Stroking the national ego: The Israelis’ eternal victimhood
Thanks to the TV series, we are promised, the world will “finally see” what happened on October 7. As if the world opposes Israel’s war crimes because the story has not yet been presented to it as an exciting dramatic adaptation. As if the problem is that the world doesn’t know what happened on that cursed Saturday, and not the fact that in the two years since, Israel has been destroying Gaza, slaughtering its citizens and starving its children.
By Yoana Gonen • Translated by Sol Salbe
Above the western Negev fields, the Keshet network logo shines, like a munificent sun, and next to it the word “Soon.” “Tens of millions of people around the world are finally going to see our story,” promise golden subtitles against a reddish sky. This is how the promo for First Light, a mini-series inspired by the events of October 7 that will air on Channel 12 on Saturday, opens. Tens of millions of people are subscribers to Paramount’s streaming service, which acquired the rights to the series. The acquisition, ostensibly an extraneous matter for local programming, is the main point of the promo. We are not being sold a locally-made drama here, but a magical propaganda tool that will expose the world to the “story of our heroes” (and thus make everyone understand that we are the good ones).
This framing presents Keshet’s commercial success as a first-rate public project: not just a profitable transaction, but a strategic victory for the entire country. This is a natural continuation of the process of Keshet transforming in the last two years from an entertainment channel into one in charge of stroking the national ego: a kind of hybrid between the IDF Spokesperson’s Office and the Ministry for National Missions, only with advertisements for banks and cheese and propaganda videos that masquerade as “news”. And as a bonus, this allows it to silence any criticism of turning the horrors of the massacre into an ostentatious television product when the trauma is still alive and captives are being held in Gaza. Keshet is not doing business here, friends, it is defending the honour of the nation.
Keshet has transformed in the last two years from an entertainment channel into a kind of hybrid between the IDF Spokesperson’s Office and the Ministry for National Missions, only with advertisements for banks and cheese and propaganda videos that masquerade as “news”
Thanks to the series, we are promised, the world will “finally see” what happened on October 7. As if the world opposes Israel’s war crimes because the story has not yet been presented to it as an exciting dramatic adaptation starring Rotem Sela. As if the problem is that the world doesn’t know what happened on that cursed Saturday, and not the fact that in the two years since, Israel has been destroying Gaza, slaughtering its citizens and starving its children. In another version of the promo, one of the subtitles claims that this is the “powerful television event of the year.” Of course, provided that one ignores the “powerful” live broadcasts that the entire world has seen in the past year — refugees burning in tents, hospitals being shelled and people being shot while queuing for bread.
One can mock Keshet’s cynicism, but it merely expresses the prevailing public perception. Keshet is “the network of the Israeli people,” and Israelis prefer to wallow in the stories of the horror and heroism of October 7 as if time had frozen there and reality stood still. As if nothing had preceded that day — and nothing had happened after it. This way, we can remain in the comforting position of eternal victimhood: as long as we live on October 7, we will always be the injured party and everything we do will be justified and necessary. More than the series itself, the promo for First Light markets the collective fantasy that if we just package our trauma in a sufficiently tempting package, the world will “finally” love us again.
