As in Saramago's "Blindness," as if they were cleaning up "White Darkness" and the parties are staking their bayonets for the third time this year • It's time to put the toxic campaign sprays aside

Something bad is happening to us here in the campaign year and the three election campaigns. Without feeling our language change. Our Hebrew is no longer the same Hebrew. She is different: sliver, party, accuser, inclusion and conflict. For many of us, the hatred of the other or the controversy with it became inherent and inherent, until it became our initial identity. This means that many times, independent opinion and view without affinity for the other position - does not exist at all. Only the opponent and his positions define and shape us, and not us.

This is how normality, and the terminology derived from it, is erased from our private and public code of conduct. Someone replaced the disk with us without feeling it. You can no longer talk without being discriminated against, arguing without laughing, discussing without deleting the other in front of you. It wasn't just Netanyahu who changed our language, and he changed. This is deeper than that.

The Jewish people ceased to act as a collective. Clean up Haifa voting ballots, the day after the election // Photo: Hertzi Shapira

This is the preliminary assumption that what is quietly said is not heard; That which does not include at least a little mud - will fall on deaf ears; That their argument and content are secondary and not the main thing, and what matters is their access to the public. And when the message itself becomes marginal, it can be replaced by a political need like socks, because the main thing is the manner and level of resonance.

Thus, definitions of definitions of affiliation, identity and outlook such as "right", "left", "ultra-Orthodox", "messianic" or "Arab" are unjustly transformed into derogatory pronouns aimed at excluding entire publics from the circle of legitimacy. There is no good eye or complex vision. There are no intermediate shades. The right is necessarily messianic, and the messianic is necessarily bad; Israeli Arabs are necessarily "supporters of terror", only because some of their MKs have forgotten that they are serving in the Israeli Knesset and not in the Palestinian parliament; while the ultra-Orthodox - in the incitement and anti-Semitic campaign of "Israel our house" - are free and exploitative eaters.

Who would dare to light up beautiful parties in ultra-Orthodox society today? Who will invest in reading a waiting article, such as that of Gershon HaCohen in the latest issue of "The Nation," which teaches that Smutrich is not alone; That even Ben-Gurion, he and no other, defined the Zionist idea and himself as the Messianic.

The left, whose parent party has led and founded the state - and along with serious errors instilled in us all human and social values ​​- has become synonymous with a curse and assigned because of disgust, while the right, in many important areas, catapulted the country forward, to the left is the father of the unclean ancestors. Everything is mixed up, and so on purpose. The mix is ​​poisoning not only our language but our souls as well.

Heavy darkness

Writer S. Izhar was impressed two decades ago that two Jewish peoples live in the Land of Israel, who speak different languages ​​and respond differently to the same events; Izhar meant the Israeli people and the Jewish people. These two nations have indeed interpreted differently over the years the taste of the state, the taste of Judaism, and the taste of their daily lives. "Each side understands differently and feels different," the author then observed, "until what one considers a feat, then another as a loss, and what one considers as respect, is considered as a disrespect, and what one excites, is a depressing second, and there is almost no bridge between them."

On the night of hatred, the language of sewerage and brainwashing that the public has to deal with today, it cannot even be defined as a dispute between two Jewish peoples, as he would then define, or even as some controversy. Worst of all is that it is no longer about two different or contradictory views that can be argued and debated. Until we got there. With Izhar's diagnosis, it was still possible to live, because when the ends of the dispute are defined, a bridge can be built over them. Today, however, the ends are deliberately blurred, because the essence has become tackled and almost irrelevant, not on security and borders, and not on social and economic matters.

Almost everything is creative and personal and imagery, and everyone is spraying each other with poisonous campaigns that blur thought and common sense. The contamination that surrounds us dulls our senses and dulls our brains until we can even define controversies, and we shoot in the dark.

Darkness is so heavy that we have forgotten that there is something greater than the different ways; There is still togetherness on the one side, and on the other is the other, and alongside the tribal war in Jewish society, "together the tribes of Israel" also exist. Let us forget that there are many things in many ways: the Jews of this land have a common Jewish color, and past and present are common in Jewish culture and memory and existence; That instead of confiscation can be contained, and that the whole - the people of Israel - is larger than its parts and disputes, which is shared by the separator and which is much more different.

As in Saramago's "Blindness," as if we were cast in the "white darkness," and the parties that are already staging their campaign bayonets for the third time this year - blind our eyes and thought, so we can't remember seeing otherwise.

Were we blindsided, that even in the mirror we no longer recognize ourselves? Almost every event that takes place in our places is enslaved for the benefit of the other dawn, and there is no further examination of things on the merits. Almost everything is for the opponent's body and the immediate political need.

Remembering Lipa

The time has come to set aside the poisonous campaign sprays, if not for us then for our children. To my private ones, I find it increasingly difficult to explain who to whom and what the controversy is about. Instead of disgracing and blaspheming the other, we may all have to fight for the other's right to voice it, even if its opinion seems unfounded and horrible to us.

We must pay homage to a political opponent, illuminate his credit and not just his imperative. Respect, hold back, contain and most importantly listen. Remembering the words of Lipa the wagon in Yechiel Mohr's poem, "A little less is a little more", or in our language today, that more is sometimes less, and that the perfect is the enemy of the good, "Stretch the pull and a little take back."

Even when the era is radically different and the ideologies seem to have "died", and everything is so personal, possible otherwise, and no one's hand in his brother - in the meantime only virtual.

Initially, Israeli society was built on values ​​such as sacrifice and giving, and modesty and personal example and especially on mutual guarantee. But in the campaign year, the Jewish people often seem to stop acting collectively; That different groups show stronger loyalty to their reference group than to all of Israel.

If we are doomed to live for another two months in an ongoing campaign, then all of these must be addressed there, even if we remember where we came from and where we must not fall.