How one single word shifted the historic debate from being about the innate character of the state of Israel toward the go-to Israeli framing of “right vs. left”, leaving large swaths of society to believe that this is not their fight.
It seems as if it’s all been said and done, in the press and in the streets. And at the very end of this unleashed chaos, Israelis woke up one day to find that they were living in a different state, unlike the one they knew, and only because of some “reform”! The Israeli instinct to frame everything as “it’s a left vs. right issue; one thinks this and the other thinks that, but we’re all family; all we need is love” — was working around the clock. This heuristic anesthesia was extremely effective in taming the public outrage. It gave many people the leeway to refrain from learning the details of such a reform, from listening closely to what politicians were talking about, or to look beyond their standard partisan positioning.
It’s too hard for us to comprehend a radical change in the country’s regime. So instead, why don’t we discuss our usual topics, and I’ll tell you my usual opinion and you tell me yours. So anyway, they call it a reform. But what’s the big deal? Just a few minor changes in some judicial stuff. There’s nothing to worry about man!