The State of Israel is running from the truth: How did we turn war into a routine?

Forgive me, Eviatar Kahana, a reserve officer with the rank of Major and one of the most prominent "grooms" in the current season of "Married at First Sight" (Keshet 12), if I use him as an example of a much broader phenomenon, but it was he who testified about himself. What is the testimony? Well, it turns out it is much easier for him to deal with the demons that have been haunting him since October 7 when he is in the reserves. According to his testimony, given with notable candor, he struggles to function in civilian life (as an engineer), but from the moment he put on his uniform and signed for his weapon, in the environment of other reserve soldiers, he feels understood and accepted, he feels at home.

Let us move from the private case of Eviatar (whose television relationship fate with Neta Menashe, who also carries the scars of war in her heart, though she deals with them in a completely opposite way, we will only know later this week) to our national case, the citizens of Israel: how did we normalize a situation of endless war, which has been going on with varying intensity for almost three years?

The easy (too easy) answer would be that it suits politicians, since "when the cannons roar, the muses are silent" (attributed to Cicero), and it is easy for them to manage with a mobilized public: one can always raise the flag and say that the time is not yet ripe to ask difficult questions, since we are in a war on "seven fronts". For those who still remember, this was the original excuse of Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for delaying the establishment of a state commission of inquiry, long before they chose to blacken the face of the Supreme Court President. Not only are the muses silent, but so is the opposition: no leader (except for the fringes of the left camp) wants to talk about ending the fighting through an agreement, lest they be perceived as defeatist. Part of the Zionist ethos.

The fact that Israel is losing on the ground (Iran, implied by the agreement being formed with Donald Trump; Gaza, which will move to the management of the Peace Council under the influence of Qatar and Turkey; and Lebanon, where Hezbollah will maintain its power), regardless of the quality of its military actions, fails to cause a change in public opinion — and as a result, in the position of the opposition. Assuming that "the people" want total victory, almost everyone who challenges Benjamin Netanyahu's leadership promises not to stop the war, but rather that they know better than he does how to win it. The combination of the government's cynicism and the opposition's weakness is horrifying, but still manageable — we have already learned that the political system is cynical and weak. The truth, however, is much harder to digest: we have become addicted to war.

There will be those who say that this has always been the case, even from the days before the establishment of the state, since a central pillar of the Zionist ethos is the ability for self-defense, the one that distinguishes the proud Israeli from the diasporic Jew. This is true to some extent, but it still does not explain how we moved from a reality of civilian life between wars (which, unfortunately, happen every few years: 48, 67, 73, 82 — and so on), bounded in time, to a reality of ongoing war (already more than two years and ten months) that is interrupted by "lulls between rounds".

So we have already blamed the political system, but what about the media? The media also interprets the will of the people as support for the war until victory. The intention is not the "pro-government" channels, which will always back the government and its head, but also the media that is perceived as free. Even there, news editions and current affairs programs have become like battle heritage evenings. The media is also to blame. Even there, they prefer to salute the soldiers, sanctify the memory of the fallen, dance with new recruits amidst the splashes of water poured on them at the induction center, and hug the businesses of reserve soldiers or those who acted for them. Despite the somewhat cynical ending, I will clarify that my heart — like the heart of almost every Israeli — is not hardened to the warm embrace of the IDF (which is us, our parents, and our children), but to the fact that along the way, the fact that the role of the media is not to salute, but to ask the difficult questions, to doubt, to be skeptical — whether it concerns politicians in suits or politicians in uniform (and every officer from the rank of Brigadier General is such). That is, we are obligated to remember and remind of the fallen and cherish their memory, but at the same time to ask why they fell and until when young people will continue to pay with blood for the power-hungry and violent fantasies of unrestrained politicians.

The ongoing war is destroying every good part here: the education system is an immediate victim of it, as are the health and welfare systems. Vital infrastructure is neglected. What happened to the Israel Police, which moved from operations intended to prevent crime to over-policing in dispersing demonstrations, we are already tired of telling. So how do we, the citizens of Israel, allow this reality to manage us, even when we are slowly sobering up from the illusion that we are managing it? Normalizing an ongoing war. The answer is that we too have become a little addicted to the smell of napalm in the morning ("Apocalypse Now"). We normalized this distorted reality in which the "strongest army in the Middle East" cannot handle a terrorist organization armed mostly with light weapons — for almost three years now. We normalized a reality in which IDF soldiers in Lebanon became targets for drones, paralyzed tourism in the north, and running to shelters every time we hear a lion's roar in the face of a venomous cat. We normalized the abnormal — just don't let them close Ben Gurion Airport between rounds, so we can "vent".

The possible answers are many, some of them technical even if painful. More than half of the candidates for security service do not enlist at all. Among those who enlist, the majority will serve in non-combat units. From the minority that serves in field units, only a part will continue to reserve duty, from which they will drop out in too high percentages every year. Is it a wonder that the IDF urgently needs more fighters? The direct burden of the campaign affects a minority among Israelis relatively. Add to this those who are not involved from the start (due to religion or national affiliation, i.e., Haredim and Arabs) — and you have why, as long as an Iranian missile does not hit their home, there are quite a few Israelis who live in relative peace with the continuation of the war.

Who is afraid of soul-searching? And there are, of course, not only technical-quantitative reasons, but also qualitative-cultural ones: as long as the war continues, soul-searching is delayed, questions about social and political involvement are pushed aside. We too, just like Major (Res.) Eviatar Kahana, prefer to wear uniforms, sign for weapons, and go to the reserves, instead of dealing with the demons that haunt us. I think in psychology it is called "repression" — a survival mechanism so essential in the short term and destructive like no other in the long term.