A looming death certificate for the Israel that was

In 1994, leading Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai recited verses about the need for peace: “Let it come/ like wildflowers/Suddenly because the field must have it: Wildpeace,” he said at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo for Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat.

Amichai embodied a strong current of humanism and recognition of the other that traditionally expressed itself in Israeli literature, theatre and film, vying with tendencies toward militarism and nationalist intoxication. Death, for Israeli humanists, was to be caused when there was no other choice, according to an ethos that may have been more rhetorical than actual. But at least this ethos pointed to the possession of a conscience.

Sometime after Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in 2009 and especially with the passage of the 2018 nation state law, which effectively defined Arabs as second-class citizens, the humanistic side of Israel came under intensified attack. With the far Right’s gains in the 2022 elections, the coalition’s attempt to concentrate power and then the October 7 Hamas atrocities and Israel’s devastating onslaught in Gaza, Israeli humanism became eclipsed. Its cultural manifestations were often depicted by the coalition and its backers as treasonous or undermining the army.

Now the coalition is going even further. A new bill it is pushing through the Knesset providing for death by hanging of Palestinians convicted of intentionally killing Israelis (but not Israelis who do that to Palestinians) amounts to a looming death certificate for the Israel that was, with its place for liberal and humanist voices.