Don’t look at the TV for the most absurd headline, look outside your window
Coverage of the callup of reservists and the Teachers’ Strike, News programs
By Yoana Gonen • Translated by Sol Salbe
There are days when it seems that Israel is no longer a country but a documented chronicle of collapse. In this crumbling reality, the news seems to be broadcast from two parallel universes: of ordinary citizens and of bigwigs. Yesterday in the plebs’ world, for example, school and kindergarten teachers went on strike after their salaries were cut to fund the billions of shekels which are to be poured into settlements and yeshivot [Jewish seminaries]. Soldiers continued to die and become the “we are authorised to report” headline. And a missile from Yemen made a huge hole at Ben Gurion Airport, right next to the Israeli national airline’s “The most at home in the world” billboard.
In the meantime, in the bigwigs universe, they weighed raising the salaries of Knesset members and ministers by thousands of shekels; It was decided to expand the process of annihilation of Gaza and to call up tens of thousands of already shattered reservists. And the prime minister released another tin-eared video in which he blabbered about “total victory” and “stages of subjugation.” In between these two universes, the news programs appeared less like current affairs presentations and more like exaggerated satire or forced dystopia.
But the most absurd headline is not on the screen. It’s outside your window, maybe even right inside your home. These are hundreds of thousands of Israelis who oppose the continuation of the fighting, and yet report for reserve duty and are willing to die so that the government remains in peace in and in one piece. These are the pilots who understand that they are killing hundreds of civilians and participating in horrific war crimes, but at most they’d sign a petition. These are masses of workers who are angry at the cut in their wages to fund coalition kickbacks and an eternal war, and yet they don’t even think about joining the teachers’ strike. This is probably the greatest achievement of the Netanyahu government: It succeeded in convincing its victims to carry the stretcher, while it, the government, lounges on top.
“Nobody actually runs the country and the government lives in la la land”, said Channel 12 correspondent Liron Zaid. “They are on a bus of Israeli citizens, racing into the abyss with the driving team eyes covered and their ears plugged. How long will we let them sit with their feet on the accelerator and their hands on the wheel?” Zaid is right but inaccurate: the idea that we are sitting on the bus is a relic of an era when governments had any interest in the well-being of citizens. As far as the current government is concerned, we are not the passengers — we are just the cheap fuel that drives the wheels.
The mass callup of the reservists finally gave rise to a slight whiff of mutiny in the TV studios, but the presenters and analysts found it difficult to criticise the continuation of the nightmarish war. This blindness was well represented by Major-General (res) Gadi Shamni, who explained on Channel 14 that military pressure does not help and that “the government is leading to an endless war” — and in the same breath made it clear that the soldiers must report because “this is what mutual responsibility is all about.” Talk about steely logic! In ancient Rome gladiators used to proclaim: “Hail , Ceasar , those who are about to die salute you.” And in contemporary Hebrew translation: “Leave politics out of it, bro, we are all reporting for reserve duty.”
