Israel’s extraordinary ability to normalise the most abnormal things
By Orly Noy • Translated by Sol Salbe
As we marched in the demonstration last night from Zion Square to Paris Square, we chanted slogans: an end to the war, a hostage deal. But in Paris Square, faced with the children and families of the abductees and of those who were murdered who delivered the speeches, we choked. When the brother of abductee Idan Shtivi opened his speech by addressing his younger brother directly, there was no way to hold back the tears. I didn’t even try. In this square you can just about hear the sound of so many hearts being crushed, every week anew.
The State of Israel has an extraordinary, a truly rare, ability to normalise the most abnormal things that could ever be described. Trivialise them. There are lots of examples: Take the systematic oppression of millions of people over decades or the mass starvation of people. Or another example, genocide. And yet another one, the outcry of citizens screaming from the depth of their hearts, begging to bring their loved ones out of the inferno, while they’re still alive. Perhaps the worst manifestation of this normalisation is the turning of these phenomena into disputed matters. That is, matters about which there is debate, for and against. For and against genocide, for and against mass starvation, for and against the return of the abductees. Less than a century since the Holocaust, a Jewish collective pronounces a genocide as a matter about which it can be said: “it’s complicated.”
These disputes, in turn, generate the arsenal of emotions reserved for political disputes in Israel, the extreme end of which is simply hating the other side’s guts. Yesterday, there was one young man, still wearing his white Shabbat shirt, who literally walked by our side all the way and slammed us for the we serve Hamas, how we made Sinwar so happy and what damage we are causing to “the people of Israel.” In my worst dreams, I would never have imagined that citizens would show indifference to the lives of other citizens who have been so brutally abducted and are in real mortal danger, let alone genuine hostility, hatred and rancour towards those who are fighting for their release. For their own family members.
It is truly amazing: for many the Right has labelled the left as alienated, aloof, remote and lacking in solidarity. But now it is overwhelmingly people from the Leftist camp who stand with the families of the abductees in their desperate demand to bring those abductees home. At the same time those who are willing to abandon the abductees to their deaths with a shrug of the shoulders, treat them as a commodity and prefer vengeance and bloodshed to saving them are on the Right. What a miserable joke it is, that all those who have accused us for years of “destroying the unity of the people of Israel” turn their backs on citizens in trouble without batting an eyelid, perhaps with some cynical hollow lip service added as an afterthought.
But Israel has succeeded in consolidating the inner logic of the dystopia we live in, so well, casting that logic in such a solid form that even a simple reality test is no longer possible. Therefore, it is certainly possible for Netanyahu to be re-elected, even if the elections take place on the very anniversary of the October 7 massacre. The man who for decades has been formulating the rules of our dystopian world is now reaping the rewards. There is no reality, no life, no death, no future, no morality and there’s no history. What there is is a virtual memorial ceremony for our virtual reality in which only blood, terror and bereavement are very real. And there we scream, and scream, and scream.
Translated by Sol Salbe, Middle East News Service
