Shame Doesn’t Belong Only to the Government

The government of Bibi Netanyahu, with the arrogance of a man who has long stopped pretending he serves anything other than his survival, voted yesterday against the resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations General Assembly. That decision should scorch the conscience of any Israeli who still possesses a shred of integrity. This wasn’t a vote but an abdication, a public display of moral bankruptcy disguised as realpolitik. We, who have endured persecution and who have fought for a homeland with our backs against the wall, have now cast our lot with tyrants, betraying not only our history but the very argument for our existence.

And look at the company we keep. Israel and the United States, two nations that ceaselessly invoke democracy as their divine right, now find themselves standing shoulder to shoulder with Russia, North Korea, Nicaragua, Syria, Belarus, Eritrea, Mali, and Zimbabwe—an ensemble of despots, war criminals, and ghosts of failed revolutions. It would be almost laughable if it weren’t so revolting. This is the grotesque masquerade we have chosen to dance in, where dictatorship is the norm, oppression is policy, and human rights are treated as an inconvenient joke. Any Israeli with an ounce of memory should be disgusted. Any American still clinging to the illusion of their country’s moral superiority should feel the bile rise in their throat. Because at this moment, we have not just abandoned principles—we have spat on them, buried them, and let corruption piss on the grave.

The shame doesn’t belong only to the government. It belongs to the opposition, which stood there, mute and paralyzed, as if silence were a virtue and cowardice were a strategy. The entire nation should be boiling over, but instead, we sink into apathy, watching as our leaders twist the knife into whatever is left of our dignity. And for what? Political leverage? The scraps of a crumbling alliance with Washington? The pathetic illusion that moral flexibility will buy us security? This is not politics—it is degradation. And degradation is a disease; it rots the bones of a nation from the inside out.

If we cannot stand against injustice—not only when it threatens us but when it threatens anyone—then we forfeit our right to demand justice for ourselves. If we forget what it means to lose a homeland, to watch our sovereignty be trampled under the boots of foreign power, then we have become precisely what we have always claimed to despise. And that, indeed, should shame us all.