Asking doesn’t hurt

“I imagine a world where libraries are more important than banks.” This is a sentence by Quino, the genius behind Mafalda.

For those who don’t know, Mafalda is an iconic Argentine character created by Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known as Quino.

During the dictatorship in Argentina, Mafalda became a voice of resistance and reflection. Her satirical and philosophical strips criticized politics, society, and humanity in general. Her simple and direct phrases carried a depth that touched on the most fundamental questions of human existence.

Reading Mafalda in Buenos Aires taught me to speak Castilian, the city’s Spanish. Within its pages, I lost myself in the childish wisdom that unmasked adult complexity.

With her critical innocence, Mafalda taught us to look at the world with eyes of wonder and reflection. In one of her most striking comic strips, set against the backdrop of the 1976 military coup, the sixth coup since Argentina’s independence, Mafalda asks: “What if instead of economic plans, we made human plans?” This phrase, so simple and powerful, resonated like an echo of the hopelessness and disillusionment of an entire generation.

And it was there, and in Brazil, that I learned what it is to live in a country under dictatorship. I don’t know if you know, but dictatorship has a smell. I lived with the dictatorship in Brazil from my first year of life until I was 22 years old.

The military dictatorship in Brazil, which lasted from 1964 to 1985, was marked by repression, censorship, and human rights violations. The military government suppressed civil liberties, imprisoned and tortured political opponents, and maintained strict control over the press. People lived in fear, surveillance was constant, and freedom of expression was virtually nonexistent. The smell of dictatorship, the continual fear, and the oppression permeated my mind, which is why I can sense one from afar.

Israel today is not under a dictatorship, obviously, but it is already beginning to smell like one, and that terrifies me.

What scares me even more is seeing the far right circulating through the corridors of power. There’s no way this can end well. History shows us that authoritarian regimes, fueled by extremism, do not bring prosperity or justice; they bring fear, oppression, and regression.

We no longer have Quino to alleviate the stench with Mafalda’s wit, which makes everything more urgent.

If Quino lived in Israel today, perhaps he would once again ask the question that Mafalda asked on March 24, 1976: “What if instead of occupation plans, we made human plans?”