I did the unthinkable and watched a mainstream Israeli TV news program this morning. I survived, but only barely, and I have to tell you; if it weren't that catastrophically tragic, it would be freaking hilarious.
Not a person in Israeli public life thinks Israel should do all it can to avoid a war with Hezbollah. No one. I'm not joking.
Yesterday, when pathetic rumors about a ceasefire began surfacing (I wanted to write it was nonsense, but gave it up because I was kinda sure everybody normal gets it already), Israeli leftwing and liberal opposition leaders came out and said that 21 days of ceasefire is too much, and Hezbollah should be given no more than a week max to repent and clear southern Lebanon (not a direct quote, but that's the spirit).
There is no debate like there has been no debate throughout this horrific year of genocide, and as there has been for the past generation about the occupation: it stopped being a subject for debate some 20 years ago. As far as Israeli politics were concerned, it was no more.
In Israeli media, journalists and pundits only argue what's best: to smash, break, annihilate, destroy, or exterminate Hezbollah (code name: all Lebanese).
I have said it many, many times before - many times in Hebrew, when I still used this language to convey political thoughts, which I don't do anymore: In Israel, nothing ever happens, and nothing ever changes.
Nothing happened in the past year, as far as the Israeli public debate is concerned: antisemites bark and terrorists try to kill us all because we're Jews but hey - it has always been so.
No thought is given to the prices of war, and specifically to the potential outcomes of a full-blown war with Hezbollah. In the Israeli psyche, IDF is going to stroll into Lebanon and push Hezbollah across the Litani River, after which a buffer zone will be established in that area, easy peasy.
October 7, and the year that came after it, shocked the world and made literal billions aware of the darker sides of Zionism. In Israel, nothing happened.