Israeli media erases Palestinian people from Israeli consciousness

A few days ago, the prosecutor raised the possibility of opening a criminal investigation against singer Eyal Golan, after he called for the “total annihilation of Gaza”. On the one hand, it is worth asking why the Public Prosecution specifically targeted the Golan Heights, completely ignoring the calls for genocide against the Palestinian people by dozens of politicians, military personnel and journalists who delved into their morbid fantasies of genocide, razing, starving and starving.
On the other hand, let me assure you that Golan is not in any danger, and he certainly will not go to jail, as he is accused of a case of sexual exploitation of minors. He is inciting against the Palestinian people. One has to live in Israel for two hours to realize that this “investigation” is nothing but an empty farce, designed to attract the attention of the judges of the Hague Tribunal and Uncle Sam, in order to show the seriousness of Israel’s attitude towards war crimes and incitement to genocide, which denies “reasonable people” the right to interfere in our affairs through trivial ideas such as “international norms and conventions” and “humane treatment”.
Just raising the possibility of an investigation into the Golan Heights is odd, since the protests against the investigation transcend existing divisions between Israeli political camps, with protests stretching from Simcha Rotman (member of the Knesset) to Ahmed Tibi (member of the Knesset), even if it is for contradictory reasons (I bet Tibi thinks many other people who encouraged genocide in Gaza should be convicted, while Rotman thinks no Jews should be prosecuted because the crime of “incitement” is a miraculous crime that only Arabs could commit).
Among the many comments, a very insignificant one appeared, that of Ynet analyst Attila Schomfleby, who wrote: “In light of the absurd decision of the Attorney General, here is new material I wrote for you to investigate: Possible eradication of Gaza! Come with me and investigate it now.” There is no need to praise Schomfleby for his audacity, as he is well aware that the state provides every support to those who call for the eradication of Gaza, but essentially praises those who actually eradicate it. If Schomfleby was keen to defend freedom of expression with practical actions, he would probably have to fight for the Arab citizens who have been fired, arrested or beaten in recent months for doing completely legal things; like posting on social media that read “Gaza’s eyes are crying”, or for wearing T-shirts with Arabic text, or for going out to participate in peaceful anti-war demonstrations.
But Shomfreby’s post is not only sad, it’s dangerous. It turns the real possibility of two million people surviving despite the war into a mere rhetorical device in a theoretical debate about Jewish rights (just as calls to exterminate all Jews by gassing in the name of free speech have been turned into a slogan and turned into an abstract issue).
This trivial article is representative of a wider phenomenon; it is the complete disappearance of the Palestinian people from Israeli consciousness. Similarly, President Isaac Herzog condemned the massacre in the village of Gite, claiming that it “hurt all settlers” and “the status of Israel”, but said nothing about the harm done to Palestinian men and women. Settlers attempted to burn, and Israel’s foreign minister wrote in a letter to former Tzipi Livni: “They believe they are burning Palestinian houses, but they are burning the foundations of the Jewish national homeland, just as they are burning Palestinian houses. These are illusions, not the essence of the event.”
Treating the lives of the Palestinian people as an abstract theoretical entertainment, or we can say, at best a media issue, transforming millions of people into ghostly figures who do not exist or are unimportant unless they contribute to society, reveals the internal debates of the Jewish people. Symbolic erasure is not necessarily worse than actual erasure, but it can happen easily; life is nothing more than a rhetorical tool, and there is no problem in annihilating it, eliminating it.
Yuna Gonen
Haaretz
Palestine Institute