Israeli divide causes 'incalculable damage', tears IOF apart

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Israeli Media
31 Mar 2023 10:50

Israeli media reported that the ongoing "ethnic and sectarian divide" in "Israel" threatens to send Israeli society 60 years back in time.

Israeli military reservists carry a stuffed figure on a stretcher during a protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to overhaul the judicial system in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 25, 2023 (AP).

Talks over the deteriorating situation in "Israel" are becoming more prominent in Israeli media. Amos Harel, one of the most prominent Israeli journalists and the military correspondent and defense analyst for Haaretz, has written about the rift among Israelis and how it threatens the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).

Harel argued that "Israeli identity politics is playing a bigger role" in the ongoing and deepening divisions across the entity. This came to show that "Israel" has indeed been faced with an identity crisis resulting in "ethnic tension" and "sectarian hatred".

According to Haaretz, "ethnic tension was deliberately restored to the heart of the debate" in light of the criminal investigation into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Harel argued that this "controversy" could cause "incalculable damage" in the IOF.

Moreover, he stated that the sequence of events has been "encouraging sectarian hatred," which ended up dividing reservists, who have been at the forefront of the most recent violent protests in "Israel", into “us” and “them” which, Harel explained, categorized IOF pilots as "a privileged group of disloyal elitists."

IOF and ethno-classist tensions

Natan Eshel, a Netanyahu confidant, according to Haaretz, once explained on Channel 12 that the “non-Ashkenazi public, … hate everything. Hatred is what unites our camp.” That was the common ground for the Israeli protests, claimed Harel, before he added that in "Israel" many observe a significant difference between "first-class citizens" and "second-class citizens".

The report also noted the statement of Professor Yagil Levy, an expert in army-society relations, who explained that the ongoing crisis “has ratcheted up the ethno-class tension in the army. It is fomenting a politicization of tracking. The air force bases are the venue where the collision is developing in the micro space, beyond the separation between the pilots and the policing army in the territories.”

Harel also highlighted that Israeli media such as Channel 12 and Channel 14 anchors have been publicly taking sides in the ongoing divide and dubbed them to be "brainwashing viewers" and driving the conflict deeper.

He stressed that through such propaganda, the tensions being spewed and driven by media will "seep back into the units [IOF] until an explosion occurs that will not focus only on the regime coup and the threats to refuse to serve."

The analyst then concluded that "the government is ready to tear the IDF [IOF] apart and hurl Israeli society 60 years back in time."