I’ve never met the IDF deputy chief of staff with the quintessentially Israeli name Yair Golan, so it’s hard for me to tell whether he’s brave or stupid or possibly both. Golan spent much of his military career in elite paratrooper units and participated in every major IDF campaign since the 1982 war, including house-to-house combat against Palestinian terrorists as the head of an infantry brigade in the 2002 Operation Defensive Shield, so I suppose his courage is self-evident, though battlefield daring doesn’t always include courage of convictions as well.

Golan’s foolhardiness has become obvious since his bracing Holocaust Day speech on Wednesday at Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak, in which he refrained from casting Israeli society as an eternal victim but warned against the increasing intolerance that could turn it into a potential perpetrator as well. I am assuming that Golan knew that his words would be made public, that he was cognizant of the tremors of shock they would send throughout Israel and parts of the Jewish world, especially on such a sensitive day, and that he was fully aware that within the space of a few hours he would become public enemy no. 1 for Israeli right wingers and self-styled Jewish patriots abroad. If he didn’t know, he’s an idiot, if he did and went ahead nonetheless then he’s a fool, career-wise at least, but more of a hero as well.

Open gallery view Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly cabinet meeting in the Golan Heights, Israel, April 17, 2016. Credit: Sebastian Scheiner, AP

Within minutes of Golan’s speech, the right wing spin machine leaped into action, inflating his words, taking them out of context, blowing them up to diabolical proportions. Rather than challenging Golan’s assertion that disturbing trends in Israeli society evoke associations to Germany and Europe in the 1930s, which is what he actually said, his words were twisted to suggest that he had compared the IDF to the Wehrmacht, Israel to the Nazis and Palestinians, by logical extension, to persecuted Jews about to be carted off to concentration camps. With the ground thus prepared, politicians started piling up on Golan, accusing him of defiling his own IDF, defaming the state and aiding and abetting BDS. The self-induced mass hysteria quickly turned into a virtual witch-hunt, which I can only assume Golan was also prepared for, because it is part and parcel of the ominous trends that he was warning against.

Once again, it was left to Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon to defend the honor of the IDF against hotheaded right wing politicians, as he had in the recent public storm that followed the Hebron killing of a wounded terrorist by an IDF medic. Along with President Reuben Rivlin, Ya'alon is one of the last Israeli politicians who still believe that hawkishness and continued occupation do not have to contradict democracy and a commitment to the rule of law. It is a position that has always been fiercely contested by the left but is now increasingly rejected by the right, for diametrically-opposed reasons: universal human rights and democratic principles are increasingly viewed and portrayed by right wing leaders as subversive concepts used by Israel’s enemies to weaken its hold on its historic homeland. That also sounds familiar to students of mid-twentieth century Europe, but let’s skip that for now.

Golan’s main message, as Netanyahu probably knows, was that the kind of inflamed nationalistic rumble that erupted from the demonstrations in favor of Sgt. Elor Azaria, the soldier who shot the terrorist – which Netanyahu, at best, did nothing to quell – were ugly and dangerous and, yes, reminiscent of darker times. That such rallies, as well as statements made by irresponsible politicians, carry an implicit and often explicit message that killing Palestinian terrorists, no matter what the circumstances, is not only excusable but also desirable (and they’re all terrorists in the end, as everyone knows). And that the IDF’s anachronistic efforts to cling to its old-time leftist and defeatist values of “purity of arms” and to adhere as much as possible to the commonly accepted laws of war and rules of engagement have no place in today’s all-out battle to the death against Israel’s enemies.

Open gallery view Thousand rally in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square for soldier who shot Palestinian assailant in Hebron. April 19, 2016. Credit: Moti Milrod

In that sense, Golan’s greater sin may have been his direct challenge to the world view presented by Netanyahu himself a few hours earlier at the official Holocaust Day ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Netanyahu, of course, is the last person on earth who can object to comparisons between the Holocaust and the present because they are his number one rhetorical weapon of choice, as he amply demonstrated during last year’s debate over the Iran (Munich) nuclear deal concluded by Obama (Chamberlain) with ayatollahs (Nazis) in Tehran (Berlin). But for Netanyahu and, alas, for most Israelis and Jews, Holocaust analogies can only be a one way street: Israelis and Jews are always cast as the victims, no matter what the circumstances, while the rest of the world, whatever its grievance might be, is trying to finish what Hitler, Himmler and Goering had started.

Gas chambers or not, atomic weapons or not, Netanyahu has embedded Israelis in a world in which they are no more masters of their fate than the Jews of Ghetto Bialystok or Ghetto Lvov, a universe in which the village is always burning and the carving knife is eternally on Israel’s neck. It is a suffocating, essentially anti-Zionist message in which the establishment of the state of Israel has done nothing to change the basic condition of the Jews. It depicts a world of danger and darkness, devoid of light or hope, in which Israel is repeatedly abandoned by its duplicitous friends and unfaithful allies, in which Jews around the world are perennially on the lookout for an upcoming pogrom, in which anti-Semitism has somehow broken out once again as a plague for no rhyme or reason, in which even naive college students on American campuses who support a boycott to protest the occupation are an existential danger, in which the only hope for survival lay in eternal vigilance against external enemies and internal backstabbers. It is a world in which the Final Solution is always on the table, a world of perennial conflict between good and evil, a world in which there is no room for mercy, remorse or weak-kneed illusions of peace. Just as it was back then.

Open gallery view Beitar Jerusalem fans, especially the group known as La Familia, are known for right-wing, racist views. Here they are holding a banner supporting "Hebron shoote Elor Azaria, April 4, 2016. Credit: Nir Keidar

By painting such a one-sided world, Netanyahu helps himself, politically, of course, but he also makes it easier for Israelis to feel justified and virtuous. He absolves them of the need for retrospection or for looking in the mirror. He enables them to deny reality and to fail to connect the dots, even if the evidence is under their noses. Just as Israelis - as well as most American Jews, by the way - have mastered the art of ignoring half a century of occupation “beyond the mountains of darkness” and just as they have repressed memories of their blatant indifference to the carnage and casualties in Gaza in 2014, so they are now capable of overlooking the repeated and often well-documented pattern of Palestinian assailants who are killed despite posing no danger, as well as the increasing public displays of dangerous racism and even genocidal agitation in the streets, in football stadiums and, perhaps most ominously, on social media.

There are thousands if not tens of thousands of Israelis who call for ejecting, raping and murdering Palestinians, leftists and even plain old critics of the government, on an almost daily basis. The cry “Death to the Arabs” which reverberates in radical right wing demonstrations as well as football fields has become so routine that no one seems to notice anymore. Just this past Sunday, a gang of 40-50 football thugs assaulted Nadwa Jabber, an Israeli-Arab teacher in a mixed school devoted to coexistence, when she was in her car with her two young daughters outside the Jerusalem shopping mall. “Here are some Arabs,” they shouted, surrounding Jabber, who had stopped at red light, blocking her way, pounding on her car and screaming racist taunts and insults. “It was 15 minutes of pure terror,” she said.

That didn’t seem to bother Netanyahu or his ministers too much. There was no public outcry or demands that steps be taken. But when a senior army officer with a proven battle record and a history of tough and uncompromising aggressiveness towards terrorists accurately points out, as a child in the Emperor’s New Clothes, that such incidents are reminiscent of attitudes towards Jews in Berlin in the 1930’s, as they surely are, that’s when Netanyahu, his ministers and, frankly, most of public opinion - that’s when they become enraged. That’s when they feel a red line has been crossed. That’s when they demand immediate action, or else.