In today’s Israel: war is eternal, war is life
The war must continue to grind on. Diplomacy is death. Every pause in the fighting is temporary, tactical and cunning. Such a break in the fighting is an essential breathing break before the resumption of fighting. We fight until “total victory,” a secular version of the end of the days and the arrival of the Messiah.
By Rogel Alpher • Translated by Sol Salbe
All the TV news programs went into a state of supreme existential anxiety in light of the invasion of southern Lebanon by six Shiites. After it had mobilised in support of the agreement in Lebanon, the volatile Israeli mainstream media turned topsy turvy within a day, as expected, and began to scream out in panic. The middle-of-the-road Bibiist ideology, which has become the middle-of-the-road Israeli ideology, has been accentuated even more: war is eternal, war is life. The war must continue to grind on. Diplomacy is death. Every pause in the fighting is temporary, tactical and cunning. Such a break in the fighting is an essential breathing break before the resumption of fighting. We fight until “total victory,” a secular version of the end of the days and the arrival of the Messiah.
This ideological concept has a name. It is neither an Israeli nor a Jewish invention. In fact, Israel has adopted Hamas’s Islamic worldview. Its name in Islamic theology is Hudna. Following October 7, the hudna became an Israeli national ideology. The ceasefire in Lebanon is only a hudna, a temporary cessation of hostilities for the purpose of organising for the resumption of hostilities. A permanent cessation of hostilities, a state of no fighting in which normal life takes place, is already seen by the Israeli public as madness, as abandonment, as a blind march like sheep to the slaughter. So how about the hudna in Gaza?
The most important burning issue in Israeli society, which every media outlet that seeks democracy and human rights should cry out against with all its might, has been discussed in the mainstream media as a footnote in a casual conversation about current affairs. Around the table in the studio, like around a café table, Yaron Avraham wondered what the “real reason” was that there was no abductees swap deal. And was [abductee’s mum] Einav Tsengaucker right in slamming Itamar Ben-Gvir in the Knesset that he intends to “settle the Gaza Strip on the blood” of the abductees?
“There is no doubt about it at all,” confirmed journalist Daphna Liel. Indeed, according to her, there is no deal for abductees because many members of the government refuse to give up on the dream of settling in Gaza for the sake of the abductees. Liel and Avraham, of course, legitimised the phenomenon on the linguistic level, by using the term “Hityashvut.” [creating new places of residences, rather than the usual “Hitnachlut” — the term disliked by the settlers] “This is the heart of the matter,” she clarified, “it is at the root of the issue.” Clear and simple. Avraham agreed. “It’s good that you’re saying that,” he remarked. In other words, an admission that this fateful news headline is being silenced. “I also think that this is the aspiration and that’s what is at the heart of the matter,” he confessed. So why don’t you shout it at the opening of the main news bulletin every evening? Moreover, it was emphasised that the supporters of the settlements are publicly downplaying their ambitions, out of political sophistication.
So you know about it, and you know that it is done secretly and kept quiet, and you don’t scream out? Because over your way, one doesn’t upset the consensus. A major media outlet in Israel will not tell Jews that Arab land should not be stolen, Arab homes should not be destroyed, the people should not be expelled, and settlements should not be established there. This prohibition has always been contrary to the Zionist ethos, and now it is even considered to be antisemitic. All the Israeli media knows that the abductees will be sacrificed on the altar of the settlements in Gaza. So yes, it’s good that you said that. Now yell it out. It is your moral duty to protect Gaza.
