Knesset members and ministers dancing last night at the settlement conference in Gaza/Flash 90, Chaim Goldberg
For many Israeli citizens, and this is not an exaggeration, the scenes from the return to Gaza conference held last night were the most difficult since the October Seventh.
It is easy to explain why the heart skips a beat when Jews are murdered, it is much more difficult to explain why it skips a beat in the presence of Jews dancing with faith and fervor, the kind of fervor that built the State of Israel, that turned the tradition of the ancestors into a return to their inheritance, from the days of the Levites to our own day.
Contrary to what one might think, the difficulty The identity of the dancers, among them ministers and members of the Knesset who have used wild and slanderous language at the IDF commanders since the outbreak of hostilities, was not in the mirror.
Nor does the difficulty revolve around the practice of potential damage that may be caused to the State of Israel among the nations, after we worked hard to explain to them that all our actions in the Gaza Strip are in response to the massacre that took place in the settlements of the Western Negev and with the aim of preventing, God forbid, its recurrence.
Of course, these two require reference, but they are not at the heart of the matter.
At the heart of the matter stand two Israelis, both good, both wanted to defend their homeland on the day of the order, but while one of them believes that the future of Israel depends on preserving the religious-pioneer-revolutionary fervor, especially in regards to security and settlement, the other is concerned with normality.
For him, apart from the lives taken and the citizens kidnapped, the worst injury of the war is the explosion of the thin layer of relative normality, the one that allowed us to develop a magnificent high-tech industry, make our own home, fly on vacation abroad once in a while and quarrel over the articles of legal legislation.
Traveling in Israel. Normality and acceptance into the family of nations as the victory of Zionism, or the continuation of the revolution?/ShutterStock
Between the Euro and Eurovision
This internal debate has accompanied Zionism for quite a few years.
David Ben-Gurion, for example, someone who knew a thing or two about a pioneering and Zionist vision, longed for the day when we would have blue-and-white thieves and prostitutes, God forbid, not because he valued theft or prostitution, but as an expression of the longing that we would be with all nations, with the good and with the bad that the behavior demanded The "normal" human.
Decades have passed since then and it seemed that normality remained the pinnacle of Israelis' aspirations, certainly the secular ones: it could be a dream of qualifying for the Euros or winning the Eurovision Song Contest, it could be a foreign passport, one that allows you fast passage upon landing in European countries, it could be Even a winter foray abroad to enjoy a cool breeze of zero degrees, while in Israel we complain about the cold even in a temperature of about 15 degrees, like today's temperature in most areas of the coastal plain.
This desire for normality pulsed mainly in the hearts of the secular, but not only: In recent years, more and more kippah wearers, who peeked and were hurt, have become integrated into it, to teach us that not all religious Zionism is one piece.
Despite the last sentence, I will admit that I have no idea what percentage of religious Zionists, who to a certain extent replaced the members of the working settlements, the moshavim and the kibbutzim, as the elite of the Defense Forces to Israel, support the idea of returning to Gaza. I hope not most of them, not even half of them, but I don't have a true figure - I doubt if anyone does.
There are those who were angry about this revival conference, which reminded less of a traditional Jewish gathering and more of a Christian preacher's empowerment conference in one of the southern countries The alliance (perhaps it is not for nothing that there was a close connection between the currents), because it was made while IDF soldiers were fighting in the alleys of Khan Yunis while hostages were being held in the caves of Heba.
I'll admit that it didn't bother me: the scoundrels who live in Gaza, whether they're holding weapons or just giving Hamas activists a civilian back, don't need motivation in the form of dancing by Knesset members Shlomo Karai and Tali Gottlieb.
Ridiculous as these may be, they are mainly a finger in Netanyahu's eye, not Yahya Sinwar's (what is more, they help him in his propaganda).
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On video: Ministers Ben Gabir, Vassalof and Krei dance with the crowd at the settlement conference in Gaza tonight 01.28.24/without
The gospel according to the resettlers
What did bother?
Mainly the gospel according to the resettlers.
Despite the historical connection of the Jewish people to Gaza (which was first mentioned in the scriptures after the flood), it does not have the status of ancestral property.
These are not the hills of Samaria on which most of the plots of the Jewish people were woven during the biblical period, our ancestors are not buried here (according to belief) as in the Cave of the Patriarchs, our temple did not stand here as it did in Jerusalem, no high priest sat in it as a priest - and we can go on and on.
