Give it a rest

Why do we deserve an editorial of gloom and despair, which claims that Israelis suffer from a general malaise, “Israel’s malaise,” September 10. Everything is going down, down, down.

On the other hand, Israelis were 13th in the world on the happiness scale published by the World Happiness Report as recently as March 2019 and 89% of Israelis report that they are happy.

If anything , it’s not Netanyahu and the other politicians who are driving the “happiness” down, its the news media, which chooses to continuously adopt a negative “the sky is falling mindset,” from climate change catastrophes, to everybody is corrupt, to US Jews are detaching themselves from Israel and Judaism, to the prime minister is destroying Israel’s democracy and legal system.

Give it a rest. Report on the positive aspects of living in Israel. YIGAL HOROWITZ Beersheba

On my return from a trip abroad this week, I was inundated with articles about the apathy accompanying the upcoming election, including the editorial “Israel’s malaise” and Gidon Ben-Zvi’s “The curious case of the invisible election.”

I was reminded of an old American political adage: “Abstention is also a vote, and it always is a no.”

In Israel, as in America, it is vital to the democratic process, for each individual to assess where best to place her/his “yes,” for failing to do so is surely placing a vote nonetheless and affecting the outcome, not by choice but by default. MARION REISS Beit Shemesh