What is Israel? Haaretz has two outcry pieces you will not read in the U.S. press, by liberal Israelis who say that rightwing intolerance is consuming their society. I imagine that both men would rather live in a democracy, from river to sea, than in the society they see Israel becoming.
Here is Zvi Bar’el saying that the right wing have now defined anyone who wants to give up the Golan Heights as "the enemy within" in legislation that would make it almost impossible to cut a deal with Syria– no return of territory without a majority approving it in the Knesset:
"Until now the Israel Defense Forces defended the Golan and Jerusalem against external threats; today the citizens of Israel can protect Jerusalem and the Golan from internal threats," [Likud MK Carmel] Shama jovially explained. "This is a holiday for Israel."
And here is Gideon Levy warning about the same intolerant trends and speaking of "regimes" doomed by such conduct. Maybe he is telling Israelis that the society can go on even if the construct (Jewish state) doesn’t?
There are many people here who know the history, who understand democracy, who should be terrified by what is going on…
They realize something is happening here that poses a greater threat than all of the external threats, whether real or imagined, that lie in wait for Israel, and they persist in their indifference.
From history they have learned that regimes that begin to act this way are doomed, that Israel is on a slippery slope, mainly because its control mechanisms have all been rendered impotent, and yet they do not protest. …they are convinced that they themselves are in no danger.
The time has come to tell them, the ones who have withdrawn and who care only about their own lives, that it’s coming. Soon, soon, it will happen to you. It won’t stop at the Arab MKs or at the NGOs, not at the universities and not at the demonstrators. It won’t even stop at your doorstep. It will enter your daily life. Police violence? It will come to your children, too. Thought police? It will reach you, too. Your newspaper and your television will look different; the Knesset, your courts and your schools will be unrecognizable. It has happened more than once, and it will happen here, too. If not today, then tomorrow.
