We've never before had a war like this, a war of complete consensus, a war of total silence, a war of blind support; a war without objection, without protest, without refusal to serve, without opposition, neither in the beginning or in the middle. A unanimous war, with wall-to-wall approval – excluding the Arab citizens of the state, who have been prohibited from objecting – and without question marks or even any doubts.
Is a war that has already killed nearly 20,000 people, the vast majority of them innocent civilians, and destroyed nearly all the homes and the lives of the residents of the Gaza Strip, the most just war in the history of Israel? Is a war that causes so much horrific suffering to more than 2 million people the most moral of Israel's wars? And if not, how is it that there is no voice calling to stop the bloodbath? Even the increasing bloodshed among Israelis has not yet called forth the questions "until when?" and "how many more?"
Most of Israel's wars were wars of choice. Almost everyone supported them at first, but soon after, when the terrible price together with the futility became clear, resistance began. By the time these wars ended, many were against them. In hindsight, countless Israelis were against them.
This was the case in both the foolish Lebanon wars and in all the attacks on the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank. Each was shorter than the current war, whose end no one can foresee. And this time, everyone is in favor and no one is asking any questions.
The brainwashing by the media is at fire-hose intensity, spraying forth from the TV news studios day and night, and even those in whom doubt may be starting to stir do not dare to raise them publicly. Together we will win.
Such is the result of a war that broke out in the wake of a barbaric, atrocious attack, but since breaking out it has been unchecked. It has no limits, and no one challenges or opposes it. In the eyes of Israeli Jews, the justness of its beginning justifies everything that comes after. Now, after two terrible months, perhaps doubts are beginning to arise.
There is no one in Israeli Arab society who is not shocked by the images from the Gaza Strip. These people are their brothers, their relatives, and unlike Israeli Jews they are also exposed to the reality in Gaza that is withheld from the Jews by the worthless, propagandist media. But Israeli Arabs cannot protest.
The government threatens this community more than any of its predecessors, brutally gagging its voice and jailing some of its members. Israeli Arabs now live in fear, of the government and of the Jewish rabble, the likes of which they have not experienced since the 1947-48 Nakba.
In Jewish Israeli society too, alongside the overwhelming support for the war together with all its crimes, there are certainly some who are beginning to comprehend the horror that Israel is causing, but here as well people are afraid to speak out, from fear of the current government and of the masses. The result: a war without opposition.
In Putin's Russia there are more displays of resistance to the war in Ukraine than there are in supposedly democratic Israel to the war in Gaza. It's not that the justice of the two wars is similar – the war in Ukraine is infinitely more unethical – but the means and the result of both are becoming increasingly similar. Horrific scenes in both, indescribable suffering by millions of innocent civilians, and all to no end.
Gaza's suffering will accomplish nothing for Israel. Winter is coming, and this suffering will double and triple. Israel has never sown such destruction and killed so many children and adults as it has in this war. When the public conversation focuses exclusively on elaborating on the military accomplishments, real and imagined, alongside endless wallowing in Israeli suffering – and it alone – together with throttling any manifestations of opposition, the result is clear.
As far as Israelis are concerned, it's possible to keep this war going forever, to kill all the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip and destroy it entirely, for good. The most moral, the most just.