The public has its limits, too

The Israeli public is sick of the army siding with anti-Israel elements, tying the hand of its soldiers and commanders, thus putting them in harm’s way. The outrage over the denunciation of the soldier in the Hebron shooting is the pot boiling over.

By Emily Amrousi, ISRAEL HAYOM

The long, sunny days between the Hebrew month of Adar and Pessah. And this time of year, when terrorist attacks are commemorated twice a day. Five years since the Fogel family was slaughtered. Twenty years since the terrible Dizengoff bombing, the Purim when costumed children were murdered and wounded. Fourteen years since Bloody March. The Park Hotel. The Matza Restaurant. Thirteen years since the No. 37 bus bombing in Haifa. Three years since Evyatar “Napo” Borovsky was slaughtered at a bus stop at Tapuah Junction. That’s only a partial list. And people are still being murdered in our streets.

And in exhausting days like these, the people of Israel must decide (before it’s decided for them) whether they side with a terrorist or with an Israeli soldier. I might not allow that soldier to date my daughter. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m on his side. He’s a soldier and we’re in the midst of a war.

To gauge how far apart those who hold the microphones are from the public, all you needed to do was listen to Army Radio host Yael Dan this week. An expert in social media networks was on the line to paint the listeners a picture of the “wild incitement against the chief of staff” (a fish in the net harsh words like “scandal,” “criticism of the chief of staff,” and claims that “the system is ineffectual.”) Dan quoted an amazing statistic: 80% (!) of social media users opposed the chief of staff’s position. It doesn’t jive with the people she knows from her own neighborhood.

“Maybe the [Internet] is a platform for more extremist types, because other kinds of people with different opinions make less effort to express themselves online?” Dan asked the expert, and added, “There are people who do this professionally, right? Who are paid? There is a mechanism, with very sophisticated techniques, for embedding responses like these — the violent ones – and from that end of the Internet, right? These aren’t just people’s spontaneous responses, is there someone doing this professionally?”

It’s the people, Yael, and this is their face. They aren’t being paid. And they aren’t extremists. These are Israelis who don’t want the soldier to become a scapegoat. These are people who were present at a stabbing attack and saw a human being like themselves trying to spill their blood. They are voters from all the parties, whose intuition tells them that the terrorist is mortal. The B’Tselem incitement, according to which the soldier is a murderer, infuriates them more than his violation of the code of conduct. They know the soldiers, their sons, and know that they aren’t the same as the gangs of murderers, and that we aren’t on the brink of anarchy.

It’s not only the soldier who is the scapegoat. The IDF chief of staff is, too. The people of Israel are tired of it. They’re sick of the legal advisors who curtail the responses of soldiers and officers, even at the cost of human life, and there have been such cases. They’re sick of seeing an IDF widow battle to have her husband’s headstone read that he died fighting a terrorist. It has no more patience with the Military Prosecutor, which still hasn’t announced whether Lt. Col. Neria Yeshurun, who was investigated after he shot at an empty (an empty!) house during Operation Protective Edge while the funeral for one of his fallen soldiers was taking place, will be tried. The people have blown a fuse over the loss of common sense, the day-to-day war, and in general.

They’re sick of members of the Journalists Party being the ones that write the discourse of values, deciding — for example — that Ramle and Beit Shemesh, where demonstrations in support of the soldier took place, weren’t “us” but “them.” They’re sick of the small group of “journalicians” that for hears has been preaching mercy toward the cruel and putting on kid gloves to empathetically interview the mothers and fathers of despicable terrorists.

Their efforts to do everything to smear the heroic, brave-hearted Israelis who fight the murderers are coming out our ears. Enough with the journalists who exploited the case of a grandmother who was injured during a pursuit of a terrorist; enough with the people who report a poll saying that most Israelis oppose assimilation because “the majority of Israelis are racist.” We look to our right and we look to our left and realize that Israel isn’t becoming “debased” as the talking heads on television enjoy portraying it.

We have no more patience with Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem and the other Jews who serve as slaves of the Europeans. We aren’t willing to sacrifice our child-soldier for the good of the European god. We know that B’Tselem isn’t interested in human rights for Palestinians, certainly not after the vicious and humiliating testimonies by the pro-coexistence group Ta’ayush, but serve the global eye that is looking for all of us.

When a mother is bleeding to death on her own doorstep, holding a knife in her body so the terrorist won’t remove it and murder her children, we have no energy for peacocking like the scissors speech. Enough. We know how to make our peace with the Talmudic dictate to “rise up and kill [someone who comes to kill you]” without the High Court of Justice and B’Tselem, and most of all we want to live. Israelis are throwing everything that they had building up inside at the chief of staff, who raised B’Tselem to the rank of Military Investigator.

The pingpong between Right and Left has become an exchange at the speed of light. Flying from one side to the other. Look at what we’ve been through in just a few weeks: “No more” and Ilana Dayan; the controversy over the civics textbook; the nonprofits funding law; the “foreign agents” campaign by Im Tirzu; outrage over the foreign agents campaign; Dr. Anat Berko’s P-P-P argument; Shimon Shiffer’s “beast” comment; Razi Barkai comparing grief to grief; Army Radio becoming the target of slings and arrows.

What more? Erel Segal is given a program and is chastised for his imitation of Zionist Union MK Stav Shaffir; the Arab MKs stick up for Hezbollah; the bill that would suspend MKs who act in such a manner; Brig. Gen. Ofek Buchris; the police commissioner refusing to investigate anonymous sexual harassment complaints; criticism of the commissioner; Breaking the Silence and classified information; B’Tselem with its footage of the soldier and the terrorist. In financial journalism, this is known as “rapid fluctuation.”

In this latest round, the pot is boiling over. This isn’t like the usual internal muttering. The clip and the institution’s harsh criticism of the soldier serve the enemy, it’s as simple as that. The imams in the mosques didn’t need it to blow up the story of the executions Israel carries out against young people, nor did the Palestinian Facebook.

But the IDF chiefs’ determined words against the soldier, even before an investigation, and his public arrest, proved retroactively that what they’ve been saying about the soldiers all these years is true. The brow of the IDF spokesman, furrowed in anger, was a gift to the spinners of false stories. The Israel Defense Forces fell like easy prey into the hands of predators who were waiting for it to slip up.