In principle, the health of a society is similar to the health of an individual. The physician asks the patient to maintain a healthy lifestyle, not to overindulge in sugary and fatty foods, not to smoke, and not to forget to shake the body out of its lethargy through exercise. He who ignores this advice is likely to suffer a heart attack one fine day. At times, it will be fatal, but ordinarily it comes as a warning. Many people who have suffered a heart attack say that thanks to that warning, they have changed their lifestyles and are now healthier and enjoying life more.
The same holds for societies, and if we continue the comparison we shall see that what has happened in Israel over the past few months is simply a warning heart attack. We are lucky that this attack is happening now. Had it struck but a few years from now, it would have likely been fatal, with slim chances of recovery. The lifestyle maintained by Israeli society is simply very unhealthy.
Israeli society has consumed immense quantities of fat: Occupation, Jewish supremacism, nationalist and racist education, oppression of women, discrimination of Arab citizens, establishment of violent militias in the occupied territories, nurturing ties with fascist movements worldwide, providing arms to dark regimes and whatnot. Nearly every iniquity imaginable has found its way to the Israel feast.
The regime coup was not born nine months ago ex nihilo. It put down roots over many years and erupted following a long process of ripening, at the end of which Justice Minister Yariv Levin appeared, in January 2023, and announced that the age of sanitized words is over, and that from now on things will be called by their proper name: Israel is entering an era of dictatorship.
We cannot gloss over the final stage before the coup, the “change government” stage, lauded by most democrats, even though it continued to conduct the same policy, expressing the same sociopolitical essence: The hilltop youth flourished under it; electric power, thanks to Gideon Sa’ar, one of its senior figures, reached outposts established by thugs; the shameful nation-state law remained intact and the Citizenship Law was repealed but continued to exist, with its spirit haunting Arab citizens in practice.
It was sad to see that the top tier of democrats here is the “change” government. The “left,” which was part of it, toed the extreme right-wing line it led. Its spokespeople forced people into silence in the face of injustices, and anyone speaking out was labeled a Netanyahu collaborator. Thanks to the change government, the entire political system shifted rightward, and all this to depose Netanyahu – the man, not the agenda.
Thus, thanks to the change government, some democracy supporters fell silent, and some of the sane ones served as interpreters for the sins of that government. All under the slogan that a Netanyahu government would be worse. There is no doubt that a fully right-wing government is very bad, but a situation in which democracy supporters are silent and silenced is worse still.
It’s good that the regime coup happened. It’s good that the dam burst and that those who sentenced themselves to silence took to the streets, and all the issues they didn’t want to discuss have been opened wide. The Kohelet Policy Forum, which infiltrated all public institutions without notice, is now under the watchful eye of the protest movement. Even the manner in which entries are uploaded to Wikipedia does not elude the eye of the protest movement nowadays.
A person, or a society, cannot be healed if the diagnosis is false, if the problems are swept under the rug. The regime coup has revealed the true diagnosis regarding the future of Israeli society, in the shadow of the destructive processes it is undergoing. Thanks to this true diagnosis, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets. It’s nothing short of a miracle. Yariv Levin unintentionally led Israeli society to sobriety.