1.
How excited I am about the vaccinations. Yes, excitement, that's the feeling. Of course, also joy and hope and relief. Obviously. But the strongest feeling I have regarding the vaccination campaign is simply excitement.
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About ten months ago, when humanity began to understand that the coronavirus was a serious matter that was stopping everything, the question that occupied everyone was: How long? When will all this end? In a year? Two years? Five years?
Then the depressing realization dawned that it was going to be a very long time, because until a vaccine for the coronavirus is found, we are doomed to suffer from the virus. And to suffer means the entire spectrum of suffering, from the angina of the mask to the angina of death.
So, when will there be a vaccine? Oh, these are things that take time, everyone said, especially those who understand. This is serious business. After all, the virus is new, and you have to research it, and study it, and understand it, and find solutions, and then see that they don't really work, and try again, and be disappointed again. There's no end in sight here, it's a long and complex process. And now it turns out that while all of humanity is talking and arguing about the coronavirus and how much we need to close and open, at the same time, gray people in all sorts of places in the world got up early in the morning, made a sandwich with white cheese and cucumber, packed a box with peeled carrots and went to the lab. That is, assuming they didn't sleep in the lab that night.
It excites me. This work, the research, the knowledge, the science, the development. The person in the lab wins. And what speed, Lord of the universe. Did anyone think the vaccine would be found so quickly?
And of course, I'm also moved by the speed with which the small state of Israel obtained the vaccine. Over and over again, I watched the footage of the yellow plane landing at Ben Gurion Airport, the door opening and the forklift starting to unload boxes with thousands of Pfizer vaccines, with the prime minister standing opposite. I don't think I've been this excited since Shamir and Peres stood in the same place and welcomed Natan Sharansky.
Okay, I'm exaggerating, but really, it was an uplifting national moment. It's a shame they didn't sing "Hatikva" at the end.
And now I'm waiting for Saturday night, for the festive live broadcast. The Prime Minister offers his arm to an excited nurse (I hope for his sake that she's not too excited) and receives the injection. I think this is going to be a rare moment that will unite the entire nation.
Netanyahu's supporters will be happy and proud of the cannonball Bibi who organized so quickly about vaccines for the country. And his haters? They will be happy to see him get some kind of stab.
2.
And speaking of his haters, last Saturday night I returned to Balfour, after a few months away. In the first weeks of the growing protest against Netanyahu, I went to see the demonstration up close.
Why did I go? For two reasons: First of all, because I know that you can't trust the media's reports when it comes to covering events of this kind. You can't trust them either in terms of the quantity of people or their quality. If the issue is important to you, you have no choice, you'll have to observe reality for yourself, without dubious intermediaries. And second, and most importantly: I live four and a half minutes away. If I lived four and a half minutes from the Bastille, or at least near people who claim to be the French Revolution of our generation, wouldn't I go see them?
So I went. And I saw up close the unclear cluster of the masses that were there. Contrary to what might be commonly thought because of the pictures of the detainees and the action, most of the people who participated in the demonstrations in Balfour at the time were not anarchists. True, there were quite a few of them, but you also saw thousands of good and caring Israelis there, of all ages, some of them literally salt of the earth, who, to be honest, the propaganda machine that tells them that Netanyahu is to blame for all their many troubles - and especially the propaganda machine that says they have many troubles - worked on them.
It was a fascinating anthropological experience, and the truth is also a little scary, to observe from the sidelines such different genres of protesters and shouts and signs all united by one idea. And Israel against Balfour was proclaimed as one man with one heart.
And what's the idea? That Bibi will disappear from our lives. How will he disappear if he is repeatedly elected in democratic elections? It's not clear. I don't think they had an operational plan other than mass honking of loud horns every Saturday night.
But after a few times I was exhausted. I understood the scene. I had inhaled enough of the huge cloud of weed that hovers over the solid Rehavia neighborhood on Saturday nights. And besides, the repulsive sights, what they call "protest performances" in Balfour, deteriorated week by week until I simply felt uncomfortable walking around there, not even on an important journalistic-anthropological mission.
3.
This week I went back there for a few moments, and I didn't just go back, I came with the whole family.
On Shabbat evening, I received a WhatsApp message from the Chabad emissary in Rehavia, Rabbi Israel Goldberg, with a designed invitation: "Light up Paris Square! Come to the lighting of the large menorah at the corner of King George-Ramban-Aza streets.".
