Every Israeli who has ever left Israel knows the feeling: as soon as you pass passport control, you become ambassadors. The state of accumulation of an individual's national identity changes when he is outside the borders of his country; Identity is empowered, centered and becomes a much more significant defining factor in a person's consciousness and experience.
When a political figure leaves the borders of Israel, even for a private ski vacation, but mainly on representative trips or work trips, something much more extreme happens: the president, the prime minister, the minister, the Knesset member, the committee chairwoman or the senior official completely shed their personality, name and identity. They become the state that sent them and that they represent. They are nothing more than the symbol of the seven-branched lamp, which flies on the lapel of their jacket and in front of their car.
Therefore, however we turn it around, when an Israeli or American demonstrator or whatever you choose, behaves brutally towards an Israeli elected official who comes to visit New York or anywhere on the globe, he is not demonstrating at all against Minister Amichai Shikli or MK Simcha Rothman or anyone or an anonymous person. He is demonstrating brutally against the State of Israel, no matter how just his claims may be, and however important his criticism of the Israeli government may be.
When an Israeli minister visits New York as part of an official and state visit, demonstrating in front of him and shouting against him in the street is shouting against the state, which is completely unacceptable – unless someone has declared a conflict with the state, but then it is better not to wave a blue and white flag.
It is not only the chosen one who is abroad and is, as stated, a symbol and not a persona, but also from the protester himself, I would expect behavior that expresses the natural process that befalls every Israeli who lives far from his land and language, and whose soul is bustling with love of the people and the land.
And here, too, I fell into a trap that everyone tends to fall into: I refer to a demonstrator who tackles a Knesset member who walks with his wife on a busy street in the heart of Manhattan and sticks a megaphone into their ear, in terms of breaking the rules of the political game, yes-or-no, and in terms of respect and diplomatic etiquette. As if the very operation, when it is carried out here in Israel – in Tel Aviv and Kfar Saba, Jerusalem and Ashdod – is completely legitimate and must be contained.
Well, sorry. No and no and no. As part of the general madness, someone got confused. The orchestrated persecution of politicians in front of their homes or in front of their cars or in front of their children's school or in front of a hall where they perform, when it is neither spontaneous nor one-time but timed and organized as a method, is a violent disgrace, a million times cruder than the "violence on the roads" and the "culture of discourse in the studios" and other purist whines that we hear from time to time.
Infiltrating private space by force is violence that sends a violent message and creates a violent climate, which says: If it's important enough, then everything is allowed. And how do we know if it's important enough? Exactly. Everyone can decide what is important enough for them and what is not.
The margins of the protest constantly stretch the rope, expand its boundaries and give free rein to extreme and exaggerated passions. The core of the protest, whose legitimacy I have long expressed, must raise a voice against this trend and completely erase the personal demonstration initiatives against elected officials and their families.
I am also one hundred percent sure that these images and sounds shock and worry a huge part of the people, who just a few weeks ago filled Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv and other places around the country with vigorous protest. Where are they today? Their voices need to be heard. They are not supposed to change their minds and positions. They are not even supposed to change their support for a rigid line of resistance. Just put a line between "demonstration" and "harassment." The acts of personal harassment, always and on all sides, deserve all condemnation. They're out of the game.
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