If we don’t rise up now, then when will we?!

For nearly two years now, every day we wake up to a new horror, and every night we go to sleep with another, each one the work of the current nightmare regime. These horrors unfold wherever their long arm reaches – certainly in Gaza, where we’ve reached the point of deliberate starvation of two million people. But this neighborhood bully also lashes out at all our neighboring countries, and at us, the citizens who elect them, through corruption, draconian laws, turning the law into a joke, and escalating violence against anyone who doesn’t fall in line with their agenda.

And us? We’re the silent lambs.

Quami asks the question that should already be keeping each and every one of us awake at night...

Ayala Shalev, Editor, That’s About Us

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If we don’t rise up now, then when will we?! / Quami

Because all of this has already happened, and just in the past few days: Netanyahu is weighing alternatives for retrieving the hostages, while endlessly stalling their release. At the same time, Islamic Jihad announced it had lost contact with the captors of the hostage Rom Braslavski. Likud is considering forming a committee to investigate “the funding of protests against the government” – but of course, not to investigate what led to the catastrophe of October 7. Limor Son Har-Melech says our fallen “did not perish but ascended,” essentially turning them into Shahids. Orit Strook called to expand the fighting in Gaza to areas where there are still hostages, even though everyone knows that will kill those that are still alive. The Knesset, by a majority of 71 (!) members, just voted on a declaration calling for Israel’s sovereignty to be applied in Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley, meaning, the occupation is no longer swept under the rug but openly proclaimed as a goal.

People claim this declaration is symbolic and has no practical meaning, but it definitely has at least one: the world saw the smug grins on the faces of our monstrous leaders, and concluded that if the people aren’t rising up against them, this must be what Israelis want – occupation and apartheid. As long as they’re in power, their disgusting faces are the face of us all. Just like people here say 100% of Palestinians support Hamas, so the world sees Israelis as if 100% support this government. And how can it be otherwise, when they see that mass protests against the government aren’t sweeping up a majority of the people?

Not to mention that multitudes of Israelis delight in the suffering of Gazans, celebrate dead Palestinian children, and deny the crimes against humanity Israel is committing against Palestinians – chief among them the deliberate, mass starvation. I no longer believe these are just bots – people here truly have developed a joy for death. Around the world, we’re now called a “murderous terror state” and we’re like, “What? What are they talking about? We’re the good guys.”

Mainstream media treats the news as entertainment, showing the public only what it wants to see, so people actually think our problem is “hasbara” (PR) and not the horror we’re wreaking in Gaza. “Hasbara” has become equivalent to concealment. Like little kids, we think if we just shut our eyes tightly enough, no one will see what we’re doing and we’ll be able to keep going.

Meanwhile, soldiers keep dying long after there are no meaningful objectives any more – young lives are cut short, entire families destroyed, survivors likely to suffer lifelong trauma, more and more turning to suicide. But the coalition keeps going and cheerfully committing any corruption it wants right in front of us. Apparently, our job is just to serve them, to keep them smiling and feel things just keep getting better and better and better for them.

But apparently, even this isn’t enough to stir mass revolt

The fascist-messianists in the government are planning to turn the hellish deathtrap we created in Gaza into a Riviera. While the world watches, day after day, more and more Palestinian children are wasting away from starvation in images impossible to process, because of the siege and starvation we orchestrated. At the same time, while our hostages are lost, starved, humiliated, and tortured by Hamas, the world also sees life in Israel going on as usual. Instead of rising up, people party and enjoy themselves; everything here seems just fine.

The hostages’ families are still painted by the government as enemies, who also continue to serve the residents of the Gaza envelope nothing but gravel, but most of us are already absorbed in routine or escapism and have forgotten them – let alone those to whom the hostages’ families are just an eyesore. There are genuine righteous people still fighting with and for them, but do we see crowds storming the Knesset or the border to help our hostages? No. So, to the world, we look like Sun City in Apartheid-era South Africa: living the good life not only while masses are slaughtered in Gaza, but not even caring about our own brothers and sisters. And then we complain that the world “fails to see the complexity.”

In the end, the people as a whole, in unfathomable passivity, allow everything our government is doing to happen. We’re not putting up a real fight – we’re not striking, not shutting things down, not stopping anything. The coalition keeps ignoring us. They’re waging a war of attrition against us, and we are letting them win. There’s always something more interesting to watch on TikTok – which we’ll forget a minute later – rather than screaming against each of these monstrosities.

And it’s not as if the entire world isn’t currently in a state of shocking decline. Everyone’s caught up in a whirlwind of moral and ethical decay, where humanity insists on destroying itself, dragging down with it the beautiful world we live in, nature, and all animals. Everything is trampled, everything becomes collateral damage.

But, unlike the other nations we so love to scorn, we were raised all our lives as the “chosen people,” a “light unto the nations,” those meant to be better. And now, the “chosen people” not only permit everything that’s already been described, but have reached a point where our Minister of Heritage openly announced this week that what we’re doing is erasing Gaza and its people. If someone anywhere in the world announced the erasure of a Jewish population, we would all cry out, immediately declaring it a Holocaust, genocide, or both. But that’s exactly what we’re doing to the Palestinians: committing genocide, extermination. All those words that rightfully make us sick to our stomach – is what we’re doing right now, and it will remain the truth no matter how loudly we deny it. Here we keep convincing ourselves it’s not true, but the whole world sees what we’re trying to hide. The truth is bad and horrific, and there’s no escaping it.

Of course, those who deny this are usually the very same people who say, “There are no innocents in Gaza,” “Wipe them out so there’ll be nothing left,” “Every Gazan baby is a future murderer,” and so on – those who already wish for the Palestinians’ destruction. So what exactly are they denying? At least let them take pride in their 'achievement'.

And let’s not forget that this erasure/extermination of the Gazans was publicly declared by Israel’s Minister of Heritage.

Let that sink in for a moment. Our Minister of Heritage.

He simply said what’s actually being carried out on the ground, spoke the truth, and that truth is nauseating.

Is this our heritage? Is this what we want it to be?

Crimes against humanity and the extermination of children won’t fix the crimes Hamas has committed against us. “An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind”—that’s from our own sources, and if anything, that’s what our heritage should be.

Since I became socially and politically aware, I’ve had criticism about what goes on in this country, long before Bibi came to power. He didn’t invent corruption, racism, or the occupation – he just maximized them to levels no sane person could have imagined, even in their worst nightmares. I’m disgusted by how our country is being run right now, but I love Israel. Why has loving Israel become blindly following the leader? Why are we letting the Pied Piper from Caesarea lead us to our bitter end, as if he and his evil coalition are some kind of God-given fate?

To all those cursing or getting angry at what I’ve written – save your energy, you won’t change my mind, and in any case, you’ve already won for now.

To everyone else: thank God there are still those who resist. There are just way too many who resist only in their hearts but keep silent. I understand everyone who’s afraid and just wants to retreat inward, but we have long ago reached the point where silence is outright collaboration with every one of these injustices, without exception.

Look how determined and unified the government and its supporters are in their goals. It’s time for us to be just as determined and united, to drop the purity tests and divisions between our own subgroups. It’s time for the ground here to shake. Otherwise—they will drag us all down with them.

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Quami is a radio broadcaster and musician