The hour that explains everything

I have been writing for tachles since the beginning of the war. Mostly, these are interviews with people whose views correspond to my own in these difficult times.

In my imagination, you the reader of this opinio article are a man or a woman, in any case Jewish, living in Europe with your family for three generations, perhaps eight. You live a comfortable life, broadly speaking: an intellectual, a capitalist, someone who believes that the State of Israel is your final refuge should catastrophe strike. Should antisemitism truly make normal, prosperous Jewish life in Western Europe impossible. A massive wave of antisemitism, as the Israeli regime has been selling us for the past three years: “There is nowhere to runway to,”they tell us here in Israel, “because they all  hate us.”
Perhaps the reader of this article is an Austrian Jew whose great grandfather or great grandmother witnessed Vienna’s fall from being the cultural capital of the world to what it is today: a “cool” city where young people think it charming to live, a kind of “Berlin of the past,” with reasonable rents, culture  and good food. Because it will never again be “Vienna of old.” As the gifted comedian Robin Williams once quipped in an interview: “You know why there is no humour in Austria? Because they killed all the funny people.”
The reader might also be a Jew who emigrated from Moscow to Berlin in the 1990s, or an Israeli who moved to the delightful city of Cologne and is reading this article online. All these answers are plausible, reasonable. The real question is: how can  you, the reader of this article, understand  what is happening in Israel right now?
Does what is happening here truly touch you in any deep way? You! perhaps a German, Swiss or Austrian citizen, Jewish, born in Berlin, Vienna or Zurich, whose parents were born there, whose grandmother was born there, who visits the remnants of your family once a year in Jerusalem or Haifa,  can the reader of this opinion piece even understand what has been happening in Israel over the past three years?
I will start from a logical, simplistic perhaps even foolish assumption: if it does not affect you personally your livelihood, the conscription of your son or daughter into the army, the state of your bank account, your ability to meet your mortgage payments, your freedom to write whatever you wish on Facebook, without restraint; if it does not affect your six-month wait for an appointment with an ENT specialist because he has been called up for reserve duty; and a thousand other reasons besides if it does not touch the edge of your everyday life then you, the reader, cannot understand  what is happening in Israel. You may think you can, but if it does not touch the issues listed above and dozens more you cannot understand it to depth. 
Antisemitism.
One cannot diminish the scale of antisemitism in the world. One cannot dismiss it certainly not after the massacre at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. It cannot be waved away.
But nd this is a very large but, how much does antisemitism actually affect the daily life of the reader of this article in Vienna? In Zurich? In Basel? Compared, say, to something as “trivial” as the conscription of your daughter, who insists on becoming a combat soldier and entering Gaza in an armoured vehicle when it is clear to you, as her father, that the only reason she is entering Gaza in an armoured vehicle is not to free the hostages, but to ensure the survival of the sovereign leader of the state. A leader standing trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. Your daughter insists on entering northern Gaza in an armoured vehicle, and it is obvious that a roadside bomb could kill her and all her friends and all of it for the leader’s survival. A year, perhaps a year and a half, after the seventh of October. It could happen to her.
And yet here in Israel we hear, chiefly from the leadership, that there is nowhere to go, nowhere to flee, because the world is antisemitic and hates us everywhere. They hate us because we are Jews - not, heaven forbid, because we are Jews in the State of Israel, a state that has committed grave war crimes over many months against civilians who had no way to defend themselves, as part of an endless campaign of vengeance aimed at preserving the supreme leader’s rule.
So we are taught that Israel is best. Best to work in Israel, best to pay progressive taxes in Israel: say, 26 percent corporate tax plus another 30 percent dividend tax over fifty percent in total all in order to fund the war, or of course to finance, with billions, a community of idlers who believe that Torah study is the recipe for redemption.
Which leads me to wonder: to what extent can the liberal Swiss or Austrian Jew reading this opinion piece truly understand what is happening here in Israel where this article is written, and where we live?
And then there are the Israelis who emigrated to Europe. Some will tell you the truth: “I left in time.” Others apologise: “We got a job offer—everything is temporary.” I doubt they read TACHLES in German, these Israelis who moved to Europe, but in any case, my encounters with them during the war, in classical Europe mostly amused me. Poets, theatre directors, film critics, novelists; fate would have it that they were all from the humanities. Regrettably, I have no doctor friends who emigrated to Europe after the war began.
After some time, I noticed that most of my conversations with Israeli friends in Berlin or Paris revolved around how difficult it is these days to be Jewish in Europe. One even told me he had removed the mezuzah from his front door, fearing that if a Muslim takeaway courier delivered his cheeseburger and noticed it, it might endanger his life.
During the first year of the war, I categorised this feeling among my Israeli friends who had emigrated to Europe as FOMO a term my children love to use: fear of missing out. perhaps mixed with a measure of guilt for not being where, in their imagination, they are supposed to be: at the heart of the storm, the inferno. Their parents are here in Israel, their siblings, their friends. And so they load upon themselves the unbearable burden of antisemitism. I do not, heaven forbid, belittle their feelings.
To illustrate my thesis let us call it, with due respect, please no comparison I will analyse a photographed text message I received last week from one of my three children. The message contained a screenshot of a push -notification page from Haaretz. That page listed news updates from a single hour, on a specific day last week, between noon and one o’clock PM.  one hour. This is what was written:

