Israeli Society Suffers from a Solidarity Deficit - Israel's Lost Values

First published in the Jerusalem Post 29/07/11

A good friend of mine is mourning the loss of her elderly neighbor. David lived  upstairs from her in Ramat Gan. His body was only discovered after my friend  complained about a smell in the communal stairwell. It turned out that David had  died about two weeks previously, but nobody knew. My friend feels guilty that  she didn’t notice. She feels responsible in some way. She fails to understand  how in this day and age, it’s possible for someone to be so alone that such a  thing can happen.

What does it say about Israel today, when in a  reasonably comfortable building in a leafy suburb, it takes two weeks to realize  a man has died? What kind of society have we created? On a tangent, I was  driving past the Ra’anana junction with my father recently.

He commented  that the trempiada (hitchhiking stop) had been closed. Established by volunteers  in 1982 during the first Lebanon war, it had been a welcome oasis, providing  drinks and sandwiches to hitchhiking soldiers making their way to and from the  front. This got me thinking about the time when hitchhiking soldiers were a  common sight. As a soldier, I remember catching a lift with many a driver, all  of them only too happy to help me out. As a driver, I have always been keen to  stop and give someone a lift, perhaps in an attempt to return the  favor.

Alas, today soldiers are not allowed to hitchhike, and the country  is much the worse for it. When our young men and women were out on the streets  for all to see, in a manner of speaking they were our kids. We felt  obliged to help out, and were happy to do so. Whether we had served or not, we  felt connected, part of something bigger than ourselves. We didn’t stop to  think, what is in it for us? We saw it as an integral part of living in this  country.

As the need to ferry our young heroes across the nation  disappeared, so, apparently, did the need to worry about anything but  ourselves. Today the obsession with self permeates Israeli society. At  the top of the socioeconomic ladder, the few who control so much of the wealth  continue their obsession with acquiring the little they don’t already own,  regardless of the cost in all its guises to the rest of the country.

Alarmingly  the government is all too willing to assist them in this pursuit. In the  Knesset, where MKs are supposed to represent all the people, special-interest  groups think nothing of holding the country to ransom to advance their own  agendas, regardless of the impact on their fellow citizens.

Hanging on by  their fingernails, the middle classes who are being squeezed so hard from all  angles find they have little time for others as they struggle to pay the rent or  the mortgage and battle against the ever-increasing cost of living.

The  poor and disenfranchised feel as if they have less and less of a stake in  society, so they think only about survival in a harsh and uncaring society that  has abandoned them. It is no wonder that they have little time or sympathy for  foreign workers and refugees, who find themselves at the bottom of this  collapsing society that today is anything but civil.

Our young look at  the society they are supposedly going to inherit and wonder about the point of  it all. What role models can they hope to emulate? What future should they  expect? What is their incentive to serve in the army if, as they see it, Israel  today is all about looking out for “No. 1”?

It’s true that many of these  problems are common throughout the developed world, but Israel is no ordinary  country. Indeed, perhaps it’s our obsession with becoming an ordinary country  that has led us astray. We need to take a serious look at ourselves and decide  what we want to be, because (in case you hadn’t noticed) we already have a host  of very grown-up problems to deal with.

I do not crave times gone by for  the sake of nostalgia. I just believe that in our race to “progress,” we have  discarded some of the best things about us. These elements need to be  reintroduced for the 21st century.

It’s time to recapture the spirit that  built this country. It’s time that the word Zionism stopped being perverted to  serve the interests of narrow and extreme minorities. True Zionism is about  ensuring a Jewish democracy for all its citizens, where the values and  traditions that represent the best of Judaism direct our actions and behavior to  the betterment of humanity.

Israel is a small country living under difficult  circumstances, with a diverse, multifaceted character. We need each other in  order to flourish. If so few succeed while the majority can only struggle to  survive, we will all fail. If we work together, with success for all as a  genuine goal, there is no end to what we can achieve. For such achievements to  mean something, however, they have to serve society as a whole.

The  erosion of our core values and of our civil society is not irreversible, but it  must be addressed. It may take our leaders some time to catch up and understand  that they work for us, and not the other way around. They will no doubt need to  be pushed. However, we all have a part to play. For starters, we can pay more  attention to what goes on around us and how events affect others. It may not  sound like a great deal, but you’d be surprised how much can be achieved with  just a little.

No more people should die alone like David.