Maybe this is Benjamin Netanyahu’s end. Maybe after such a terrible disaster he will no longer have his legendary ability to recover, and he will vanish from public life, freeing the State of Israel from the choke hold in which he has been clasping it for years. Of course, the metaphorical cemeteries are full of journalists who gambled on the end of the Netanyahu era, and it’s therefore preferable not to come out with any grandiose statements for the moment.
But even if the prime minister does go, at long last, and even if his whole flock of sycophants and fools departs in his wake, his deposing is not a magical exorcism that will solve all our problems. A month after the October 7 massacre, it’s worth examining the path we have traversed since then and paying attention to the way the behavior of each and every one of us is affecting the image of the society that will arise from the ruins.
The way it looks at the moment, we are galloping headlong toward an abyss. The public atmosphere is teeming with putrid fumes of nationalism, silencing and violence toward any slight deviation from the forced unity. The first victims are of course the Arab citizens, who during these weeks have been experiencing a disgusting persecution campaign.
While Jewish citizens are allowed to spread lies and incitement, Arabs are being arrested or fired from their jobs for every incorrectly translated post or offhand remark. The evil spirit in some cases spills over into physical violence and the media, for its part, prefers to deal with antisemitism instead of racism at home, which is a no less fateful issue for our collective future.
We all know that history does not repeat itself, but it does have parallels. Thus, like a chapter that has taken shape from a book about 20th century European history, both academia and the radical left have been marked out as enemies of the people, universities are being exhorted to fire lecturers who sound insufficiently patriotic and social media is full of posts publicly shaming of people who have expressed sadness about the deaths of innocent people in the Gaza Strip.
Many Israelis have become keyboard bullies, engaging in pursuing traitors and having childish tantrums about every random Icelander on TikTok who has failed to understand the complexity of the conflict. In this case, too, the media is fanning the sense of persecution and so far, the internal tensions are fermenting like pus.
People who up until a month ago railed against Netanyahu’s poisonous demagoguery and against his partners are now avidly adopting their methods: marking out enemies, silencing criticism, demanding condemnations, and harassing private citizens instead of the responsible elements.
In his book “The Anatomy of Fascism,” researcher Robert Paxton notes that the combination of a catastrophic crisis and an intensified sense of victimization, which justifies any action against enemies from within and from without, is the toxic soil from which fascistic tendencies grow.
According to him, discussion of fascism tends to focus on big dramas, but fascistic regimes are born from within a fabric of banal decisions by small people: the willingness to turn a blind eye, the implicit or explicit support for persecution of opponents, the everyday measures that add up to disastrous results.
It’s possible to draw encouragement, not to say an action plan: Those everyday measures can also add up to a force that will prevent the accelerated deterioration. Each and every one of us can choose at every possible moment to decide whether to invest our time in harrying a minority group or people whose failures and insensitivity have brought this catastrophe down upon us.
At every moment it’s possible to decide whether to invest our time in incitement and playing the victim or in helping and extending a hand. The war in Gaza will end eventually, but if we don’t straighten up and exit this insane frenzy, a very bleak reality is awaiting us on the other side.