Two Narratives of Stupidity

A moment when you feel like hearing what someone else has to say. You know politics and emotions intertwine and jolt your nerves just by thinking about certain issues. You see headlines and choose to be less knowledgeable by not reading further, to protect your calm. You will set your limits for listening too.

Such a moment: the nurse at the local health clinic prepared the solution for my shot, reviewing the online paperwork, and making small talk. She ask where I was from, if I make Aliyah to Israel alone, without family. I told her, “Philadelphia, and I came alone when I was 21.”

She wore a nurse’s jacket over her clothing. Her turban-like head covering stereotypically indicated she’s religious and politically to the right. From things she said, I gathered she’s a few years younger than me. She moved to Israel as a 10-year-old with her family, from Russia, expecting to live in a tent and see the land of the Bible as her grandmother had described it to her.

“Without any family here?” she asked inquisitively. I have a second cousin my age. We’re complete opposites. He’s religious, a West Bank settler with seven kids, most now parents too. It’s understood he’s right-wing. I clarify, “I’m a leftist, but different as we are, we’re close and speak frequently.”

“It’s possible,” she responds in a statement sounding more like a question. I added something about different ideas and listening to the other to gain perspective and reconsider your own convictions, respecting the legitimacy of other points of view. “It’s easy to discard the ideas of the other side as stupid, uninformed, and misguided,” I said with premonition.

She got her cue. I recognized the style of one passionate about her views and her experiences – hurting, like me. She told me how terrible it feels when people reject your ideas and beliefs, telling you they think your stupid for holding them. That’s how people make her feel. Identifying, I said that is precisely how we feel on the left too, when politicians and public-opinion makers refer to us as misguided traitors. Trying to cushion my statement further and hoping she would identify with me as I did with her, I added that I understand that there are scholars, intellectuals, educated and analytical individuals behind the ideologies on the right even if I don’t buy into them.

“Politicians?” I had said. She offered a lesson in democracy. She voted for a right-wing party, and we have a right-wing government, which should implement policies that the right-wing government is supposed to represent. “But,” she explains, “the left makes this impossible.” So, for her, this is not democracy. The majority voted one way. A minority interferes with the agenda.

I almost felt reassured about our democracy. Opposition has an impact, or too much, in her opinion. Not only the impact the Opposition should have, though the current Opposition seems rather lame, but public protests, and because of legislation and the legal justice system, democracy is protected, I thought, for the moment.

The previous government coalition, with an Arab party, a left-wing party, centrist parties and a right-wing party, halted internal struggles between parties promoting opposing agendas to prevent jeopardizing coalition stability. We all knew that moderacy would paralyze that government, but addressing shared socioeconomic concerns sustained stability for a period.

Back to the present, not reassured about our democracy. Recognizing the turning point, I said no more about it.

Agitated just thinking about judicial reform legislation on the table, under the radar, largely unknown to the public, with war and a ceasefire monopolizing headlines. A law forbidding a State Commission of Inquiry of October 7 – lest the Prime Minister’s failures be exposed. An attempt to close the public broadcasting channel.

Democracy.

Another discussion at Friday night dinner with a young man recently returned from reserve duty in Lebanon. He reports an incident where he can tell how he kindly treated a mother and her children when he had to enter their home, while moments later he and his fellow soldiers found the entrance to a tunnel and an arsenal of ammunition. He has had similar experiences in Gaza.

Still, I am compelled to respond he says we will forever live by our swords, “Because they want to annihilate us.” Their narrative must be quite the opposite. He gets it. Therefore, it seems unfathomable to most, that the sides will ever reconcile themselves to peace, respecting unreconcilable narratives.

I tell him I’m ashamed when I hear about Palestinians in the West Bank attacked by Jewish settlers, or arbitrarily beaten by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints and released and I wondering how they drive home. Arrests are made, he tells me. Arrests, I respond are made promptly when Palestinians attack settlers. When settlers and soldiers attack Palestinians, arrests are the exception. He looks at me in disbelief, because, he says, it would be in the media if it really happened. Not if certain people don’t want it in the media, I tell him. And some such incidents are published in Ha’aretz. A media outlet the government seeks to close.

Democracy. Or two narratives of stupidity.

Harriet Gimpel, November 30, 2024