Rabbi Goldberg has been working devotedly in the Rehavia area for ten years, since he immigrated to Israel with his family from New York, but in the past year his activity has taken a turn. From a Chabad emissary in an important but not particularly large neighborhood, he has become a distributor of Judaism to thousands of young people. His Chabad house is located on King George Street, very close to Paris Square, and the Balfour Protest brought countless Jewish souls of protesters and police officers to his doorstep. And not just Jewish souls, by the way.
I saw him with my own eyes chasing a Border Police officer through the streets of Jerusalem, minutes before sunset on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, and cordially offering him time to hear the sound of a shofar. Excuse me, the officer said with a smile, I'm Druze.
And so the annual cycle of the Chabad Rehavia House continues to revolve in the shadow of the mass protest, and the time has come for the lighting of the large menorah in Paris Square, above the most famous fountain in the country. Chabad has been lighting the menorah there for years, dating back to the days when other prime ministers lived in Balfour, but this time there was some concern about how the lighting would go in the heart of the leftist demonstration.
To Rabbi Goldberg's surprise, not only did the leaders of the protesters not object to the lighting and the donuts, but they even gave him their microphone to speak on the subject of the holiday. I told him that I wasn't surprised. As far as they were concerned, they were doing exactly what he was doing every Shabbat night when he lit the Hanukkah candles: spreading a little light in the great darkness...
4.
Since I had already arrived for the candlelight vigil, I took the opportunity to tour around the Prime Minister's House, to see how the protest was going. Every Saturday night I get flashbacks and updates about the demonstration that is now starting in Jerusalem, and about the march with the submarine that is coming up from the String Bridge on its way to Balfour, and later in the night about the detainees. The feeling is that the protest is continuing in full force these days. But you remember what was written here at the beginning of the column about my trust in the media, right?
Well, after a tour of the Greater Balfour complex, I want to tell you that the fact that there was no in-depth series of articles titled "Where Did the Balfour Protest Go?" or "The Death of the Summer Trend" is further proof (for those who somehow need it) that the media in Israel is not doing its job properly. The number of participants has dropped by hundreds of percent, hundreds. And the age of the participants has increased by hundreds of percent.
Look, I wasn't too impressed with the protest in the summer either. The bottom line is that what matters is not how many people come to Balfour, but how many people come to the polls and what ballot they cast there. But, there's no zero, in the summer there were many thousands here. Young men, young women, families with children, women from the military, cavalry. There was an atmosphere that something was happening here. And the numbers went up and up from week to week. Each time a new record was broken. And suddenly, a handful of hundreds. Hundreds, I mean.
And who are the hundreds? I really want to avoid generalizing. I'm sure there were also good and caring people there. But the overall feeling is of a national conference of the nervous neighbors from all over Israel, the ones who threaten (in a neat letter) to let the air out of your tire if you stop again not exactly the way they want it to stop. The types from all over the country united. There were also signs against vaccinations (including "The Vaccine Liberates," styled like "Labor Liberates"). I saw quite a few homemade signs in the style of "Netanyahu for Ma'ashiyahu," simply like that, without even being given his day in court. And there were also lots of "Peace Now" signs. Apparently four peace and normalization agreements with Arab countries in a few months, that's not enough peace or not enough now for them.
5.
But the main issue, as mentioned, is the low number of participants I saw. It's amazing to me. First of all, the phenomenon itself. Where did the Balfour Protest go? Is it the weather? Last Saturday night it was actually very pleasant in Jerusalem, and in general in recent weeks it hasn't been particularly cold. The Jerusalem winter is far from its peak. And besides, let's say it's going to be a little cold, okay, so that's it, are we coming down from the Bastille? Put on a sweater and let's save the country from the dictator.
But what, have you given up on the revolution? So quickly? Maybe you've simply exhausted the revolution? Tired of being tired? I don't know. I have no explanation. Wiser and more understanding commentators than me, on the left and the right, may have a theory, I'm sure. It would be interesting to hear them. But how would we hear them? Where? Who would ask them these questions? How would they know that the protest had died down? The media doesn't reveal the secret.
By the way, I can understand the media. It ruins the story. The item. It's not a dog biting a man, or even a man biting a dog. It's a man and a dog who stayed at home.
6.
And more than that: it actually shows that the media campaign isn't really working. That after all the reports and live broadcasts and reporters deployed in the field, in the end the public doesn't come. But hush, it's a secret. It's not allowed to report on it. There's a gag order.
Well, don't worry, I'll be on my journalistic duty. In a few weeks, I'll arrive at the Chabad emissary's Tu Bishvat Seder in Balfour, count the participants, and report back to you. Exclusively.
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva''
