Iconography of Israel's protest movement
The memes are menacing, existential; the house is burning down. Darkness is falling. Winter is coming. Civil War.
I’ve tried hard to not write about Israel here on The Dejargonizer. I just don’t want to get into it. It’s complicated. Life is too short.
I even asked
for advice. I’m still amazed he even replied, but not surprised at how thoughtful and authentic he is.
Oh well.
Israel looks like it is coming apart at the seems. Lots of people are angry. On the news, on social media, in homes. Even in the organic supermarket, which came as a bit of a shock.
The nation seems split down the middle.
One side wants to turn Israel into a ultra-nationalist Jewish authoritarian state, with democracy as an option you can turn on and off, whenever you have a majority.
The other side wants democracy, with Jewish observance as an opt-in.
[Previously, I wrote a techie’s guide to the battle over Israel’s Operating System]]
The main narrative of the opposition: Netanyahu and his ultra-nationalist and ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, are creating a Jewish version of Iran, Turkey, Russia, and Hungary, as opposed to, say, Tel Aviv, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Berlin, Copenhagen, Vienna, and Melbourne.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: we should be so lucky to end up like Iran, Turkey, Russia, and Hungary, instead of where we’ll probably be if a real civil war breaks out here. That would take us closer to places like Damascus, Mogadishu, and Karachi.
The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, who has been visiting Israel and writing about it for decades, nails it. So does the ‘1984’ motif.
Netanyahu himself has shamefully conflated protestors against judicial reform to ultra-nationalists youth who rampaged through the Palestinian town of Hawara, where earlier two of their members were gunned down in cold blood.
In Netanyahu’s Ministry of Truth, ordinary people peacefully protesting the government’s agenda are worse than a lynch mob burning a town and killing innocent people.
The timing and framing of this next photo is incredible. An ultra-Orthodox man walks past a group of protestors dressed up as handmaids from Margaret Atwood’s book “The Handmaid’s Tale”, about oppression of women in a patriarchal society. The women are headed to the demonstration. He walks in the other direction.
As for my part in the protest.
I made this. I call it Burning With Bibi Selfie. Circa 2023.
It’s a very crude riff on a well-known internet meme called House on Fire Selfie Girl/Disaster Girl.
![[Image - 17725] | Disaster Girl | Know Your Meme](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WuUu!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8d14841e-df00-4dbd-9bff-9bd34806e65e_600x506.jpeg "[Image - 17725] | Disaster Girl | Know Your Meme")
You get the picture.
I am convinced now that Bibi Netanyahu is willing to burn the house down — the only house the Jewish people have had since 79AD — for a Get out of Jail Card (he’s on trial for 3 counts of corruption). To escape his trial, he’s going straight for the Judiciary’s jugular. Curb the courts.
And then, as if things weren’t bad enough, they got even weirder.
While Tel Aviv was convulsed in protests against her husband’s judicial coup, his much-maligned wife went for a haircut at an upmarket square in north Tel Aviv. The Netanyahu’s live in Jerusalem, and also have a house in Caesarea in the country’s North. What was the reason for Mrs. Netanyahu to schedule a haircut for late in the evening in central Tel Aviv, just as the city was blowing up?
Naturally, word spread. Protesters surrounded the salon. It is being called The Siege of Sarah Netanyahu (at a hair salon, is this really happening?)
The police had to send in a battalion of Border Police officers to extricate her.
I made another crude sketch of Sarah Netanyahu as Marie Antoinette.
After Police freed his wife, the Commander in Chief of the strongest army in the Middle East posted this.
To which someone quickly responded with this
Goodnight, and good luck.