From week to week it gets harder to breathe here. Instead of stopping, thinking and calming down, we accelerate into the abyss. No one has the patience to listen, and everyone is busy being right. Yom Kippur, instead of being an island of unity and sanity, has become an ocean of hatred. The events at Dizengoff Square were discouraging. One side that comes to stick a finger in the eye to stick a finger in the eye; The other side is tired of sticking a finger in their eye, and is willing to take it to the limit.
I didn't like the reactions to praying in the square. I thought it was possible to restrain and contain, if only because of the sanctity of the day. Still, it's clear who started. Jewish Head tries to present itself as a cute, innocent, user-friendly organization. In practice, this is an organization that is busy with religion. I am not saying this - Israel Zeira, the head of the head, said it himself.
A "Jewish head" settled in Tel Aviv for two reasons: one, because it is Tel Aviv and it contains and accepts everyone; The second is that it has ample ground for religion – masses of secular people who can be brought closer to religion. The organization does all this while relying on public funds, as well as on those serving in national service. In other words, the state helps the organization persuade people to become religious.
Think of a parallel organization that would settle in Bnei Brak or Mea Shearim, ask for free public funds and manpower, and engage in excluding people from religion. By turning the ultra-Orthodox into secularists. What a commotion would have arisen here, and what would the ultra-Orthodox have done. The demonstrations, the violence, the Nazism. Everything they do even today against everything they perceive as threatening - only on turbo.
There's no way that would have happened. Not under this government, and not under any other government. This would not have happened because the secular public, for the most part, is not engaged in converting anyone's religion or opinion. Basically he lives and lets live. He goes to school, does matriculation, goes to the army, works and pays taxes, while trying to save a little for the children, and if possible then also for vacation. He doesn't ask for anything for himself, and he's also willing to absorb quite a bit of weight that his counterparts in the world are exempt from: those who evade service and those who evade work and those who evade paying taxes.
Until the beginning of the year, this was the secular status quo. Then the current government came along and decided to break it unilaterally. To take the core faith of the secular – the legal system and the Declaration of Independence – and smash it in favor of other things. Various interest groups hastened to exploit this for their own purposes: for the establishment of unauthorized outposts, for various and mostly strange designated funds, and also for processes that until now have happened (if they happened) only in a small and private way.
A "Jewish head" is an example of this. Bringing Yigal Levinstein to Tel Aviv – the man who believes that homosexuals are deviants and that women in the IDF are a bad hit – is a finger in the eye. And in direct continuation of this - within days, when the wound is still fresh and bleeding - to organize prayer in separation just to defy it, knowing and wanting it to be defiant, with the result of distancing from religion and the holy day large populations that could connect if they only felt less attacked.
As I said, I didn't like the comments. But even less so I like hypocrisy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's response was such a display on the part of a total infidel, but there is nothing to expect from him. The man who made a career out of incitement and hatred will not change his skin and his way after three decades in power. And not only him; Once again, the land was divided into Jews and non-Jews, as if Itamar Ben-Gvir had more of Judaism than his opponents, and as if his Judaism – violent, racist, hateful of the other – represented in some way the true, beautiful Judaism, which is supposed to be connecting and loving.
Collective punishment
And as if to weigh the breath even harder, came the events of the football derby. It's not easy to be a year-round fan, but this week it was harder than ever, and not because of the humiliation on the pitch. The police conduct in Bloomfield was a shameful display of uncontrollable and, above all, alarming violence.
I will say immediately: I am against violence in general, and as part of that I am against violence on the playing fields. Everything, including everything. The police must track down the violent person, arrest him and charge him, and make sure he never sees a grandstand. But it must not punish tens of thousands of innocent citizens who purchased tickets to a sporting event and found themselves suspected terrorists.
That's exactly what happened on Tuesday. The police were rude and violent (horsemen galloping into the crowd, trampling women and children) towards an entire public, whose only sin was wanting to see a football match. To its credit, it was egalitarian: its conduct endangered Hapoel and Maccabi fans equally. She did miss a few dozen powders on the yellow side, but we won't be petty; She compensated for this with a false statement in which she claimed to have caught yellow flares among Hapoel fans - as if there was a universe in which this was possible.
The officer who released the photos may have been colorblind, but he was more likely a power drunk — a direct continuation of the belief of many county police officers that they are allowed to remove name tags or wear face coverings when interacting with fans or protesters. This allows them to operate freely (including beatings) without fear of being identified and complained.
About two months ago, the Tel Aviv Special Patrol Unit arrested a young man named Amitai Abodi during demonstrations that included blocking the Ayalon Highway. It quickly became clear that the arrest was violent: a variety of photos from the incident clearly showed this, focusing the claim on the unit's commander, Deputy Superintendent Yair Hanona. Police quickly crowded ranks, claiming that the young man had used violence that necessitated his forcible arrest. It sounds strange: the entire incident was documented, but for some reason there was no record of violence on the part of the detainee, only on the part of the police. I contacted the police to prove their claim, and they promised to provide footage from the officers' body cameras. I'm still waiting (several complaints were filed with the DIP in this affair).
Between all these cases there is a connecting line - his name is Commissioner Peretz Amar. Those who claimed that the police are not a learning organization were mistaken. Here - Amar, the new commander of the Tel Aviv district, learned from the mistakes of his predecessor, Ami Eshed. If he approves the use of force, the minister of national security will like him. Along the way, he probably left his conscience and values, and sometimes the truth, at home. Otherwise, it is unclear how his people claimed that there was no partition in the square on Yom Kippur, or that there was violence by football fans who came to the derby.
The Israel Police is an essential body for the state. For years it was dehydrated and weakened, until it failed to cope with its main tasks: fighting crime and violence. Instead, she behaves like the minister in charge of her, and goes where she is. It may give her headlines and momentary satisfaction, but victory won't be here. Only a resounding collective defeat, much bigger and more painful than the one we suffered in the derby.
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us