Please imagine a situation: a house committee meeting, a joint building in the city of Sade, say, Netanya.
The subject of the meeting: the dramatic deviation in the shared water bill and the need to paint the stairwell. The meeting is opened by the chairman, whose dedication to the building and its needs is indisputable, and a moment before presenting the issue, he sets aside the water bill in his hand, takes out another paper and asks to open the meeting with a slightly different topic, namely the upcoming elections.
Not the House Committee elections, but the general elections. It is very important to understand, he says, that these elections are critical for our future as a society and as a country, and they are critical, by the way, for us as a common home.
Not only metaphorically but also particularly, as the residents of the building at 16 Yasmin Street, and therefore I would like to ask all the residents of the building to vote in the upcoming elections for the party I have been voting for for many years - this party and the one that marked such and such. That won't happen. The Chairman will not do so.
He won't do so not because he's not devoted enough to his party, but because no such thing is done. The meeting room of the House Committee is not his, and among the residents there are voters of different parties. Therefore, he is not entitled to invest this piece of public domain in the interest of the individual, even if he thinks that he is really, really right and that the issue he wants to promote is really critical.
Twice a week I hear with amazement confessions of "Marranos" in the academic world. Each such story is immersed in a sea of frustration.
A few weeks ago, a graduation ceremony was held in one of the humanities departments of the Hebrew University. The two senior speeches that opened the event were "protest" speeches. About the situation. In the audience sat people with different opinions, scratching their heads in embarrassment.
A moment later, they were forced to go on stage and receive their degrees and diplomas from the people, who had just proven that they did not see them at all and did not recognize their existence.
This week it happened at the Congress at Haifa University. A lecturer arrived in a protest shirt, but just before he opened his mouth in the professional field, he devoted a few words to the situation and then changed his shirt and went to the lecture. It's happening all over the academic world every single day. And it happened this week in the most blatant way in one of the departments of Sheba Hospital in Tel Hashomer. You've probably seen the pictures.
And the question is what, what. It has nothing to do with the opinions expressed, which of course can also be debated, but everyone has the right to think whatever he wants.
The question is: Do these people even know that there are people in the audience in front of them who think differently? People for whom framing what is happening now as a danger to democracy is itself offensive and insulting? Do they know it or not?
Either way, it's a huge problem. If they don't know, it's really a disconnection at levels that call into question their status or position, but if they do know and still allow themselves, because of their personal sense of emergency, this behavior is a violent and dangerous act, which personally scares me.
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