Akiva Eldar finds the conduct of high government officials in Israel, as noted earlier, to be deplorable, as he explains in AL Monitor:
These words epitomize the xenophobia, separatism, racism and cruelty that are eating away at every value that Israel once held sacred. These toxic waters are trickling down from the top to the very roots of society, overflowing and flooding the environment. They began with Knesset member Miri Regev, the current culture minister, calling asylum seekers a “cancer” in Israel’s body in 2012, and then moved on to the group calling itself Students for Southern Tel Aviv, which a year ago “ratted out” soldiers who volunteered at daycare centers for the children of asylum seekers. At the time, the army spokesman issued a response to the right-wing Jewish Voice website that ran the item, stating that the activity was part of the army’s encouragement of soldiers to contribute to their communities, that it was apolitical and that it was approved, as usual, by the commanders and education officers of their unit. Of note, IDF soldiers also assist Holocaust survivors, children with disabilities and charitable organizations that distribute food to the poor.
Indeed, in an enlightened society, the state bears responsibility for those less fortunate — the state, not soldiers and other volunteers, such as the nongovernmental organization Elifelet, which takes care of children of asylum seekers. The asylum seekers, who numbered 57,000 in 2012, cannot be deported because of the danger that would await them in their homeland. There is no doubt that they are needy, among other reasons because of draconian Israeli laws and regulations, and that they reside in Tel Aviv. Given this, why are they not worthy of consideration as “paupers” who have priority? After all, the Talmud’s maxim does not refer to “Jewish paupers.”
When a nation is subjected to persistent attacks of all kinds, verbal and physical, whether existential or not, some of its citizens will crack, as it were, abandoning values of national importance, and they will find ways to despise those who attack them. Those who Eldar condemn, if his characterization is true, have climbed to the heights of power on the backs of those who have been trained to be fearful, not generous, to fear those who may indeed be ready to attack them. Perhaps it is right to grieve for both those who’ve lost their way even as they attain power, and those who see it, and can do little more than write about. Eldar finishes with this:
So, kindhearted soldiers were forced to abandon the toddlers they took out of the darkness of the children’s warehouses into the sunlight. It is a missed opportunity to substitute a photo of an Israeli soldier hugging a non-Israeli baby for the one that filled the pages of foreign media showing the IDF soldier who shot and killed a wounded Palestinian assailant in Hebron in March or of a politician comfortably ensconced in the Defense Ministry flexing his muscles at the chief of staff on the backs of miserable babies. All that really matters is that the Ministry of Strategic Affairs has appointed a special team to battle, so explained the ministry’s general director Sima Vaknin, Israel’s image as a “pariah state.”
