Haviv Rettig Gur
The violence by Israeli radicals against Palestinians has the explicit support of only a very small percentage of Israelis living over the Green Line. The term "settlers" encompasses a hugely diverse group, including Haredim and secularists and even leftists. Most live very close to the Green Line and chose their home only because it was affordable, and even among the ideologically devoted there's a broad spectrum of opinion. And a great many of them, even if they are appalled by this violence, are also exhausted by events, by Arab and Iranian rhetoric that's routinely genocidal, by neverending Islamist violence and promises of violence from the ideological Islamic-supremacist factions of the other side. These Israelis may despise our side's extremists, but they see them as only the tiniest problem in the long litany of problems they currently face. This kind of problem-prioritization is how ordinary people think in troubled times. I respect it, I tend to share it. So I get the general apathy and appreciate the exhaustion. But the 20-month war to disrupt the Iranian plan for our destruction is now over. Yes, we must still patrol and secure the ceasefire and continue disrupting the many genocidal hijinks the enemy is already fantasizing about, but the long, grueling dismantling of the edifice that helped produce October 7 has emphatically come to a very successful close. Now we turn to problems closer to home. Now we have a serious debate about Gaza, about the future, about the faltering aid program on whose success the final routing of Hamas depends, about our domestic politics and the weaknesses of our politicians, and yes, about our violent extremes. If you need to rest, rest. I don't know a single household in this country that hasn't sacrificed in the past 20 months. And when you're rested, we get to work.