Ed Note: To help you read that heading correctly, imagine that it is followed, after a pause by: ‘When do we want it?’, to which the answer is, of course, ‘Now!’

As I sit attempting to write this week’s post, I am, uncharacteristically, listening to the rolling news programme on the radio, and following this (Monday) morning’s events.

I imagine most of you are keeping up, more or less, with developments in Israel, and, of course, by the time you read this post, any ‘update’ I offer will be at least 22 hours stale, and, therefore, at the rate at which things are developing here, will be worthless. However, allow me to clarify for you exactly where things stand at this exact moment, since it helps explain this week’s post.

Overnight, well over 100,000 took to the streets across the country in unplanned demonstrations to protest Netanyahu’s firing of Defence Minister Gallant. So far this morning, the Histadrut (Trade Unions Congress), in a press conference where they shared the podium with representatives of employers in the private sector, among others, called an immediate general strike, without explicitly stating what their demands were. Obviously, their primary demand is the halting of the judicial reforms. Whether that is all they are demanding is not 100% certain, although it would probably be enough to stop the general strike.

It has to be said that this unanimity of the workers and the bosses is unprecedented in Israeli history.

Following this announcement, which brings out the public sector, including the Health Service, which is now working on a severely reduced footing, the (Likud) head of the workers’ union at Ben Gurion announced the immediate halting of all departures from Ben Gurion. Halting of all landings is expected to take effect from tomorrow.

The closure of many of the country’s shopping malls has just been announced. Universities are also closing. (Schools break up for Pesach after today, and will therefore miss the immediate wave of action.)

Netanyahu is currently meeting with all coalition party leaders (a meeting that is lasting far longer than originally anticipated), and is expected to address the nation immediately afterwards.

Which leaves me two options.

I could, theoretically, ignore what is happening in Israel, and write about what I planned to write about before the sky fell in. That seems at best cloth-eared, at worst callous, at all events irrelevant.

I could, theoretically, offer an opinion. I’m not sure how far I want to stick my neck out, not least because I feel so far out of my depth. Let me just say this. First, Netanyahu has to stop the legislative process for the judicial reform, and to prepare for a considered process of national public debate leading to a reform that the majority in the country undoubtedly feel is needed.

Second, the opposition have to accept that the stopping of the legislative process and the establishment of a framework for public debate represent the achievement of the declared aims of the demonstrations, which should, accordingly, cease with immediate effect. The demonstrations must not continue as a call for the removal of the democratically elected Prime Minister.

Now that I have alienated all my former friends on the right and the left, here’s what I’m going to do.

I am, for this week, going to stop here, and hope to meet you, next week, on the far side of this, the greatest civil and arguably the greatest existential, crisis that Israel has faced since its foundation.

Two final reflections.

If you feel that to call the current upheaval an existential crisis is an exaggeration, I recommend, for an assessment of the external existential crisis, an article by a former deputy national security adviser in Israel.

As for the internal existential crisis, over the next few weeks, we are due to mark, together, the festival of our national foundation, the anniversary of our greatest national tragedy, and the terrible cost and remarkable reward of achieving national statehood. If it becomes clear that we are, for whatever reason, unable to stand alongside each other to mark these events, then I fear this will point to the truth that we are unable to stand alongside each other at all, and the Zionist experiment has failed.

Popular singers in Israel enjoy a place in everyone’s heart that is uniquely Israeli. One such iconic figure, Shlomo Artzi, announced yesterday that he feels unable to accept the Israel Prize: in this context of the existential crisis, I feel that is the saddest news I have heard this week.

I do not, I cannot, believe that the Zionist experiment has failed. Instead, we have to seize the landmarks of these coming weeks and embrace them as the unifying national experiences they undoubtedly are. Until then, I wish us all a peaceful week and a week in which all Israel begins the long, hard essential journey back to brotherhood and the recognition of our shared destiny.

I leave you with the innocence of youth, and two pictures that prove that all you need to be contented is your Nana, and that brothers can live together contentedly under the same roof…but maybe only in Wendy houses.