Stop and breathe, Israel: Political discourse has fallen apart. It's unacceptable - comment

Open X/Twitter on days like this, and you can feel the poison in real time. That is our unfortunate Israeli reality. A family sits and tries to breathe, while our social media feeds are fueled by metaphorical gasoline.

For context only: Tomer-Yerushalmi is the IDF’s very recent former chief lawyer, the military advocate-general who has been at the center of our hardest arguments since Hamas’s October 7 massacre. If the allegations about her conduct are true, it is a grave matter for the military justice system and public trust. That can be adequately investigated.

But even if a public servant is suspected of wrongdoing, did her family do anything wrong? Did her children, her spouse? Probably not. Yet Israel’s political anger keeps crossing the garden gate.

Those demonstrations did not stop even after Dermer led the negotiations that brought the remaining live hostages home and the bodies of most of the others. Both Dermer and Tomer-Yerushalmi chose public service when they could have made far more in the private sector. Their families have paid a price. So have the families of many others.

Obviously, I’m not comparing the two in terms of their actions. I’m not aware of any criminal allegations against Dermer; in fact, he is a faithful civil servant, without any ego or need to prove what he thinks is right.

Look at a small sample of what Sunday produced on X. Researcher and activist Shikma Bressler posted, and then deleted, the following: “Those who incited against [prime minister Yitzhak] Rabin now control the police. Under this disgusting pressure, the army’s chief prosecutor made a mistake.”

“Make no mistake, this is the same ideology that led to Rabin’s assassination that pushed the chief prosecutor to death,” she continued. “May her memory be a blessing.”

Walla then reported that the police commissioner instructed aides to examine opening an investigation into Bressler on suspicion of incitement and obstruction of justice following the post.

Further, before it became clear that Tomer-Yerushalmi was alive and well, tech activist Moshe Radman Abutbul wrote, “I pray this did not really happen and that she is alive, but what we can already say is this: Among sane, normal people, there is such a thing as conscience and morality.”

“In Israel’s government, with its 2,000-plus murdered and its 80 ministers and MKs, there is none,” Abutbul went on to say. “Each and every one should do serious soul-searching now.”

MK Naama Lazimi (the Democrats) blasted the police response from the same direction: “A police commissioner who decides on a night like this to investigate Shikma Bressler and not others is a political commissioner, a yes man who has lost his way; a fully political police.”

“The dictatorship will not pass. Hand out jobs to all the cronies, and we will rise, struggle, and win. There is no other option,” Lazimi said.

Then there was Likud spokesperson Guy Levy saying that “the attorney-general must be arrested and taken into interrogation tonight [Sunday].” This is what passed for debate while a family sat and tried to catch its breath.

I will not pretend this is limited to one camp. Over the last two to three years, the battlefield has shifted from city squares to suburban streets and school gates, and the rhetoric has become increasingly harsh.

The message is political, but the setting is personal. Very personal. Think about a residential street in Modi’in where tires burned outside Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s building and neighbors found the entryway blocked by drums and vuvuzelas.

Think about the Tel Aviv block where Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara lives, briefly turned into a call-and-response across a police line: “Gali, the people are with you,” answered by, “No one elected you, go home now.”

Think about a Saturday at the gate to Bressler’s moshav in the Jezreel Valley, where activists promised she would “feel what it is when they block your roads,” because the strategy was to move the fight to the home front.

Think about a court opinion in cases around protests at Religious Zionist Party MK Simcha Rothman’s home that had to say something so simple: Do not film minors, in reference to his children. If a judge has to write that, the red line is already behind us.

How can it be that we have become so divided just a bit more than two years after October 7? How can it be that October 6, 2023, has become the norm for our conversations, with two political camps shouting at each other without addressing facts or details?

This is frightening. This is bad. I have written before about the war between our two political camps and their leadership. The Left, secular, and Center will do anything possible to prove that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the father of all evil, that he thinks only of himself and his political survival, not ours.

The other side tries to show that the Left is no longer Zionist, that Baharav-Miara and the president of the Supreme Court want to take over Israel by running a deep state.

Allow me to tell you this: There is a bit of truth in what both of these sides are saying. But I do not care, because this is not the way human beings should behave. This is not the way Judaism teaches us to manage our conflicts.

While these prominent Israelis fight an internal world war III, people along the way are hurt – politicians, judges, government officials, journalists, and most importantly, the families of these individuals.

Now, imagine what is going through the families of those who have been in the public sphere for the past two years. Imagine the messages, the threats, the looks in the supermarket, the quiet at school pickups, the small humiliations that pile into dread. What kind of daily life is that?

I would never, in my wildest dreams, incite against a public figure in the ways we have seen recently. Believe me, I have a lot to say. But did anyone’s children do anything wrong? Of course not.

Those who choose the public arena know they will be criticized and fought against. As long as behavior is civil, respectful, and does not violate people’s privacy and safety, it can be acceptable. Where we are now is not acceptable, not one bit.

We need to denounce violence and incitement. We need to try to contain our emotions or take our frustrations out in other ways. We live in a pressure cooker in Israel in 2025. It is tense and hectic. Only months ago, we were still running into bomb shelters, fighting on seven fronts. Nerves are shredded.

However, there is no excuse. Whatsoever. Stop. Everyone.

Take a moment to breathe. If we want good people, quality leaders, we cannot treat them like garbage, even when we fiercely disagree.

We need to try to believe in our institutions. It is not easy, I know. But if we do not, if there is anarchy, if we continue hating each other and fighting like children, then, God forbid, a different version of October 7 may repeat itself very soon.

Tomer-Yerushalmi was found. That is the headline. The subhead needs to be ours. We will argue as citizens, not as mobs. We will keep our protests public. We will keep children out of it. Only then will there be a country worth arguing about tomorrow.neys who saved Jews was defaced with pro-Palestinian stickers.