Israelis' Thunderous Silence Enables Daily Atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank - Opinion
Some sounds are relentless, stuck in one's head like a trapped echo, chilling like an endless alert despite the bombings and the sirens' end. The echo, even after the cease-fire took effect, includes Kiryat Shmona Mayor Avichai Stern's cries over the fate of his city, and they intermingle with a cacophony of words from our recent vocabulary. Some of these words are from the military-technological field – "drone," "ballistic missile," "cluster bomb," "polygon," while others are from civilian life – "cleared for publication," "coalition funding," "abandonment," "unity."
Some words are but hollow voices that obscure the world instead of describing it. "Nobody was physically wounded," we are told, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. As if this description included the shock, the loss of a home, the life derailed from its normal course, the people whose worlds have been destroyed.
In the Gaza Strip, the dead and wounded aren't "casualties," they are "collateral damage" – a dry technical term backed by artificial intelligence and legal permits. They aren't casualties, they are damage. Language itself has been recruited to cloud what happened, as if by swapping the terms, we could also swap our reality.
"Unity," "total victory," "home front," "routine," "reform," "warning time," "normalcy" – these have been eroded to such an extent that they no longer carry any actual meaning; they merely echo like the empty sounds that the words "truth" and "lie" give off these days.
"Protected space" is another fraudulent turn of phrase in a country where a third of the population isn't protected, especially residents of Arab and Bedouin villages. This is an issue where the differences between one citizen and another aren't accidental but due to systematic state discrimination. This is the same state that deployed agencies, even at the height of the war, to thwart independent Bedouin efforts to provide themselves with shelter, on the grounds that this was illegal construction.
Here's another phrase overused to oblivion – "obedience saves lives." Granted, it is recited like a mantra in the context of the Home Front Command's instructions. But its tone is broader and deeper than that. It sounds like an order for citizens to become obedient subjects: Don't ask questions, don't think, don't challenge, just obey.
The word "resilience" – psychological stamina – is represented by people who don't complain. You won't hear those whose lives were destroyed (that is, the "pampered prima donnas," to quote one well-known psychiatrist). The only voices heard are the one-in-a-million who had their heads held high while facing their fears, suffering, family matters and economic collapse. It seems that resilience in our parts has become a measurement of silence, repression and belief in miracles.
Alongside "resilience," and as its foundation, is the phrase "Zionism standing firm" – Zionism, as a rational for our being here and for standing firm. But Zionism was kidnapped long ago, distorted and turned into a tool by messianic politicians who sanctify racism, ethnic cleansing and the war crimes committed daily in the occupied territories. And in any case, Zionism can provide resilience only for Jews. What resilience could Israeli Arabs derive from the Zionist opposition in the Knesset, which denies their right to lead the country as partners?
These words have come to dominate the conversation, but there are some that have been taken out of service – peace, responsibility, human dignity, diplomatic solution, compromise. They have been pushed to the margins or simply disappeared due to lack of use. That happens with language.
But the most chilling sound of all is silence. Israelis' thunderous silence was what enabled and continues to enable the atrocities we committed in Gaza and the ones we commit every day in the West Bank. And it's just luck that a greater power (U.S. President Donald Trump) stopped us before we completed our plan for a mass expulsion of residents of villages in southern Lebanon in the name of our security.
This lexicon, which wears a military uniform, still has one fortifying word that must be said resolutely, because it is the our resilience, the source of our strength and the bane of our existence here. It is entrenched in an the identity that unites all of us – Israeliness. Not Judaism or Zionism, but Israeliness – the fact that we are all human beings who want to live, who share a common land, a fate and a challenging reality, who cling to this place we share in order to live here – Jews, Arabs and other minorities, secular and religious and ultra-Orthodox people; right-wingers and leftists.
All of us long for security, existential and personal, for self-actualization in respectful communities and social solidarity. And this solidarity within Israeli civil society continues to emerge. It is alive and kicking, with all its layers and all its beauty. This is our resilience, and this is our hope for life in this difficult place.
Yehudit Karp, a former deputy attorney general, is a member of the Yesh Din, Standing Together, Zazim and Friends of Breaking the Silence organizations