Recovered Antisemite
Reflections on Nadav Lapid’s Yes!
The film offers a satirical but deliberately unsettling portrayal of some of the darkest corners of the Israeli psyche. Through the story of a financially struggling couple who resort to morally ambiguous—and at times degrading—means of survival, it paints a picture of a society allegedly unraveling under economic pressure, trauma, and post–October 7 PTSD. Wealthy predators exploit vulnerability; intimacy becomes transactional; and dignity is slowly eroded.
The underlying message appears clear: Israelis are not merely wounded—they are decaying. Moral corrosion is presented as the inevitable outcome of prolonged conflict and trauma. This thesis is driven to its most disturbing extreme in the scene involving a children’s choir singing lyrics about annihilating Gazans, juxtaposed with declarations of love for Israel or for one another. The moment is meant to shock—and it does. It implies that violence and dehumanization have seeped so deeply into society that they now inhabit its most innocent spaces.
I do not deny the realities the film draws from. Israel is an expensive country. Many Israelis struggle financially. The war has placed enormous strain on the economy, and Israel’s enemies openly bet on economic exhaustion as a strategy of attrition. The influx of diaspora support, investment, and reconstruction capital does not negate the daily hardship many face.
However, I strongly disagree with the film’s diagnosis of the crisis.
The challenges Israel faces cannot be isolated from the regional reality imposed upon it. Israel is not struggling because it refuses to grant Palestinians a utopian vision of justice; it struggles because it has never been allowed a normal life. Economic pressure, militarization, walls, checkpoints, and separation barriers are not expressions of moral decay—they are defensive responses to sustained rejectionism and violence.
The separation is not between Jew and Arab, but between Israeli and non-Israeli, rooted in security necessity. The closed roads between Israel and Lebanon or Syria are not acts of ethnic exclusion but measures designed to keep those openly committed to Israel’s destruction at bay. Lebanon itself, until very recently, rejected Israel’s very existence. Context matters.
As one of the very few Arab voices who openly and vocally support Israel—out of conviction, admiration, and lived understanding—I found the film deeply disturbing, not because it exposes suffering, but because it misidentifies its source. I am also in the process of converting to Judaism, and that journey has sharpened my awareness of Israel’s imperfections without blinding me to its moral core.
I do not see Israel’s ethos eroding because of checkpoints or walls. I see danger emerging when parts of Israeli society become disconnected from Israel’s raison d’être and from the Jewish mission that underpins the state’s existence. One does not need to be religious to live by the moral framework rooted in the Ten Commandments, a social and ethical pact that binds Jewish civilization across time.
An Israeli who dismisses that mission, who takes Israel’s existence for granted, or who seeks a “normal life” stripped of history, responsibility, and meaning, is vulnerable to nihilism. And nihilism is precisely where Israel’s enemies want Israelis to end up: disoriented, self-loathing, and detached from purpose.
If one desires a life entirely free of philosophy, faith, or collective responsibility, Israel will indeed feel unbearable. That tension is real. Some will leave. Some will collapse inward. But that is not proof of moral decay—it is proof of a society wrestling with the weight of meaning.
So what is the solution?
Israel today suffers from a profound internal fracture, often framed as left versus right, Tel Aviv versus Jerusalem. While imperfect, the analogy captures something real: a cultural and spiritual divide that cannot be ignored. Dialogue between these worlds is not optional; it is existential.
Bridging this gap is not the responsibility of those who have disengaged from Israel’s purpose. It rests with those who still carry strength, resilience, and moral clarity—not only to endure themselves, but to extend a hand to their Israeli sisters and brothers who are struggling. Preserving Israel’s ethos is not an abstract exercise; it is an act of responsibility toward one another.
The film succeeds in provoking discomfort. But provocation without moral precision risks becoming distortion. Israel is wounded, but it is not hollow. And portraying it as such does not heal it; it weakens it.