The Politics of War and It Effects on Israel

The following passage from an article over at the New York Review of Books caught my attention, it was written by an Israeli, a resident of an urban Kibbutz in Sderot.

How did we, as a society, lose the ability to formulate questions about the feasibility of a political alternative? How did it happen that a person who suggests a nonviolent solution is the delusional one, the traitor, and the one who calls for the leveling of Gaza is the true patriot? How did peace become the enemy of the people, and war always the preferred option? How did it happen that dialogue and treaties cause more public fear than a volley of missiles? And how did these dehumanizing processes seal us off from the suffering of others? How did we lose the capacity for empathy? What does it mean that a girl from Gaza—whose school was bombed and her best friend was killed before her eyes—has to remind us that they, too, are human beings? And how has a nation that has occupied other people’s territory for forty-five years continued to tell itself, with such deep conviction, that we are the single and ultimate victim in this story? And the evil of the occupation has become so banal that no one sees the evil anymore.

Does this reflect a dominant view?  No but it does reflect the divide that exist within Israel.  The political divisions within Israel are along secular and sectarian lines as well as where they immigrated from to Israel.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2012/12/the-politics-of-war-and-it-effects-on-israel-foresman.html