The Paradox We Face: To Let the IDF Win
After photos of the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff conquered the front pages of the weekend newspapers, I couldn’t think of anything better to do than to repeat the popular right-wing slogan “Let the IDF win.” That’s a little problematic, since the extreme right has already accused the heads of the military and of the Shin Bet security service of spearheading a coup d’etat against the elected government.
But I nevertheless decided to adopt the slogan. I will tell the right wing that is in power that what I mean is to let the army defeat the Arabs, as in the old days. And to the Arab community in Israel and the protest movement against the coup that the government is trying to carry out, I would explain that the meaning is to defeat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his partners. It’s killing two birds with one stone. Who said that opportunism isn’t effective?
Yes, this is black humor. The 10th-century poet Abu Firas al-Hamdani said, “Indeed, they are two things, and they are both bitter.” That’s the current situation. The sweetness in our situation tastes bitter, but it’s not only the bitterness that is rallying around this militant slogan. So is the paradox that on one hand, we are familiar with the “winning” army’s exploits against the Palestinian people and the Arab peoples.
But on the other hand, we are well aware that without the army and the Shin Bet(another name that makes one shudder), Netanyahu and his gang will continue with a coup that will bring disaster on the entire society here, particularly the Palestinians inside Israel and their brothers in the occupied territories.
The tough question is what will we say to Israel’s Arab citizens and the Jewish democrats? Will we ask them to change gears as one would socks and switch enemies and instead of criticizing the IDF, embrace it? And if we don’t embrace it, won’t our Haaretz colleague Nehemia Shtrasler come and admonish us for failing to organize solidarity missions to IDF General Staff headquarters and for not dancing the debka in circles outside the Shin Bet’s offices to raise morale? Yes, the world is cruel and the alternatives are even crueler.
An Israeli settler (R) argues with an Israeli soldier along a road in the town of Huwara near Nablus in the West Bank, in February.Credit: JAAFAR ASHTIYEH / AFP
The writer Emile Habibi said, “I hear the echo of history’s laughter,” and the Arabs have said that “the worst of the disasters is the one that prompts laughter.” One needs to say black laughter, because the people who are attacking Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi and the Shin Bet director and the Supreme Court president and the attorney general are not the ones who we had hoped would attack them.
We had hoped that those attacking them would tell them: Stop the occupation, the discrimination, the excessive capitalism, but at the moment, those attacking them are actually the ones who want more occupation, more ethnic cleansing, more discrimination and more excessive capitalism. And for the moment, we discover that those whom we hadn’t stopped fighting against already need us to defend them.
If you need to defend your oppressor because a crueler enemy is at the gates, it’s clear that the situation is dire, so it’s worth taking a deep breath, taking a good look at what’s happening in the vicinity and quietly thinking, in an unsentimental way, without schadenfreude, about what needs to be done under the circumstances. Because if we’ve gotten into such a paradoxical situation, the entire house is on fire, and we don’t have the luxury of being a party to the collective suicide that the fascist right is kindly offering us.
Anti-occupation activists from the Shalom Now organization march towards the Homesh outpost in the West Bank, in July.Credit: Moti Milrod
The situation is complicated in every respect, but a warning is in order here. If Israeli society places its trust in the military and security establishment, it would be highly dangerous, because there are also those negative elements there over whom it was once claimed that they were entirely marginal, but they have already taken center stage. The military is now an incubator for fascist movements whose activity is aimed both inside the country and against Jews.
Such things happen. Just look at Turkey! We were constantly being told that the Turkish army was in control of the situation and that it would not permit extremist and fanatic forces to arise, as if the army wasn’t being influenced by what was brewing beneath the surface in Turkish society. The same is true in Israel. What had been brewing beneath the surface has already flooded everywhere above ground.
This column is somewhat confused, but it’s only because reality itself is confused.