The war of complete conformity, the war of complete silence

Our entire history has never witnessed a war like this. It is a war of complete conformity, a war of complete silence, a war of blind support. It is a war without opposition, without protest, and it is a war without rejection, and without a rejecting parliamentary bloc, neither at its beginning nor at its climax. It is a war by consensus, a war with the support of the comprehensive Israeli public, the public from one end to the other (and this does not include the Arab citizens who are prohibited from dissent). It is a war without question marks, but rather it is a war without an iota of doubt.

Is the war that resulted in the deaths of about 20,000 people in the Gaza Strip, most of them innocents, the war that resulted in the destruction of the homes and lives of almost the entire population of the Gaza Strip, the most just war in the history of Israel? Is a war that causes such horrific suffering to more than two million people the most moral of Israel's wars? If the answer is no, then how come we do not hear a voice here calling for an end to the bloodbath? Rather, how can we not find a voice that rejects the war, given the increasing bloodshed from Israeli army soldiers, and how has the following question not yet arisen: Hatam and for how long?

Israel's wars, for the most part, were wars of choice. At first, it was supported by almost all of Israeli society, but opposition soon began to emerge, after the terrible costs and futility of military action became clear. When these wars ended, many of our ranks became against them. The opponents of this war, with a reactionary effect, became too numerous to count. This is what happened in the two ridiculous Lebanon wars, and this is what happened in all the attacks against the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. These wars, all of them, were shorter than the current war, the end of which no one can predict. Here we are in a war that everyone supports, and no one is asking questions about. The media is brainwashing with an intensity we have never seen before: The media appears to be a chorus of pretenders of integrity, if I do not want to describe them as a chorus of chants of the Soviet Red Army. This is the chorus that reaches day and night in the studios, but whoever has doubts starting to seep, perhaps, into his heart, will not dare to speak about them publicly. Well, “Together we will win!” [The slogan that Israel raises for this war].

This is the course of a war that broke out as a result of a “barbaric and criminal” attack, but nothing has curbed this war since its outbreak. There are no limits to this war, and on the other hand, there is no controversy or opposition to it. The credibility of this war at its beginning, in the eyes of Jewish Israelis, justifies everything that will happen during it. But now, after two terrible months, doubts may be starting to creep in.

You will not find anyone among Arab society who is not shocked by the horrific scenes coming from the Gaza Strip, as their victims are their brothers and members of their families, and they, unlike the Jews, are watching what is happening in the Gaza Strip, an exposure that the Jews are deprived of, thanks to the miserable and propaganda media. But "Israeli Arabs" cannot protest. The current government threatens Arabs more than all its predecessors, brutally muzzles people, and throws citizens into prisons. Now, “Israeli Arabs” live in terror, terror from the authorities, and terror from the Jewish street, a terror the likes of which we have not seen since the 1948 Nakba.

In the Jewish street as well, and despite the complete and overwhelming agreement on the legalization of war, with all the crimes it entails, there are certainly those who have begun to realize the atrocities committed by Israel, but the fear of revenge is great here as well, due to the terror imposed by the current government, the Israeli street and “The Awakened” [the prevailing description of the Israeli “leftist” figures who declared that they had “awakened” from the illusions of coexistence, after the start of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation]. The result: war without opposition.

Even in Putin's Russia, there are more anti-war manifestations in Ukraine than in supposedly democratic Israel. This does not mean that we equate the two wars in terms of the justice of their endeavors. The crime in Ukraine was infinitely more horrific, but the means used in the two wars, and their results, made them more similar than before. We are witnessing horrific manifestations in both, and immeasurable suffering of millions of innocent people, all in the name of achieving absurd goals.

The suffering in the Gaza Strip will bring nothing to Israel. Winter is approaching, and this suffering will be two and three times greater than it is now. Israel has never, throughout its existence, sown such devastation, nor has it killed such a number of children and the elderly in its entire life, as it did in this war. At a time when Israeli public discourse focuses on military achievements, whether real or imagined, along with the insistence on wallowing endlessly in Israeli suffering, and the insistence on focusing on the suffering of Israelis alone, not others, and in addition to all of this, pounces on any appearance from the manifestations of opposition to the war, the conclusion becomes clear: on the Israeli side, this war can be continued indefinitely, and the entire population of the Gaza Strip can be killed, and its entirety destroyed, forever. Thus, this act becomes the most moral and the most just.

Source: Haaretz