Hunger Games, Israeli style
Op-ed: Israelis are statistics in a regional game: Our children are sent to fight and sometimes die in a form of Israeli Hunger Games; the distinction is that our youths are sent off for a noble cause.
Ignoring the actual weather, I can write that after two months of torrential rain (of Gaza rockets) the sun has finally come out. Just one week ago, a grim-faced Netanyahu made a television appearance with dark, worried circles under his eyes, and now we see him extending his wishes to students starting the new school year while appearing lighthearted, cracking jokes and looking chipper. People could be mistaken and think that all is well and calm here in Israel.
The academic year opened with us still licking the wounds of war, keeping in our minds all the foreseen budget cuts that were sacrificed for the sake of security. How did Netanyahu phrase it at the cabinet meeting? "Security comes before everything".
It's hard to disagree with such an existential argument which in essence means that there's a gun is pointed to our heads, or if we're speaking in current-day terms – a shabaria knife (traditional Arabic dagger) held to our necks.
It is for this reason that Israeli children are forced to huddle together in classrooms like sardines, the poverty-stricken among them trying to silence their growling stomachs; and those who happen to feel unwell should be warned – the health care system is in a far more dire state.
And so, according to this theory of relativity, the citizens of Israel are mere statistics in a regional game. They bring children into the world and nurture them with tender devotion only to send them at the age of 18 to go fight for the IDF and sometimes die – a type of Israeli version of the Hunger Games.
The distinction, however, is that our youths are sent off for a noble cause, one that is existential in its nature, and not God forbid because they are satisfying the whims of a group of extremists.
Every individual has the right to hold right-wing views (I allow myself to dismiss in advance the right-wingers, a marginal group which at its best can act as a weak, harmless opposition), but the same individual should understand that choosing a party with a proper agenda is not enough.
The voter should try to predict which leader will head his party in the coalition. Yesh Atid, for example, is a party that seeks to be perceived as a center party that focuses on social issues, selected in the spirit of the "new politics", with hopes it will do good with the middle class.
In reality, Lapid's views as a Finance Minister are one with his views as head of Yesh Atid. For example, esteemed economists believe that the best way of dealing with a deficit caused by the war is raising taxes rather than making across-the-board cuts.
However, Lapid is trying to stand behind his word and not raise taxes. Therefore, not all cuts are equal in reality, and those who took a blow as a result of these cuts are those who were already on weak footing beforehand.
Another example occurs daily on our way to work, or if we're lucky, to a café in Tel Aviv. Everyone is equally stuck in traffic. Now that the war has ended, we can allow ourselves to ask the mundane question we didn't dare ask when we were still being regularly fed with news from the battlefield: for instance, why is it that Tel Aviv and its surrounding cities don't have a subway system? And why has construction work been taking place on the same stretch of roadway that we've been driving on for the past 8 years?
The reason for this all, if you managed to forget, is because of the war. The one that already happened and the one that will happen in the future. Because there is no budget and there won't be one, and nothing is going to change.
The region will remain unstable and there's no peace partner, at least according to the insights extracted from the prime minister, who according to polls will keep on serving as the country's prime minister in the next Israeli version of the Hunger Games film.
Tami Arad is the wife of Israel Air Force navigator Ron Arad, who was captured in Lebanon after his aircraft crashed in 1986.
