Two alarming publications have caught my eye in recent days. The connection between coffee and nationalism and family name, which creates a mistaken and ugly pursuit of the bearer of the name. For more than 60 years, there hasn't been anyone in the country who hasn't been familiar with Elite Turkish coffee. Finely minced. Smells wonderful. Superbrand.
Although the connection between Elite's Turkish coffee and Turkey is tenuous, the surfers' froth has surpassed it. Change the name, demand from the company. Turkey is not nice to us, there is no reason for your flagship coffee to bear the name of this country, the surfers shouted. They were furious at the Turkish president for speaking out strongly against Israel, and from there the distance was short. They also rode the wave calling for a boycott of products from Turkey.
The sages of Elite convened, consulted, thought, discussed, and at the end of the consultation decided to surrender. There is no other way to say it other than giving in to a specific mood, which will change once "all-inclusive" in Turkey returns to being a preferred vacation option.
Elite decided to temporarily print national slogans such as "We have no other country," "Am Yisrael Chai" and "Victory Generation" instead of the brand's well-known name.
"There was noise on social media around the name," the company explained, so it joined the war effort and raised the morale of the soldiers, who consume this coffee in the combat zones and in the assembly areas. Woe to us if slogans are the ones that will raise the morale of the fighters and not the righteousness of the way, and woe to us if writing on a coffee bag discourages them.
The second case is the attack on Prof. Amal Jamal of Tel Aviv University. Full disclosure - Prof. Jamal was my master's degree lecturer in the Department of Political Science. A pleasant man, a lecturer with kindness, a great knowledgeable. He never hid his views on inequality in Israel. The foam came out on him due to a decision not to allow leniency for reservists. They claimed he was an Arab, even though he was Druze and served in the IDF.
Jamal is an Arabic name, at which time Alihum, including calls from politicians, the coalition and the opposition, began to fire him immediately. However, it turned out that it was not his decision at all, but that of the university, which clarified that the decisions were not his and that these were jobs related to the previous academic year...
What both cases have in common is the light finger on the keyboard. Turkish coffee - flip; A lecturer with an Arabic name - to fire. And it doesn't end there.
The sages of Elite convened, consulted, thought, discussed, and at the end of the consultation decided to surrender. There is no other way to say it other than giving in to a specific mood, which will change once "all inclusive" in Turkey returns to being a preferred vacation option
Anyone who tries to present a position that does not align with a certain consensus may be the object of attack. I, too, receive invective from users who read my columns in the newspaper, commenters who are not satisfied with a substantive response, and immediately move on to nationalistic stripes. Consolation = Hamas. Nothing less. In another case, a user held me responsible for the massacre on 7 October.
But it is not about myself that I have come to speak, but about the fact that it is worrying that the divisive, radicalized, inflammatory discourse is returning to our lives under the crack of the door, which seemed to slam and close when the fighting broke out so as not to return again. Turns out we made a mistake. Yesterday, the president of the country begged for an end to the heated discourse that raises its head. But when nationalism and nationalism cling to each other, the chances of that happening are slim.
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