Darkness is over the abyss. Across the abyss, the massacre from the south of the country spreads darkness over Israel. Now the clouds are gathering, it can get very dark: Israel is losing its mind. The left "rejected illusions", the right became radicalized, McCarthyism and fascism are celebrated.
Wartime is always a time of silence, uniform thinking, racism, incitement and hatred: complete mobilization in the service of propaganda, the end of tolerance and the persecution of all who dare to step out of the column.
The horror of Hamas' actions in the south has brought all these phenomena to an extreme level: as if the horrors serve to justify the loss of all restraint. Emotional turmoil can of course be understood. The totalitarianism that accompanies it - no. If it is not stopped, the danger that threatens democracy is a thousand times more serious than the one lurking by the judicial coup that ravaged the entire system.
The first to lose their minds are, as usual, leftists. They "abandoned all illusions and hopes." Those who were determined to fight for democracy before the war are now sabotaging it with their own hands. Those who, until the war, considered themselves liberals, people of peace and human rights, adopt a new world view: they are indifferent to the current horrors that are happening in Gaza, a large part wants these horrors to intensify.
Why? Because of the crimes they did to us. How long? Until the end. At what price? At any cost. The left now thinks about Gaza the same way as the right: beat, beat, there is no choice. Those who before the war underestimated the importance of confronting apartheid and the fate of the Palestinian people now think, to hell with everything. Let them suffocate. Let them die. Let them be expelled. Those who until the war thought of themselves as enlightened persons are now in favor of a consensus. Hamas has turned the Israeli left on its head. From now on, everything is allowed to be done to Gaza, even to be treated barbarically. From now on, it is forbidden even to show empathy towards the residents of Gaza.
Yariv Oppenheimer* saw Amira Hass shedding bitter tears over the fate of the Gazans and hastened to write: "I admit that I switched off." In front of 2360 children's bodies, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (data from Tuesday), the left's heart closed. As at the beginning of every war, the left fuels it. Then it "turns around" and somehow returns to itself. This time it is not certain that it will happen.
What is happening in other sectors is even more frightening. Fascism has turned into the only correct attitude. Television channels have joined Channel 14, when it comes to Gaza there is no other opinion. Reporters and anchors call Hamas Nazis in a disgusting display of trivialization and denial of the Shoah, and the audience cheers. Hamas has done terrible things, but they are not Nazis.
Any dissenting opinion entails persecution. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, spoke true and brave things about the context in which the terrible violence was born and hastened to emphasize that this does not justify the attack by Hamas, but Israel attacked him harshly in the media using insults and slander. Every reporter in the country who has never expressed an opinion on anything knows that the things said by the Secretary-General "provoke outrage."
They didn't make me angry, for example. Everything he said was true. Actress Maisa Abd Elhadi was detained for a post whose content does not violate the law, her films were removed from the program. McCarthyism would be ashamed. The performance on the show of the freed Joheved Lifsic was touching, and the journalists grumbled because she told the truth. Rani Rahav watches a video about the destruction of Gaza and writes: "I love it this way!!!" (All drooling exclamation points are from the original text.) Zvi Yehzekeli incites the destruction of Gaza every night. All of Gaza. And a colleague from TV Channel 13, Natali Shem Tov, sees that "there are too many buildings left in Gaza". Such is the purified evil in the face of the disaster in Gaza, the horrors of which are almost never shown to Israelis.
These are dark times. The time of the barbaric attack by Hamas and the time of losing reason and conscience in Israel.
(Haaretz; Peščanik.net; translation: translation from Hebrew by Alma Ferhat)
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* Israeli activist for the protection of human rights and at one time director of the organization Shalom Ahshav (Peace Now).
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