There were many exhilarating moments during the days and nights of the march to Jerusalem. One of them occurred on Saturday morning, when a massive human wave, quivering with thousands of blue and white flags, slowly streamed down the hillside near Shoresh and intersected with the crowds waiting at Hemed Bridge. The two camps melded together; water bottles were given to the hot and weary walkers, along with slices of watermelon, ice pops and grapes. There was generosity, goodwill and heartfelt sharing. There was the rare understanding that each of us was composed of the many people who came to this place, who continued together up the Qastel hills to Jerusalem, sweltering in the extreme heat but with their souls uplifted.
The Jewish nation has experienced rifts and divisions: Sadducees and Pharisees, Hasidism and Misnagdim, and many other opposing factions. But what has been occurring in Israel these past few months is no longer on the same continuum. We do not yet have the words to adequately describe this turn of events, and that is why it is so frightening. It may transpire that it was the beginning of a process that will crumble – and possibly resolve – our society’s ossified, dangerous points. But for now it is bringing to the surface Israel’s secrets and lies, the cumulative historical offences, the lack of compassion, the injustices, all of which have become an intolerable dissonance that breeds mutual revulsion.
The resistance movement has also revealed how sophisticated were the mechanisms of self-deception, delusion and brainwashing in which we engaged so that, for 75 years, we could prevent all these hostilities from erupting. How we learned to hide them, chiefly from ourselves, and found ways to whitewash them, train them, domesticate them – and ourselves. How hollow the “unity” mantra that sated us for decades sounds today. How false the term “cohesion” now seems, when one side all but erases the worries, anxieties, values and wishes of the other.
We stand now, defenceless, against these grating lies that have burst forth into our exposed reality. The ground falls away beneath our feet. Great fear gnaws at us.
We have never, to this day, voiced such a trenchant acknowledgment: our existence here – an existence that, for all its flaws, is also wonderful, yearned-for, exceptional – is made possible thanks to the air supremacy guaranteed by a few hundred pilots. It is a frightening realisation. This simple, concrete fact of our reality is terrifying.
Yet rather than merely debating the legitimacy of the pilots’ decision to suspend their volunteer service in the armed forces, we ought to look elsewhere for a moment. We must look to the place where we admit that our military might – namely, our existence – depends largely on these few hundred people, and that we would therefore do well to strive for peace treaties with our enemy-neighbours as soon as possible. Otherwise, we risk another war. The truth that many of us have known for years is now in plain sight: this is vital to Israel’s security.
As if the awareness that has been dulled for so many years has suddenly been awakened, we now comprehend the responsibility – no, the culpability – of the self-proclaimed agents of Jewish history who brought about the state’s greatest disaster: the settlement enterprise.
This week, the fate of Israel as a democratic state will be determined. The hundreds of thousands of Israelis who left their homes under impossible circumstances did so in order to protest and sound the alarm bells, but also because they felt the need to live, however briefly, in a proper, functional, benevolent atmosphere. It is a need that should not be taken lightly. For decades, it was stolen from us. The state became a place of violence, vulgarity, pollution. The deception perpetrated by Simcha Rothman (member of the Knesset for the far-right Religious Zionist party), the justice minister, Yariv Levin, the security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Benjamin Netanyahu is, ultimately, just the artist’s signature in the corner of the big picture.
There is a tremendous thirst to spend even a day or two in a different moral climate. In a lucid reality. In a strong breeze of hope. How refreshing it was to see that torrent of people slowly pouring down the hillside outside Jerusalem, composed of hundreds of thousands of Israelis of all ethnicities and all ages, supporters of different political parties, people who founded – or whose foremothers and forefathers founded – the state, and who will absolutely not give up on their dream. Because they know that if that dream is distorted and vandalised, there will quite simply be no purpose to their lives.
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David Grossman is an Israeli author. This piece was translated by Jessica Cohen from an article originally published in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz
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