-pandemic figure of 3.4% joblessness, not to mention the budget deficit, which at the beginning of 5780 was 3.9% of GDP and at the middle of 5781 was 6.6% of GDP.
A full return to the pre-pandemic levels requires the pandemic’s defeat. Unfortunately, 5781 ends with medicine humbled and the virus alive and well. And so, after having already resumed cultural events and relaxed social distancing restrictions, Israel reached the year’s end with infection rates resurging, social distancing restrictions reinstated, and the 5782 school year’s opening possibly delayed.
That is how the sense of medical perplexity which overhung the makeshift, outdoors synagogues in which millions of Israelis greeted 5781, was largely restored as they prepared to greet 5782 in a typically Israeli mixture of improvisation and defiance.
Economically, the pandemic’s resurgence means renewed trouble for the travel, entertainment, dining and tourism industries, even while the government struggles to balance economic rehabilitation with anti-viral discipline.
The sense of twilight with which the medical year ends animated the entire political year, arguably the most turbulent Israel ever endured.
THE POLITICAL year was defined by the election that took Israel to the ballots five days before Passover.
The holiday’s celebration of freedom’s victory over slavery was bolstered by the relaxation at the time of the pandemic restrictions, as families were now allowed to gather for the Seder meal.
However, the springtime atmosphere of medical optimism was marred by political pessimism, as the previous week’s snap election – Israel’s fourth in hardly two years – did little to end Israel’s ongoing constitutional crisis.
Subsequent weeks did generate change, as a new, and very improbable government emerged amid innovations that even Israel’s unpredictable politics never saw, including an eight-party coalition joined by an Islamist party, and this under a prime minister who once headed the West Bank Settlers’ Council.
While this unfolded, 5781 saw the end of an era, the 12-year-long second premiership of Binyamin Netanyahu. Israel’s new government is novel not only in its composition but also in its manner.
Under Netanyahu, Israel gradually shifted to a personalized style of leadership, whereby the prime minister dwarfed all his colleagues and partners.
This attitude reached its controversial climax when Netanyahu failed to even just inform, let alone consult, both his foreign and defense ministers as he initiated and hammered the peace agreements with which Israel greeted 5781.
The new government’s rotation mechanism between Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and its delicate balance between eight, mostly small parties and their frequently inverted convictions add up to a collective leadership that is the antithesis of Netanyahu’s soloist style.
Even so, as would befit a year of twilight, the end of one political era was not followed by the dawn of another.
Technically, the Bennett government is fragile, not only ideologically, but also politically, as its razor thin majority can vanish any day. Substantively, the new government has yet to affect the constitutional crisis from which it emerged. Justice Minister Gideon Saar’s quest, to redefine the judiciary’s powers and rebalance its relations with the legislature, has yet to be translated into actual bills.
This is beside the fact that Israeli society remains split between those who were convinced and those who were appalled by Netanyahu’s attacks on the judiciary that indicted him, and on the media and police that, according to his accusations, joined the judiciary in conspiring against him.
THIS IS not to say Israel saw no happy moments in 5781.
The new government not only ended the most extended political crisis in Israel’s history, it also displayed unusual harmony among sworn rivals, most notably between Bennett, an Orthodox nationalist, and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, a gay liberal, an odd couple that is leading the war on the pandemic jointly, with remarkable harmony. Even more happily, Israel’s athletes returned home from the Tokyo Games donning two gold medals and two bronze medals, by far Israel’s best ever Olympic performance.
However, the Olympiad itself was marred by the unprecedented absence of spectators in the seats, due to the pandemic. The surreal sight of world-class sporting events devoid of the fans’ color and cheer redoubled the year’s sense of twilight, which was even harsher abroad than it was in the Jewish state.
The year that was dominated by the coronavirus’s resurgence is also set to be recalled as an environmental turning point.
Massive floods that took 230 lives in Germany and seven surrounding European countries coincided with floods in multiple locations elsewhere, from Turkey through Pakistan to New Zealand.
Meanwhile, vast fires flared worldwide, from Arizona to Patagonia and from Siberia to the French Riviera. While August’s fires outside Jerusalem may have been man-made, most other fires were attributed to climate change, as were the year’s multiple floods, a diagnosis that now was accepted also by American Republicans who previously denied industrial emissions’ meteorological impact.
The year’s sense of environmental crux was joined by geopolitical disaster in Afghanistan, where an American buildup of 20 years collapsed over several weeks in which the Afghan Army – built, trained, and supplied by the US – unraveled in the face of a resurging Taliban’s charge.
In a fitting finale for a year in which the sun never rose, the world’s medical plague and environmental crisis were thus joined by political fiasco, as Islamism struck its first victory since the downfall of ISIS last decade in Iraq.
As 5782 arrives, the Jewish New Year greeting’s first half – “may one year and its curses end” – is as relevant as it hasn’t been in generations, and its second half, “may a new year and its blessings begin,” can hardly be more urgent.