Last Saturday night, at about 10pm, a friend called me: "The allegedly serially corrupt official at the head of the government has announced it has approved the surveillance of civilians, just like in the darkest of totalitarian states."
I didn't really have much to say in reply - I thought I'd misheard over the deafening panic that is currently washing over the country.
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A playground on Tel Aviv beachfront is wrapped in tape to prevent public access due to coronavirus
(Photo: AP)
At 1 am, he called me again: “While everybody was sleeping, he [meaning Justice Minister Amir Ohana] announced the closure of the courts system and only an idiot can't see what’s coming.”
Because I was awake when he called, I knew exactly what he was talking about. Ohana, the so-called justice minister, had decided to declare an emergency across Israel’s legal system in order to delay his master’s disgrace in court. That is his job after all, and it appears that the coronavirus is a handy tool for a useful idiot.
I could hear him sigh down the phone.
“How fortunate we are to have this coronavirus,” he said. “Now there's apparently no need to burn down parliament to turn a democracy into a dictatorship.”
I couldn’t help but disagree. The fear of coronavirus is a sickness that thrives on panic, media fear-mongering and opportunistic politicians who wish to use this terror for their own ends.
The coronavirus outbreak seems to have shone a light on the fragility of democracy in the digital age, revealing a political system that stands on the precipice of total annihilation as it did in Europe almost 100 years ago.
Just 20 years ago everyone was talking about the diverse opportunities the Internet could offer, while today, it is helping to put our battered democracy on the executioner’s block.
On Sunday, I read that the government has approved regulations allowing police officers to fine those who violate the quarantine or congregation restrictions imposed by the government and the Health Ministry.
They also passed regulations that allow court hearings to be carried out without physical attendance by the detainee, while visiting rights for prisoners and detainees have been suspended. Even their lawyers are prohibited from seeing them, forcing them to settle for legal consultation over the phone instead.
Later I read that the government intended to monitor and track the phones of coronavirus patients in order to see where they were and where they might be going.
Police order surfers from the sea at Palmachim
The government of course stresses that the information won’t be saved anywhere else but in their data banks.
I calmed myself down, telling myself there was no way such information could be used against law-abiding citizens (primarily because the courts are closed).
So, we tracked some people, arrested others, and locked up the rest, what are you getting all jumpy for? It’s all in the name of efficiency after all. Now sit at home and do as you're told, and Netanyahu and co. will tell you what that is.
Further affirming my fears, I opened the newspaper the very next day and saw that indeed legions of inspectors have been dispatched to protect us from the afflicted who violate their quarantine, mainly by fining them thousands of shekels that they don’t have since they can’t go to work anyway.
How relieved I was to see that the punishment only applied to the secular population and the ultra-Orthodox were free to do as they pleased.
With a deep sigh, I exhaled what remnants of the toxic liberal democracy I had left in my lungs, leaving only the benevolent coronavirus.
All is well, I told myself, for if I outlived the toxicity of liberal democracy, why should I worry about a little virus.