Isn’t It Ironic?
Lech. Go. Lech-Lecha. Go forth.
Isn’t it a little ironic that this is the Torah portion of the week: Parashat Lech-Lecha?
“Go forth from your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house…”
No, I don’t follow the weekly Torah readings.
I am not religious, I do not observe Shabbat or keep the commandments, and my relationship with the Almighty remains full of question marks- a fact I have made complete peace with.
Facts are not a matter of choice.
We are allowed to doubt, and we have every right to ask questions even when certainty unravels and the fear of the unknown creeps in. Because in life, as in politics, it is only after the storm calms and the dust settles that something within us finally agrees to look truth in the eye and truly see.
It isn’t easy.
I know that. Trauma and seismic disruption pull us out of our inertia, violently shaking us awake from our comfort zones and from the calcified positions we thought we would never dare abandon. Ultimately, beneath all the stinging humiliation and pain, every single blow is sometimes the only way we learn, open our eyes, and face reality soberly.
Looking back now over recent years, I realise just how afraid I was. How terrified we all were.
Throughout our lives, an omnipresent, well-oiled political apparatus operated against our collective psyche on one primary currency: fear. A machine engineered to manufacture apocalyptic scenarios and existential dread-duly fueled whenever necessary to entrench the messianic narrative that “there is none besides him,” all to rationalise his political survival:
- 1996: “Peres will divide Jerusalem”
- 2005: “Sharon will divide Jerusalem”
- 2006: “Olmert will divide Jerusalem”
- 2015: “The Arabs are moving in droves to the polling stations”
- 2019: “The Left is dangerous” (framed against military cemeteries)
- 2020: “Either Bibi or Tibi”
- 2022: “A Muslim Brotherhood government”
- 2026: “The Right or Palestine”
Thirty years of weaponized fear.
Thirty years of navigating a horror script written by someone else, tailored solely to narrow personal interests. Thirty years under continuous threat that if we ever loosen our grip or let go, the sky will fall and that the only entity capable of holding it up for us is the very man whose spouse we just heard declaring that without him we simply cannot survive, even while he is in the bathroom with bodyguards rushing after him.
Must we truly continue clinging to the familiar simply because it is familiar, even while it breaks us to pieces?
That is a rhetorical question.
I want to propose a new framework. Yes, new beginnings can be daunting. But perhaps the time has come to normalize a basic reality that citizens of functioning, sane democracies take for granted:We deserve to live in real security. It is our sovereign right to vote for security.