Jews lived in Gaza mainly during the Ottoman period, a relatively late period in the city's history after the Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamluks - and before the Egyptians, but it seems that it would only be fair to state that the Jewish faith and tradition are not the basis of the desire to "Jew" You are Gaza.
What is there?
The perception of Zionism as a revolutionary movement that exists only by being such.
How long?
until Messiah son of David comes.
If pragmatic Zionism - whether based on a socialist view or a revisionist view, always saw the victory of Zionism in its transformation from a revolutionary movement into a kind of management company of the Jewish state (the main debate on the political issue was and remains mainly the location of the "Iron Wall", not about what will happen to Israel in the day After the Arabs recognize its existence, Messianic Zionism is almost a counter-movement to it.
The aspiration that one day we will be a nation like all the nations was the basis of our existence, it is what allowed us to forge a path in the arena of research, development, art, sports and more, and to turn Israel into an advanced Western country, even if it is deeply rooted in the heart of the ancient East.
Messianic elements have always been on the fringes of the scene, but the price tag of their faith (even before there was a small but harmful terrorist organization) was clear:
it is possible to declare war on all Arabs wherever they are, conquer and resettle, but even if the mission succeeds, it will turn Israel into North Korea , to a third world country that exists within its own bubble and not as part of the family of nations.
That's why the sights last night were scary.
Michael Ben Ari, for example, Kahana's apprentice and who was a member of the Knesset from the ranks of the right "from right to right", summed up the event nicely in a tweet he published this morning, saying: "Settling in the Land of Israel from the dawn of Zionism was a Messianic matter, those who are not Zionists are not Messianic, those who are not Messianic are not Zionists ".
That is, while I, as a Jewish-Israeli-Zionist and secular, already wish for the day after, to give me back a part of my life that was before October 7, for some of my brothers-to-arms, this day is just the beginning of a campaign for the next war.
My "normal" - and that of many others, is in their eyes the end of Zionism, literally, because their Messianic revolutionary concept is at the heart of the matter:
they will not stop at Ariel or Kiryat Arba or even at the rebuilding of, let's say - Kfar Darom.
In fact, if they had been a significant political force at the time of the ceasefire talks at the end of the Yom Kippur War, they would have been in favor of a settlement on the axis between Alexandria and Cairo...
Any place occupied by IDF soldiers becomes holy in their eyes (after all, it has just been sanctified in blood), such that there to settle, and each settlement is only the base from which the troops will depart for the next mission.
Binyamin Netanyahu: Very soon he will have to choose between the extremist base and the moderate right/Government Press Office, screenshot
Netanyahu's catch
That is why the gathering of these last night was an unbearable sight, not because of pictures of Jews dancing and happy in the atmosphere of the afflicted all around, but because it symbolizes a deep disagreement in which it will be difficult to reach a compromise between significant publics in Israel.
If you will - the exact opposite of the unity (real and fake) assumed by the majority of Israeli citizens outside of Twitter.
And this is also where the great hope comes from: this gathering may wink at Bayes, but it is obscene in the eyes of the majority of Israeli citizens, who would prefer that Gaza with all its inhabitants (minus the hostages, of course) sink into the sea, than that it become another Israeli-Jewish-religious colony.
Netanyahu for the time being opposes this weakly, but consistently.
His dilemma is how to continue to hold on to his enthusiastic base (most of whom were present at last night's event), while bringing closer to him the more moderate part that is between the right and the center - those four-five mandates that, at the end of the day, are the ones that decide elections in Israel.
When you think about it like this, you find some comfort here, nevertheless: Netanyahu, who wants to rule, will sooner or later be forced to abandon his "what is nice" dances in front of the hard core and formulate a message to the entire people of Israel, the one who, despite a deep shift to the right, still listened with hope to the proposal to end the fighting With a successful hostage deal, the end of Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip and its replacement by a pan-Arab force with Saudi involvement, which is ready to give even a hug of normalization in return.
When the two alternatives are presented to the public court, everyone who wants to live will choose the pursuit of normality at the expense of the continuation of the revolution and the war.
The camp that indulged in the illusion of normality suffered a fatal blow, but the fact that we had to roll up our sleeves, mobilize, fight and yes, also mourn, did not relax its hands:
even those who believe that the victory of Zionism will not be achieved until there is no iron wall (as a metaphor) between us and our neighbors, must renounce those who see By moving this wall east, west, north and south you visualize everything.
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