There Is No Truth or Justice, Only Sides
"It cannot be that Jews do this to one another, we are children of Holocaust survivors," cried out Meira Solberg, the wife of the deputy president of the Supreme Court. And indeed, like a smoldering ember, it seems the internal fire burning among us sears every person and every place. Just a few hours before the rented bus arrived in Alon Shvut, another video from the creators of "Bibiist, not half a human being" was circulated on social media. The video was satirical and biting like its predecessor, but unlike the colorful family portrait that framed the previous one, this time the plot followed a noir-style detective who investigates the method that led to the fabricated accusations against Force 100. The video struck a chord with the national camp over the past few years. The justice system backed the protest against the overhaul, which was inflamed by the old media, which supported the justice system out of an agenda, the video argues. In their view, the affair reached its peak in the Force 100 case. As recalled, the chief military advocate leaked and fabricated a video claiming that IDF fighters committed sodomy against Nukhba terrorists. In retrospect, it turned out that the video, which caused an international uproar and led to severe accusations against Israel, was far from proving the claims. Nevertheless, the military advocate general slipped away from responsibility almost silently, while the mainstream media and the attorney general refused to disavow the plot.
The bottom line of the video was repeated several times, "There is no truth and justice," the detective says after the conversation with the suspect, "there are only sides." The video as a whole, in effect, serves as a defiant mirror held up by the right toward the left. Looking at the protest against the overhaul, which included acts of refusal and encouragement of nonattendance, and the system's weak resistance or indulgence, it is clear that there is something to this. But reality is still better than any fictional script. Evidence that this worldview, that there is "no truth, only sides," has also taken hold on the right comes to us again and again, for example in the recurring sagas surrounding MK Tali Gottlieb. When an elected official repeatedly spreads baseless conspiracy theories, lashes out at security officials, or amplifies unsupported information, the response of a leadership that wants to survive should have been total repudiation in the name of truth. But instead, we see how the government and the entire camp often choose to stay silent, look away, and sometimes even justify the madness. Why? Because she is "one of us." Because she is fighting the "right enemies." This acceptance shows that in the current era, lying becomes legitimate as long as it serves the camp. This worldview no longer characterizes one camp or another, it has become the mother tongue of Israeli politics. There is no proper administration, no standards, no pretense. There is no truth and justice, only sides.
The tragedy is that the motive can be understood: there is truth in the claim that many times the left, or the systems identified with it, acted exactly this way. When public discourse is conducted in such a manner, people on the right feel they have been cornered. The response to the left's concept of "sides" became an impossible dilemma, either surrender, meaning undermining the will of the voters, or fighting over every inch, which shakes democracy itself. The goal is no longer to prove the righteousness of a path or to offer a moral alternative, but to throw the same coin back at the other side. The right chose to wage this fight using the same destructive strategy, "holding up mirrors." The goal is no longer to prove the righteousness of a path or to offer a moral alternative, but to throw the same coin back at the other side. It happens in institutions, when blind support for legislation in favor of Haredim is justified as a response to brutality. And it happens in the street, when actions by right-wing activists such as Mordechai David, who block and harass senior left-wing figures like Aharon Barak, suddenly receive support and justification from the national camp on the childish and dangerous grounds that "Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara started it" or that "Kaplan did it קודם." But this must be said plainly, when both sides believe there is no truth and no justice, only a struggle for power, and when the only justification for actions is to "hold up a mirror" to the opponent, this is no longer a war of ideas but a war of classes. It is a race to the bottom without boundaries, where everyone loses. When the government itself empties concepts such as "proper administration" and "statehood" of meaning, the fire immediately reaches additional sectors, and when the government itself empties concepts such as "proper administration" and "statehood" of meaning, the fire immediately reaches additional sectors.
Some will argue that the Haredi problems will end when the legal adviser stops taking the law into her own hands, but anyone with eyes in his head sees the escalation, from the attack on two female soldiers in Bnei Brak in February, through the break-in to the yard of the Military Police commander, to the violence now directed at the deputy president of the Supreme Court. The Haredi parties, too, which waited hours before issuing a condemnation, understand the new rules of the game, their own people are afraid they may be harmed. If we have given up truth and justice in favor of a camp war, we are left without a common foundation on which to build a state. The images from Alon Shvut are a painful reminder that in a world of rival groups, even children of Holocaust survivors will suffer burns. It turns out that when there is no truth and only sides, there is no limit to what Jews are capable of doing to one another.
