Two pictures and a conclusion: The editor of the Presspectiva media criticism website, Hanan Amiur, posted on his X account this week the cover of the Hebrew Haaretz weekend magazine supplement alongside the cover of the Makor Rishon weekend magazine. On the left is a harsh, distressing, bleak picture that cannot help but shock and touch the heart of any human being, apart from crazy sadists of whom there are increasing numbers here. A mother clad in black is carrying her dying son in her arms, a skeleton of a human being, who is clinging to her with the last scraps of his strength, the last scraps of his soul, his heartbreaking gaze pleading for help. A masterpiece of a photograph and a masterpiece of a text by Nir Hasson of Haaretz: "We have entered the monstrous stage."
To the right is a light-filled and more colorful picture, a group shot of four women posing, three of them wearing elaborate turbans – typical of the spirit of the times and of that newspaper – their hands resting on one another's shoulders. The text: "Heroines for Them" – the partners of wounded soldiers starting their struggle. The cover of the Makor Rishon's supplement.
Amiur's conclusion: "On the right – Love of the Israel Defense Forces. On the left – hatred of the IDF." A true media critic should have written: On the right – militarism; on the left – journalism. Amiur and millions of other Israelis believe that it is obligatory to love the IDF. And also that it is forbidden to show the Gaza Strip's suffering, lest that damage the obligation to love our sacred army.
The connection between that and journalism was severed long ago. All that remains is fascism, brainwashing, denial of reality and the concealment of it – not only in the newspaper Makor Rishon but rather in most of the Israel media. The readers of Makor Rishon, like most media consumers in Israel, do not want to see the true picture that Haaretz is trying to present. The suffering of the women in the head coverings is the only suffering they want to know about. However, between the West Bank settlement of Elazar and the Gaza town of Rafah – that is the least of the human suffering now.
Amiur's worldview should not have been of interest to anyone had the settler right not become mainstream Israel. How many Israelis are still questioning the statement that it is obligatory to love the IDF and forbidden to show the reality of the Gaza Strip?
According to that sick journalistic logic, it is forbidden to show Gaza because it is forbidden not to love the army. Therefore, it is obligatory to show Gaza the way the Haaretz weekly magazine supplement has, with determination and courage, and it is permissible to criticize the army and even to hate it. No alternative remains to any individual who has a conscience and is humane.
How is it possible to love the IDF now? What is there to love about it? Setting aside its unbelievable failures before and on October 7, what remains to be considered is its handiwork since then. The IDF of the past 20 months is an army of slaughter like the world has never seen. An army paving the way for genocide and population transfer. There is nothing to stop it; it exercises no discrimination and restraint. It has never before killed so many children, it has never before demolished so many homes and worlds of human beings. It destroys and takes pride, kills and preens.
The new spirit of the IDF has also quickly moved into the West Bank. The army, the aid organization for the violent settlers, is treating the Palestinians with cruelty the likes of which have never been before, not even in the harshest years of the occupation.
The change in the spirit of the army must bring about a change in the attitude towards it. Love it? Love an army in which the soldiers have killed a thousand newborn infants? How is it possible to love an army that slaughters lines of hungry people struggling for a single portion of food in order to survive?
An army does not need to be a love object. In its better days – it is a necessary evil. To love it now is to love its deeds, and they are criminal. To love it, to love it not – it is necessary to look at the cover of the Haaretz supplement and remember that there is someone who has maliciously caused this helpless child to lay dying in his mother's arms.