“No Wonder Israelis Want War. Violence Has Become a Source of Joy” (Dr Ariel Handel, Ha’aretz) /
‘The Fanatics’ Pre-Election Plan to create chaos in the West Bank’ (Ben Caspit) /
West Bank at boiling point as IDF faces manpower shortages and “Jewish nationalist crime” surges (Yossi Yehoshua) /
Netanyahu left the White House empty-handed (Ben Caspit) /
Key strategic changes in the Gulf in the past two weeks (Col. Udi Evental)
[These compilations are drawn from analysis & commentary by leading Israeli political & security commentators, predominantly translated from Hebrew sources — as reports published in Hebrew often provide a different window on Israeli internal discourse. Minor edits have been made for clarity during translation].
CONSEQUENTIAL OBSERVATIONS —
No Wonder Israelis Want War. Violence Has Become a Source of Joy (Dr Ariel Handel, Israeli political theorist; author of Normalizing Occupation: The Politics of Everyday Life in the West Bank Settlements, Ha’aretz):
What if one reason Israelis are so happy is that brutality has become pleasurable? … Today, violence is not only liberated from the trap of “shooting and crying” … or from acceding to the call of Naftali Bennett ... of “no more apologizing”: It is also becoming joyful. Probably the clearest manifestation of the ostensible joy of violence takes the form of what’s referred to as “happy Jews.”
In 2015, journalists Akiva Novick and Chaim Levinson explained in their report, “The Complete Hilltop Lexicon,” that happy Jews are those “who are not bound to the archaic conventions and rules of morality, and carry out ‘price tag’ [retaliatory operations against Palestinians] with a smile on their face” … Invitations to carry out pogroms are circulated on colourful, cheerful posters that look more like flyers for an open-air rave than calls to violence …