Q&A: On the Brutalization of Israeli Society
On the Brutalization of Israeli Society
Question
Since the Rabbi is much older than I am and has lived in this country for many years, in your estimation, is this Israeli brutalization, like we saw at Sde Teiman and likewise on social media, which produced bizarre tweets like, “It is forbidden to investigate soldiers under any circumstances,” and the insane support from members of the government—are these signs of the last generation, or were there always things like this here?
Answer
It’s hard to measure something like that. These phenomena are becoming more extreme because of social media and the media in general (the global village), but they are intensifying in both directions. The “liberals” and the progressives are becoming more extreme, and the conservatives are becoming more extreme in response. The left is becoming more extreme, and the right in response to it. Today, everything is more extreme.
Discussion on Answer
From reading many articles and comments on various sites from both ends of the political and religious spectrum, I found quite clearly that the hatred and revulsion among the progressive left toward religion and toward religious/Haredi people is incomparably higher than the hatred in the opposite direction. That impression is confirmed by a survey published three years ago, which found that 40% of secular people said they hate Haredim, while only 2% of Haredim said they hate secular people.
Likewise, the left’s sympathy for Palestinians, as opposed to their deep hatred for right-wingers and for religion, is really astonishing. It seems they feel much more threatened by people whose security and economic conduct they see as harmful than by those who want to murder them with torture. It’s hard to understand such distorted psychology.
The survey about hatred of Haredim sounds dubious to me; I’d be happy to see a link.
It seems to me that stupidity and hatred are a priori and just latch onto convenient targets. So in my opinion, you can find them in every community.
Just to balance things out. Recently I started reading the comments on articles and op-eds in Haaretz, and I was surprised: there are also refined thugs. You can read truly nauseating comments there, ones that openly identify with terrorists and sneer at “our” tragedies.
Just one or two examples from memory: a comment mocking the husband of MK Limor Son Har-Melech, who was murdered in a terror attack, and adding that the child she was pregnant with should be called child ***.
A comment in which the commenter refers to the army as the Gestapo and claims that Hamas’s actions don’t come close to Israel’s atrocities, and terrorists who were arrested are called “wretches.”
I hope that in the quotations I didn’t go over the garbage threshold that’s allowed to be posted on the site.