'Netanyahu government took dvantage of us'
Photo: Haim Tzach
What has become of our nation?
Op-ed: Netanyahu regime has destroyed our livelihood, dreams, values and future; turned Israel into racist, violent state
In Bibi's Defense
Hagai Segal
Op-ed: Social protesters' predictable attacks on PM over price hikes not based on facts, cannot be taken seriously
Last weekend I ran out of words. I want to share my sadness with you – sadness over my nation and what has become of it.
What is there left to say about the lawlessness, which recently claimed the lives of three women in Netanya? What is there left to say about the hurling of firebombs on kindergartens, homes of migrants and a Palestinian family's car? What is there left to say about the lynching of Arab teens by dozens of Jewish teenagers in Jerusalem, or the destruction and abuse of the Palestinian population in the name of "our people"? And what about the hatred and racism emanating from our synagogues and corridors of power?
What is there left to say about our interior minister, the stringent Jew who takes pride in his plan to lock up those migrants who the government is preventing him from deporting? What do you, as the descendants of refugees, say about the fact that infants and mentally challenged children are being held in detention camps and suffer from hunger and lack of medical care? And what about the deported migrants who were killed upon their return to South Sudan or died of diseases they contracted there?
Even if we accept the argument that their parents committed some sort of crime against the Jews, would we have even imagined three years ago that infants and toddlers would pay for their parents' "sins"?
You tell me, my fellow Israelis, do you remember where we were before the Netanyahu government took advantage of us? Do you remember who we were - as a country, society and, most importantly, as human beings?
Who were we before the hope of being a free nation in our land was lost? Before the current regime turned our livelihood, our dreams, our values and our future into Pompeii? And where does it say in the Jewish Torah that it is permitted to crush and abandon the weak, the disabled, the poor and the foreigners? And what is there left say about police violence, legislative brutality, the destruction of the education system and freedom of the press? Tell me.
And is there anything left to say about a prime minister who turns the president into the new "threat?
I feel a great sadness; and shame, and rage and fear; and hope that the correction will come before the destruction. I hope we succeed in rising from these ashes, learn from what has happened to us. I hope we realize that the last thing we need is a "strong leader" and that with more of this "democracy" and this "Judaism" - all will be lost.