A. 12:05
The government decided to establish a political commission of inquiry into the events of October 7. The commission will examine the influence of Yitzhak Rabin on October 7, due to the Oslo Accords (1993); the influence of Ariel Sharon via the Disengagement Plan (2006); and also the “contribution” of the organisation Brothers in Arms, which the Minister for Environmental Protection, Idit Silman, described that very week as a terrorist organisation that should be outlawed. Never mind that this organisation kept the entire country on its feet during the first ten days of the war. In any case, the new commission will investigate how all these supposedly led to the tragedy of October 7.
At the same time, the “October 7 Council” a protest movement founded by bereaved parents demonstrated at the Knesset. It is led by Eli Eshel, father of the observer Ronnie Eshel, murdered on October 7 at the Nahal Oz military base, and Rabbi Elhanan Danino, whose son Uri Danino was abducted and murdered in Hamas captivity (and Netanyahu mistakenly assumed that because he is a rabbi, a Mizrahi, he must be a Likud supporter…). They demonstrated in favour of a state commission of inquiry to examine, among other things, the government’s conduct and responsibility for the  dreadful events leading to October 7. The worst day in the history of this country.  But the heart-rending cry of the bereaved families does not move this government one inch.

The cartoon by Uri Rosenwaks and Noam Amir shows a minister and Mosche Edri at the entrance to the show. 

B. 12:15
On the same day, the Minister of Defence announced the closure of the army radio station Galei Tzahal. The station is located very close to the studio where I am writing this article, and shortly after the announcement, real-estate agents’ signs appeared, advertising the sale of the property to the highest bidder.
It is difficult to overstate the contribution of Galei Tzahal to free journalism in Israel. The finest journalists of the past fifty years began their careers there, after gruelling selection tests at the age of eighteen. They are perhaps the last independent journalists still willing to stand upright against the regime. Anyone who grew up in Israel in the 1970s, 80s, or 90s—before YouTube and the internet, received their entire international musical education from Galei Tzahal. Anyone stuck in traffic before the Waze era received every direction and traffic update from its sister station, Galgalatz, broadcasting road reports 24/7 with unwavering loyalty to its listeners.
But this does not suit the Defence Minister, Katz, because the station refuses to fall into line with the silencing of journalists in Israel. So he shuts it down  after seventy-six years. Just like that. In a single second.

