Thursday, December 29, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
The alarm clock rang long ago already. It rang at fascist speeches by ministers. It appears that we turned it off and slept on. Now it is ringing again . . . One feels like weeping in view of the darkness that is slowly descending on our lives; in view of the takeover of extremist and racist opinions and worldviews, sometimes in such flagrant fashion as in this instance, and sometimes without our even being aware that it is happening. (1)The new, anti-liberal Israeli Right and Religious Zionism have joined forces, following the logic that guides totalitarian regimes, [aiming] to capture the souls of the pupils and to transform them from lovers of people into stuck-up nationalists. This is the way to turn Israel from a Jewish and democratic state into a religious-nationalist state with a thin veneer of democracy. (2)It looks like Weimar, it smells like Weimar; it’s malignant like Weimar. We aren’t the Weimar Republic, but a lot of what is happening here is reminiscent of what happened there’. (3)‘Think of the media as a giant keyboard that the government can play on,’ famously declared Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, who certainly knew a thing or two about communications and cinema, and about the psychology of the masses. On this point, at least, the present Israeli government is acting as though in agreement with him. (4)This is a sophisticated revolution, full of scheming, that rests on an obedient, ‘normative’, even liberal and tolerant Revolutionary Guards. The sort whose very inaction and habituation feed the revolution. They are sure that we are not Iran, and that we won’t become like Egypt or Turkey. No one is going to surprise them one morning with the execution of intellectuals and the burning of books. There will be no need for that. What happens here is that people march politely along with the revolution, saluting it proudly. (5)Don’t be surprised if one day someone in civilian dress knocks on your door and takes you for questioning. For two days no one will know your whereabouts, and then you’ll be released, with no explanation . . . We will howl that its ‘undemocratic’. . . and they’ll say, ‘You can say “undemocratic” in Sweden; not by us’. (6)
I'm sorry, did I imply these articles are recent? No, they are from seven years ago.
1. S. Kadmon, “Between the Wall and the Fence” (Yedioth Aharonoth, December 31, 2015)
2. M. Kremnitzer, “Human Rights? A Whole Lot of Nonsense” (Globes, December 9, 2015).
3. N. Barnea, “Not Even Death will Liberate from Betrayal” (Yedioth Aharonoth, January 28, 2016).
4. N. Anderman, “Regev Learned from Netanyahu How to Crush the Cinema” (Haaretz, March 29, 2017).
5. Z. Barel, “We, the Revolutionary Guard Corps” (Haaretz, February 24, 2016).
6. Y. Klein, “Please, Censor Me” (Haaretz, January 27, 2016).
6. Y. Klein, “Please, Censor Me” (Haaretz, January 27, 2016).
None of the confident predictions about the government came true.
I have no idea what the new Israeli government will do. But the point is - neither does anyone else. Especially the types of people that made these confident predictions in 2015 and whose jobs rely on their newspapers getting eyeballs.
I found these excerpts in a recent academic paper in Israel Affairs titled, "‘It’s a war on Israel’s liberal democracy’: the Israeli left as a moral panic community, 2015-19." The abstract is worth reading:
This article examines the discourse of the Israeli Left in the years preceding the succession of general elections in 2019–21, with a focus on claims of the purported threats to democracy presented by the right-wing government. Rhetorical analysis of opinion pieces and political commentary in the press on issues relating to education, science, and culture shows recurrent use of appeals to fear – such as comparisons with totalitarian regimes and invocation of other dystopian spectres resulting from nationalist indoctrination and processes of ‘religionization’. This article defines the appeal to fear and other forms of the Left’s identity claims making during this period as moral panic discourse, around which the Left sought to revive its relevance in the public debate at a time when it was viewed as a marginal political force in ideological decline. The article’s main argument is that while the labelling of the Right as a ‘danger to democracy’ has been entrenched in leftist discourse since the 1977 ‘Upheaval’, during the period in discussion it became the principal – almost sole – theme in leftist publicist discourse, serving as a flag issue around which the Left reorganised its identity as the ‘democratic camp’.
