Haaretz [Archive] – Gradually Israel will disconnect completely from the standards of human civilization and develop its own morality, its own logic
I’m in a shop that sells legumes. On the wall before me hangs a picture of a man with graying hair and a trenchant gaze.
Below it is a caption: “Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu.” In a weird moment of disorientation I ask myself: Why is this picture hanging here? Isn’t this person wanted for murder? I must be confusing him with someone else. No way someone like that would be honored this way in a respectable business.
In front of me and behind me ordinary people are waiting in line to pay for the pine nuts and peas in the bags they’re holding.
The customers look completely normal. But no, it looks as though I’m not mistaken. There’s no disorientation, I’m perfectly lucid.
This is really how it is: The prime minister, the elected leader of the only country I belong to, is wanted for murder under a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court – one of the loftiest institutions created by the human race. The results of his actions are plain to see: whole cities laid waste, myriads are dead.
It’s a chilling thought. We’ve become accustomed to having offenders in the top ranks of the state: swindlers, cheats, bribe takers. But it looks as though the situation has been aggravated.
The situation becomes even more confusing when we remember who the other person is who’s wanted for similar offenses: Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister. The person against whose dismissal we demonstrated not very long ago.
If the warrants are ever carried out, Netanyahu and his arch-enemy could well be thrown into the same prison cell side by side. And the newly elected leader of the Free World, the next president of the United States, the man who oversees the keeping of the world order, who has under his command 1.5 million soldiers, 13,000 aircraft and 11 aircraft carriers.
By chance or not by chance, he’s also a friend of Netanyahu. Scary as hell.
Something odd has happened to our world. We’ve been snared in the net of a gang of criminals.
…And let’s remember: We can’t disconnect from them. It may be consoling to believe that there are criminals in the government, but that the institutions are being managed with professional criteria.
But every sensible person understands that, over time, the thugs shape the institutions in their image. Nothing will survive. If the picture of an offender is hanging in your daughter’s school, that’s a sign that he’ll set the example in that institution…
How do Israelis cope with the knowledge that their country is not much more than a gang of murderous criminals who won’t balk at the most serious deeds? Most people can’t live with that dissonance. No wonder that the mainstream media and the opposition also reject out of hand the accusations of the court in The Hague – especially considering that one of the warrants is targeting Gallant, a darling of the protest movement.
If you ask them for an explanation, they will reply that the United Nations and its institutions have themselves fallen under the sway of an extreme anti-Israeli and perhaps even antisemitic ideology. They expect the world to return to “healthy logic” and recognize the justness of the Jewish state…
Because every person needs some sort of justification for his deeds, Israelis will need to create alternative standards for themselves. These will rest in part on the criminal morality of Trump and his gang, and will draw support from him.
Others will retreat into religious nationalism, as those who are faithful to the rulings of the rabbis by definition don’t see themselves as obligated to observe the law of nations and the imperatives of reason.
The Hague, Amsterdam, Geneva – they’re merely names of cities of impure gentiles. Gradually Israel will disconnect completely from the standards of human civilization..
