In Israel's Media Landscape, Racism Thrives in the Lifestyle Pages-
Dana Spector writes a much-read column in a much-read newspaper. Her column is called "Soon I Will Reach Far." Last week she went to the farthest place a columnist in Yedioth Ahronoth could go to: a Palestinian village, five minutes away from Kfar Sava.
Her impressions make for a disconcerting and fascinating document. One needs to read it in order to understand what happens when the Israeli center, self-satisfied and enlightened in its own eyes, comes on a safari-like visit to a zoo called a Palestinian village.
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This isn't National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir or far-right activist Benzi Gopstein. Spector is Israel's guru of lifestyle and well-being, who went to see Palestinians in their cage. She was shocked by what she saw. Their café looked like a "rat-infested kiosk."
She arrived in Hableh in an armored Israel Defense Forces vehicle, of course, as a guest of an IDF battalion called the Panther battalion, also known as the "authority" battalion. One of the many charms of this particular battalion is that it is a mixed-gender one.
View of the Israeli town of Matan, with the Palestinian village of Hableh in the back, straddling the Green Line.Credit: Avi Ohayon/GPO
Wearing a helmet and ceramic vest, as befitting a war correspondent, she hadn't even managed to stretch out on an armchair in a house the army had expropriated after kicking out its occupants, before Spector witnessed "open and blatant hatred" in the eyes of two young men on the street who saw soldiers approaching the stolen house. She was scared. It is really scary to see an expropriated house. "If I were one of the amazing and courageous female fighters of the Panther battalion, I might have been less frightened," she wrote.
The white anthropologist came to discover hidden worlds. "I wanted to discover in what kind of houses people were living in, how they conduct their daily lives, that is, when they're not busy pursuing their favorite hobby, planning the death of Jews." A shopping buff herself, she was also interested to know whether the village had a clothing store. Sixty minutes after arriving there, she already knew that this was no innocent village. "And that was enough to make me forget my guilt over the poor family whose house was confiscated by the army."
As everyone else of her ilk, Spector doesn't feel "even a shred of compassion" for any Palestinian after October 7. Captain A. backs her: "For me, every one in this village is a terrorist." Spector sees a moral army.
Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant speaking with the mixed gender Panther battalion in the West Bank.Credit: Ariel Hermony/Defense Ministry
Master Sergeant A., for example, is a charismatic young woman with a honey-colored ponytail. When a villager requests to fetch water, she lets him. "I keep wanting to show them that we're not like them," explains the charismatic soldier with the honey-colored ponytail. Spector wants to know how she's dealing with the fact that her image has gone viral in every "nest of terrorists" in Qalqilyah.
We are also unlike them in interior design. Spector is horrified by a chandelier with bulbs shaped like golden lilies and by a candlestick adorned with "diamonds." A horrible design, concludes the style influencer.
"This isn't too bad," says another female combatant. "You haven't seen Tulkarm. We were inside a few houses there where you couldn't understand how they live that way. In the worst one we saw, there wasn't even a shower or a toilet." Human animals.
Israeli military vehicles drive through a destroyed market during an Israeli raid on Tulkarm refugee camp in the West Bank in 2024.Credit: Nasser Ishtayeh / SOPA Images via Reuters
No less embarrassing is Spector's worship of the soldiers. They are champions in maintaining order, they are so ethical, one cannot mistake their determined steely looks. "They have to break into houses in the middle of the might, deal with crying babies and grandmothers screaming with fear, without losing touch with everything that's human in them," and the tears flow. Even Israeli army propaganda organs would have been ashamed to publish such a text.
On the eve of the recent release of Palestinian prisoners, soldiers went to the houses of the prisoners' families and warned them that "there had better not be anything we don't like to see taking place here" – such as joy over the release of their sons. Oh, how these men and women of the Panther battalion enjoyed themselves in Qalqilyah. And most importantly, there are some romances blooming in the battalion.
Pretty soon we'll be reaching far. You don't need the fascist right in order to sow the seeds of racism. You don't need Channel 14 in order to dehumanize and demonize Palestinians. It's all here in the center, in the very center of Israel. In the leisure and fun pages of a newspaper.