The march of folly – Israel’s collective insanity
JVL Introduction
In an opinion piece in Haaretz, Yossi Klein spares no one.
Against those who hope for better times when the war is over, believing that Israelis will learn from the catastrophe now unfolding, he has a simple response: “Nothing will change.”
It’s a useful corrective against those – like your webeditor – who assume that one day, soon, Israelis will come to their senses and realise what they have wrought. I still hope so but Klein has made me doubt myself.
He concludes:
“In our neighborhood, human lives do not count. When they marched the Palestinians in underpants, Zvi Yehezkeli, head of the Arab affairs desk at Channel 13 News, rejoiced that we have started to speak in “the language of the neighborhood.” The language of the neighborhood, along with Itamar Ben-Gvir’s militias, will be in control here on the day after, and if Hamas is looking for a victory, that will be it.”
It is incumbent on us to prove him wrong.
You can read his 2022 article “It’s Official Now: Fascism Is Us” here.
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Fri 15 Dec 2023. Read the original here.
Diaspora Jews are also paying for Israel's debacles
We have succeeded in wearing a yellow patch for the Jews of the world, who are paying for our debacles. What were you thinking, we say to them, that you would integrate, assimilate and get rich while we are devouring one another here?
We are escaping from a harsh reality to an artificial, imagined reality. We are imagining the huge change that will be brought about on the day after. It is not going to happen.
Life after the earthquake will be like what there was before it, minus thousands of dead and plus an economic crisis. On the day after, we will go back to the lies we told ourselves, and we will go back to denial of what threatened us. We will make a 360-degree turn back to the place we had been in. The march of folly will continue from the place where it had stopped, only with greater momentum.
It is mistaken to think that a single event, no matter how terrible, will change us. The sea is the same sea and the nation is the same nation. We are a nation that adapts. Adapting is the enemy of change. If we adapted to the occupation, to Bibi, to the settlers, to maintaining the ultra-Orthodox and to the rockets, why shouldn’t we adapt to the October 6 way of life again?
Two months is enough time to assess how the return to the day before will look. Nothing will change. The same manipulative-ness will define October 7 as a “Holocaust,” a one-time event, a tsunami, or an earthquake that could not have been prevented. We already have the justification for the mass killing in Gaza: They deserve it, why didn’t they get rid of Hamas? (And why didn’t we get rid of Bibi?)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will remain the same Bibi on the day after, too. And the religious nationalists who control him will not deviate from their path of self-righteousness. On the contrary. In their opinion, we did not sacrifice enough. More than 500 soldiers and more than 1,000 civilians are not enough for them. We have been defeated, in their view, because we lack “willingness to pay the real price that must be paid to live a life of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel,” as Israel Harel wrote in the Haaretz Hebrew edition on December 8.
It is a mistake to think that on the way to Jewish sovereignty, the conception of force as a problem-solver will change. On the contrary. From wars that led nowhere, we have learned that instead of force, it is necessary to use more force. When an army of half a million grapples with a gang of 30,000, it hands the myth of “the few versus the many” over to the enemy. And we also have another bushel load of myths to offer them about a weak nation fighting for its freedom.
We are no longer fighting for our independence, but we will continue to exaggerate in estimating our strength and minimize the extent of our dependency. We are living in an imagined reality; we do not believe they will boycott us like South Africa. We are fantasizing that the Holocaust is still protecting us. They won’t dare, we say, they won’t want to face our UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, with the yellow patch again.
We have succeeded in wearing a yellow patch for the Jews of the world, who are paying for our debacles. What were you thinking, we say to them, that you would integrate, assimilate and get rich while we are devouring one another here? In the end you will come crawling and say: You were right, we have no place in the world except in Israel (where since World War II more Jews have been killed than in any other place). “We need to protect world Jewry,” said a certain broadcaster on television, in a stunning demonstration of unawareness that goes beyond the bounds of stupidity.
Stupidity and arrogance haven’t gone anywhere. Analysts in whose voices the IDF spokesman speaks are saying that a lot more time is needed to achieve the aims of the war. Wait a minute – what about us? What about the evacuees, and what about the public at home? You aren’t asking them? Is it prepared for “a lot of time” in this war under this government?
Time is the ladder on which we will climb down from the withering tree. If we only had more time, we would demolish them, the generals who have built on the demolition as an argument for leniency toward them will say. The pictures of the destruction and the civilians in underpants they are distributing have not been aimed at Hamas, but rather at us, so we should rejoice.
Time is in our favor, say the analysts, and they know but are not saying that it is working against the hostages. They know that the hostages, alive or dead, will stain the victory. Those who are calling for “returning the hostages now” are also calling for cessation of the fighting. And those who are calling for “completing the mission” are sacrificing their lives.
In our neighborhood, human lives do not count. When they marched the Palestinians in underpants, Zvi Yehezkeli, head of the Arab affairs desk at Channel 13 News, rejoiced that we have started to speak in “the language of the neighborhood.” The language of the neighborhood, along with Itamar Ben-Gvir’s militias, will be in control here on the day after, and if Hamas is looking for a victory, that will be it.