For Israel, the war itself is the end, not the means

 

Haaretz Opinion

By B. Michael

Now, after around 100 Palestinians donated their bodies to better glue Bibi's derriere to his deerskin armchair, we may begin to tell the truth: Israel has not been a state for some time. It is an army base. Nothing but an army base.  

All that most of its inhabitants are concerned about is the vital question of who shoulders the greater burden when "carrying the stretcher," but are hardly bothered by who is on the stretcher, who is lying on it. What and who are they all carrying, those obedient stretcher carriers? And to where?

Had they bothered to check, they would have found only two groups of spoiled nuisances lying there. The one lies there because it received permission and funding to be as idle as it wishes. The other is waiting there for the coming of the Messiah, making everybody else miserable in the meantime. Why? Because God told them to. He speaks to them regularly.

And under the stretcher, millions of wild weeds crowd together. Those on whom it is permissible to step, to spit, to collect the taxes needed to finance the trappings of power. In return, the wild weeds get gurnisht. Here and there, they are allowed to die in war or to be taken hostage, which is really the same thing, and then they are praised to the skies. After all, sooner or later the government will once again need suckers who will die for it, so as to renew the holy war.

Nobody is telling them the depressing truth: The war is not a means to some end. The war itself is the end. Why? Because it is much easier to control a country that is at war. Then, everything is so sacred. Forbidden. Secret. "Not now." "Only when it's over." But it will never be over. War is our life. We have no existence without it.

With God's help – we shall always devour the sword, we shall always feed the sword, and we shall always sell a sword to anybody who wants one.

In fact, from its very first day the state has been in one, long, continuous war. Why? Because that's how we like it. Because if you were to take our war away, in an instant we would completely fall apart. And so, there is only one fitting name for this 80-years' war: the "Peace for War" war.

Above all, we like to fight the Palestinian people. Not only with bombs and cannons, also with settlements. And discrimination. And dispossession. And with the simple pleasure of harassment. Why? Because it's there. Because this seems easiest to us. Because it's what God said to those who talk with him regularly. And who wants to argue with God?

My army base no longer interferes in the missions of "the state." I don't want to. What, now? When there's a war on? When soldiers are dying? Health? Education? Welfare? High prices? Police? Infrastructure? Forget it! We're only dealing with stretchers now.

Eight one-ton bombs to kill one man. For fun. For revenge. So that everyone knows that it's permitted to kill 100 innocent people in order to assassinate one man. It won't help in any way but it's good for morale, it will iron out some of the wrinkles in our ego, it will gladden the nation and rescue Bibi.

The strikes were precise, of course. Ask all the military reporters. Surgical, even. Bravo. If emergency rooms used such precise surgery, Israel's population would be halved in no time. You know how much money that would save Smotrich?

It won't be easy to get out of the hole we fell into, maybe it's already impossible. A hole is no place to raise children.

~  Michael Brizon, who writes under the pen name of B. Michael, was born in 1947 and has written satirical columns and op-eds for Haaretz for close to 20 years.