We begin with this chalkboard image, the origins of which I don’t know, as someone sent it to me. It’s a pithy way of capturing what many Israelis feel about this still-shrinking country:
My great-grandfather told us that once, we could go traveling in Syria. My grandma told that once, we used to be able to travel in Lebanon. Mom tells me that once we could travel in the Galilee.
While it’s always true that it’s impossible to capture the mood of a country from only official news sites, that feels more true yesterday and today than in general. The issue: the burning northern border.
So today we’re focusing exclusively on social media, which was awash yesterday (and still is today) with images that in other days might seem innocuous. Big outdoor fires, in the Middle East, in the summer. It happens, one might be tempted to say.
But the northern border is aflame not because of natural forces like dryness and heat (though those may make putting out the fires harder), but rather because Israel is being relentlessly attacked by Hezbollah, whose drones got all the way to Nahariya this week when the air force failed to shoot them down. At the moment, it seems, there is nothing Israel can do to stop the north from burning—so the videos of the fires have become the new meme representing what feels to many Israelis like unprecedented weakness.
As we’ll see below, while some of the critique comes, as expected, from the Left, much of the rage is coming from the Right, and some of those who have long argued that the middle of a war is not the time to topple a Prime Minister are changing their tune. Ironically, at least about the Prime Minster, Left and Right are beginning to agree.
Below, a smattering of examples that communicate the national mood now that the border is burning.
Another video posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) with images of the fire close to residential areas (which have been abandoned, obviously).
Here’s another post, from someone whose Twitter tag is “@Nifla_Po”, meaning “things are great here.” The Google-generated translation isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough. It’s a new “explanation” of the name of the city, Kiryat Shemona, which literally means “The City of the Eight.”
We’ll come to a more important post by Assaf Sagiv, perhaps Israel’s most important conservative public intellectual, below, but first, a quick post of his riffing on the fact that every day, the IDF announces the names of a few more Hezbollah operatives who have been killed Lebanon.
It’s become a national joke—the north is burning, but IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari and others are instructed to tell the public about two or three more Hezbollah bad guys the IAF has taken out.
Some of the rage is specifically focused not only on Bibi, but on Sarah, thanks in part to a recording of hers that has just resurfaced.
The image below, of Bibi and Sara looking at the burning north, is adorned with the caption, “Come Sarahle, things are burning.” It’s a riff on a new recording of Sarah Netanyahu which doesn’t sound so great these days. The recording follows just below:
The video below, also posted on X, begins with Aviv Bushinsky, formerly Netanyahu’s communications advisor, recalling that someone called him (this was 22 years ago) and told him, “Aviv, there’s a recording.”
What was the recording? We hear Sarah Netanyahu’s voice, saying the following:
These people don’t understand one thing: the country is burning, there are terrorist attacks, and beyond all the regular political infighting, there’s just one man who can save this country.
And when I hear all these claims by these or those Likud members [complaining about Bibi], I say to myself, “For heaven’s sake. If that’s what interests them, then screw it. Bibi is leader greater than the country, he’s genuinely a leader of national status. Do they want to be slaughtered and burned in this country?
Great, then why should he have to work so hard? He and I will move abroad, and then this country will burn. Without Bibi, this country will not survive.”
That definitely did not age well.
From those long critical of Bibi, like Amir Shperling, a well known TV personality, the jabs were not unexpected, but some were clever enough that they made their way around.
To understand this one, here’s what one needs to know:
Kiryat Shemona, “The City of the Eight”, is the city in the north that is uninhabitable.
Kiryat Arba, “The City of the Four,” is a right-wing settlement just outside Hebron, populated largely people seen by most Israelis as among the most hard-core settlers.
Ben Gvir and Smotrich, of course, are very supportive of Kiryat Arba and similar places, and want them to grow.
With all that in hand, we can understand Shperling’s tweet, went a bit viral:
“Smotrich and Ben Gvir propose to the government: as revenge for the Destruction of “The City of Eight” [Kiryat Shmona] let’s double the size of “The City of Four [Kiryat Arba].”
Finally, we come to a social media post that is much more serious, this one also by Assaf Sagiv, one of Israel’s most influential public intellectuals. Sagiv has long been associated with the right on many issues, and is bitterly opposed to the Biden / Netanyahu cease-fire plan now under discussion.
From the beginning of the war, I repeatedly expressed my opposition to the demand to replace Netanyahu immediately. I justified this objection on the grounds that elections should not be held in the midst of such a difficult and demanding military campaign.
I also argued that Netanyahu's insistence on “total victory,” whether it was sincere or intended for purely public relations purposes, was at least preferable to the spirit of defeatism that characterizes his opponents.
Nevertheless, for one moment I did not feel a shred of confidence in Netanyahu’s leadership—he’s a talented man but also horribly selfish and a coward, who lost his way a long time ago—and I did not imagine that the person responsible for such a terrible failure would run for the leadership of the country in the next elections.
Now, the prime minister is trying to promote a disgraceful surrender deal to a terrorist organization. And even though he is sending contradictory, confusing messages—perhaps a deliberate tactic, perhaps just because he’s hopelessly lost—there is no doubt that that he does not wish to and is unable to fulfill his obligations to the people of Israel.
His weakness, his cunning and his treachery have led us, as a state and as a society, to the edge of the abyss, and we cannot afford to be misled by the Bibi-ist apologetics that cleanse him of all his sins under the pretext that only he can protect us from the weakness of the left.
Netanyahu may not be the only one—or even the main one—responsible for the deterioration of our situation, internally or externally, but we cannot begin the process of national reconstruction as long as he insists on holding onto the horns of the altar [DG - a reference to the religious tradition that a person holding on to the altar cannot be taken away for punishment]. It’s time for the camp that has unified behind him for such a long period now do the right thing, the responsible thing, the necessary thing—and show him the way out.
Enough, enough, that's it. We will continue from here without you.
Finally, to round things out and end where we began with the chalkboard message up top, here’s another Tweet, also from yesterday., Google-translated:
To understand it, you need to know what every Israeli does: Yarkon Park is one of the best-known parks in Tel Aviv.
"Kiryat Shemona was named for the eight defenders of Tel Hai, but will be known for the eight houses that remained standing"