You want unity? Okay. Whose?

A Tel Aviv protest to bring the hostages home. (Lawrence Rifkin)

A former work colleague, whose prose, professionalism and pragmatism I have long admired, recently published a column headlined “Splits within Israeli society and calls for unity.”

“They’re back. Or more to the point, they’re off again,” she begins.

The “they” refers to military reservists who say they will think about ignoring the next in an already long line of callups since October 7, 2023; to citizens who are leaving the country or contemplating such a move; and to the media for reporting on all this.

“The efforts to make everything conditional on getting your own way – the government you voted for but that didn’t get elected; the secular over the religious; this or that cause or campaign – is damaging rather than democratic. No wonder Iran has worked hard at encouraging the splits and divides,” she writes.

Damaging? Let’s see.

The government you voted for but that didn’t get elected.

This is a backhanded reference to the most extreme government by far that Israel has ever seen. Its leader has just one goal – to stay out of jail – and apparently just one way of making this happen: by surrounding himself with haters, messianists and the super-religious who together want to bring us closer to either God or kingdom come, and also, by the way, couldn’t care a whit about democracy.

The secular over the religious.

This is a direct reference to the undue influence over the rest of us by a minority that refuses to send its young males to an over-extended and exhausted army, and then does its best to dig into our pockets to finance its non-working public and, where possible, tell the rest of us how to live our lives.

This or that cause or campaign.

Where do I begin? Protesting against a blatantly fascistic judicial overhaul that first led reservists to threaten to refuse? Complaining loudly about a politicized and often violent police force whose senior leadership is firmly in the thrall of a racist, far-right criminal? Keeping the issue of the hostages front and center by highlighting the government’s inability to seriously contemplate the painful and costly steps necessary to bring them home – if only to keep the onus on Hamas?

But then there’s this: “Soldiers who don’t feel able to serve can quietly inform their commanding officers and drop out; those who want to leave the country can pack their cases and go: no one needs to broadcast it to the general public unless they are trying to make a deliberately demoralizing point.”

I get it. Almost a year of extreme, in-your-face legislative efforts aimed at curtailing if not ending democracy. And now, more than a year of meandering war, hostages rotting in Gaza tunnels and a government that spits in our collective face by refusing not only to take responsibility, but to say loud and clear where it plans to take us. And we’re demoralizing you?

We’re worried sick about a country we love but one that has been hijacked by a man desperate to save his hide and apparently willing to drive us off a cliff in pursuit of that goal. Yet people stand to the side and complain that we’re ruining everyone else’s day by destroying the country’s unity – and worse.

Yes, I get it. If only we’d shut up there’d be at the very least a semblance of unity so powerful that it would discourage our enemies to the point where they’d throw down their weapons and throw up their hands. Better yet, we should make it true unity by marching to the same drummer. Your drummer, of course.

No can do. Your drummer is the one at the wheel. As long as we remain headed for that cliff (i.e., no exit strategy for a controversial and very costly war; no clear and realistic definition of “total victory”; no willingness to take the unpopular but necessary steps to jumpstart a process to bring the hostages home), it can only be viewed as Benjamin Netanyahu’s way to postpone the inevitable consequences of his failings and remain in power and out of jail.

Until there’s proof that this isn’t so, no one should be pointing fingers at me or anyone else who is making noise. In fact, the decibels need to be pumped up even more.

At the personal level, though, we can all do more to strive for unity.

When I read my former colleague’s words on Facebook, in a fit of pique I unfriended her. My edges are long raw and my emotions are getting more and more unchecked. It’s another sign of how many of us feel.

Yet deep down, my respect for her made me reconsider. We see things differently. I hate to see what she writes and I can only assume that she feels the same about the things I write. But she never unfriended me. She never went that far.

I guess that is where we can begin working on our unity. At that level, I’m all in.