[Salon] The Red Line of Israeli Society Is the Line of Death

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-03-29/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-red-line-of-israeli-society-is-the-line-of-death/00000187-2e22-da89-a39f-2f32c7420000

The Red Line of Israeli Society Is the Line of Death

Gideon Levy, Mar 29, 2023
Death was one of the threats waiting in ambush for the judicial coup. It could contain anything, but not the threats of the bereaved families and the agents of bereavement. The state ceremonies, first and foremost Memorial Day, have become threatening target dates. It was clear they could not be allowed to happen in the midst of demonstrations and protest. Even the closure of Ben-Gurion International Airport for a few hours was dwarfed in the face of the lurking danger from Mount Herzl and Kiryat Shaul cemeteries. That tells us something about a society whose military cemeteries are its borderline, the final glue that unites it. Until death do us not part.

The red line of Israeli society is the line of death. It turns out that from underneath all the shows of joie de vivre and the surveys ranking Israel as among the happiest of nations, death, and above all the cult of death, peeks out. What would happen if someone were to protest at a Memorial Day ceremony? Or to cry out during the torch lighting ceremony? Like the end of the world. But it’s the end of the world we’ve invented for ourselves. The idea that everything has to stop at the gates of the military cemetery is self-deception. It is permissible to protest in the homes of the living, and also okay in the homes of death.

The protest has shaken society, slaughtered sacred cows and most of all exposed truths. Israel turned out to be much more militaristic than it had seemed. After the protest, which is in essence also a class war, revealed that the people’s army is an army of classes – notice the tension between the insubordinate pilots and the mechanics who denounce them – it will be the turn of the fallen soldiers. There are classes in death too. A dead fighter pilot is not the same as a dead soldier. A soldier who died in a car crash is not the equal of one who fell in battle, and heroes are almost always only from very specific units. Only the pain of the families is the same, and even they sometimes fight over the definition of their loved one’s death – fallen or dead – as if it matters now.

The debate on military bereavement is not free. It is focused on the emotional side, and rarely does anyone dare ask whether it is always inevitable, decreed by fate. How many of those buried under military headstones died in vain? The subject is taboo, but it must be discussed. We can understand the compassionate national sentiment that shares the pain, but it must not silence and cover up everything. Precisely because of its terrible cost bereavement must serve the living; it must teach a lesson, otherwise, perhaps it has been in vain.

Nobody wants memorials to turn into demonstrations. But making the cemeteries off-limits is forced and artificial. The question isn’t whether politicians will speak at them – their speeches are always empty – the question is what may be done and said in the name of the dead. It’s unthinkable that their memory is used only in one direction. It’s unthinkable that the bereaved families are permitted to do anything except to protest, or that their protest is seen as more than that of any other Israeli; that the only lesson from their loved ones’ death is to continue to live by the sword and to believe only in force.

Notice the ugly, violent and repugnant battle against the Parents Circle–Families Forum of Israeli and Palestinian bereaved families. The law is coming. Don’t touch our bereavement. It’s only ours, the Jews.

In the face of the tsunami of saccharine slogans set to wash over us in the weeks to come, we must also take note that Israeli society has changed. If there has in fact been an earthquake here, it must also affect the military cemeteries. The feeling is that if the protest reaches this temple, it will be the end. That if this final glue dissolves, society will disintegrate. But there too the time has come to expose truths. There is no equality in Israel, not even among the dead. The dissident reservists, who are so admired now, say they won’t fight for a dictatorship. They are willing to enlist enthusiastically for the occupation, even to be killed. Tomorrow’s bereaved families will be barred from protesting against that. There’s still a long way to go.