You can have a go at Benny Gantz, who saved Benjamin Netanyahu when the latter seemed finished after October 7, in the days when Bibi-ists and Kahanists felt ashamed and wanted to let go of the golden calf that led to this disaster. You can mock the lack of political instincts, or suspect Gantz's will to become prime minister, to lead. You can be infuriated by the failed timing, the lack of determination, the naivete, the clumsy attempt to be statesmanlike.
But Gantz is not the problem. Neither is the stupid quarrel between the leaders of the opposition, which allows the bloc that still enjoys a lead in public opinion polls to remain as disorderly as it was in the runup to the 2022 election, while missing every political opportunity.
The problem runs much deeper and wider, even if you sometimes want to scream with rage or bash them to release just a bit of your frustration and fear. At times, like now, the situation seems all but terminal.
When a society, or at least a large part of it, chooses again – as is reflected by recent polls – a prime minister under whose rule its citizens were slaughtered, its daughters raped, its children abducted, and who is leading it on to military bloodletting, diplomatic isolation, economic slump as well as a culture of corruption, criminality, ignorance and backwardness; when a society, or at least a large part of it, lends its hand to abandoning hostages and their relatives and allows acts of violence against them; when a society, or at least a large part of it, does not differentiate between someone who sacrificed their son for Israel and someone whose demented son is leading a parasitic life abroad, it is neither Gantz nor Gadi Eisenkot who is to blame, nor the demonstrations that are "forcefully pushing right-wingers back into Netanyahu's arms."
It is a pathology of a rotting society, stupidly racing in a mad dash towards oblivion and annihilation. Whoever is "swept" back to the cesspool of rot because they hate the protesters, or seem to object to their actions, have within themselves a rotting foundation and are only looking outside themselves to legitimize it.
When anybody calling themselves "Zionist," and "right-wing" to boot, supports the prime minister under whose long rule Israel lost two regions while the war he wages achieves none of its goals – this cannot be explained by ideological reasons. This is a deep sickness, incurable and probably afflicting those who don't want to be cured.
When the desire to see as many dead Palestinians and as many Ashkenazi left-wingers in pain overcomes any rational consideration, the prognosis cannot be positive, and there's no chance of any lifesaving treatment. From now on, it's just prescribing morphine to mask the effects of dying and numb the consciousness.
Government ministers speak confidently of a busy war schedule, first and foremost a war in the north that will be "a short, decisive barrage" which will have residents back in their homes before September 1. People who never served in the military, or who served in low-ranking roles, are sending others to die while with their other hand they cook up a corrupt draft exemption for the ultra-Orthodox. This is an untenable reality, according to logic, yet this cruel reality drily announces its absurd existence.
The fight may already be lost. If, after the October 7 mass atrocity and the subsequent calamities, the public is unwilling to rid itself of this curse, if thugs have carte blanche to take the wheel and flatten anything good that remains, what can you say, what can you do?
Indeed, barring some immediate event, something that now seems miraculous, in the absence of millions in the streets and urgent, effective political organizing that will finally produce a consensus leader for the democratic camp, one whom all the others will work for and with – it's best to spend our energy on plans for survival rather than go on drowning in this sea of despair.