C. 12:27
The government decided to appoint MK Zvi Sukkot as Chair of the Knesset Education Committee. Sukkot became notorious last year when he forcibly broke into the Sde Teiman military base together with dozens of rioters, protesting the arrest of military investigators suspected of sexual abuse of a Palestinian detainee. This was a violent incursion by a Member of Knesset and dozens of civilians into a military zone. No indictments were filed.
Sukkot never served in the Israeli army; he refused to serve due to the Gaza disengagement. He was charged more than fifteen years ago with arson of a mosque. He is a senior figure in the extremist settlement of Yitzhar, from which rioters regularly emerge to confront Palestinians in order to force them out of Area C.
Now Zvi Sukkot will be responsible for the education of Israel’s children setting curricula, history, and civics studies.

D. 12:38
MK Limor Son Har-Melech was appointed Chair of the Knesset Health Committee. She calls for Israel to withdraw from the World Health Organization; she opposed COVID vaccinations; she opposes abortion; and recently she has spoken extensively about establishing a lobby to campaign for Jewish women to remain virgins until marriage, as prescribed by religious law. As of last week, this woman heads Israel’s Health Committee.

E. Finale
To conclude that single hour last Monday, between noon and one o’clock the Minister of Culture, Miki Zohar, announced the cancellation of the Israeli Film Law. Enacted in 1999, the law guarantees 100 million shekels annually around €28 million for Israeli film production, distributed among eleven film funds. Sweden, for example, has two film funds; Israel has eleven.
At the most recent Ophir Awards ceremony, the Israeli Academy of Film and Television—around 1,100 industry professionals once again selected the Israeli film to represent the country at the Academy Awards. The Academy chose The Sea, a modest, moving film about a Palestinian boy who decides to leave the West Bank to see the sea for the first time. The film portrays IDF soldiers as humane and understanding; its criticism is subtle and restrained.
But and this was a big but for the Minister—the film is spoken largely in Arabic. Israel sent an Arabic-language film to the Oscars. The sky fell. (This has happened before: Ajami, nominated in 2009, and The Band’s Visit.) The minister BTW did declare he never saw the entire movie, but he heard about it. Anyway,  That very night, the Minister announced the withdrawal of government support from the Ophir Awards, accusing filmmakers of disgracing IDF soldiers. Instead, he proposed an alternative ceremony, offering total prizes of one million shekels ten awards of 100,000 shekels each. An absurd, grotesque sum in the context of Israeli cinema.
And yet the overwhelming majority of Israeli filmmakers refused even to register. Only a handful of films did. An anonymous committee selected nominees, but a week before the ceremony scheduled for tonight six nominees withdrew due to its political nature and its service to the honour of the Minister-Commissar, who opposed the Academy’s decision to send an Arabic-language film to the Oscars.
Following their withdrawal, the Minister decided to cancel Israeli cinema altogether—to end film production in Israel simply because his attempt to bribe diligent professionals had failed. A mad, sad, repulsive story. Had the cancellation gone into effect, some 2,500 Israeli families would have lost their livelihoods overnight.
Eventually, through the mediation of Israel’s most powerful film distributor, Moshe Edri—politically aligned with Likud the withdrawers were asked to return, in exchange for the Minister refraining from destroying the entire industry. They returned. They agreed, in their great generosity, to accept unprecedented prizes simply to “save” Israeli cinema. \\\\hypocracy at its best.  An impossible situation. Tonight, outside the Jerusalem Convention Centre, their colleagues will wait to boo them, to hurl abuse as they walk the dark red carpet unfurled by the regime simply to strike at an Arabic-language film sent by Israel as its representative to the American Oscars.
The entire article— around 2,000 words in Hebrew describes, with precision, a single hour in the life of the State of Israel: Monday, 23 December 2025.
In that hour, the profession I love and depend on was abolished; my beloved radio station, which shaped my entire childhood, was shut down; the possibility of a state commission of inquiry into October 7 was eliminated; and two people who believe in the supremacy of religious law and in the Messiah son of David were appointed to oversee Israel’s education and health systems.
And so I wonder how a Jew living in Switzerland with his family his entire life, reading this article can understand what is happening to us here. And how he might help. Can you people help us? 
 
Ari Folman is an Israeli filmmaker and works as a columnist for tachles. In 2023, Israeli film critics named him the most important filmmaker in Israel's 75-year history.