Does Israel Have an Ethical Dome? |
Does Israel Have an Ethical Dome?
Iron Dome intercepts rockets. Arrow reaches higher. David’s Sling fills the space in between. Israel has learned, through bitter necessity, how to build layered defenses against dangers coming from outside.
The Ziv Agmon affair forces a harder, more uncomfortable question: does Israel also possess an ethical dome?
Agmon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman and acting chief of staff, resigned after exposed remarks in which he insulted Mizrahi and Sephardi Likud politicians in crudely contemptuous terms, mocked parts of the ruling camp, and attacked Netanyahu himself. He later acknowledged that the quotes were authentic, argued they were partial and taken out of context, and denied that they reflected racism, pointing to his family’s Moroccan roots.
That matters. It matters not only because the language was ugly, though it was. It matters because the contempt was not random. It attached itself to style, class coding, cultural tone, and a persistent Israeli temptation to treat some Jews as less refined, less serious, less naturally at home in the symbolic center. The language sounded available, as if it had long been waiting in........