In one of Hitler’s favorite operas, “Götterdämmerung” – from Richard Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” – Brünnhilde jumps into a funeral pyre, singing, “Laughing let us be destroyed; laughing let us perish, let night descend, the night of annihilation ... laughing death.” And in the final aria of “Tristan and Isolde,” Isolde experiences death, calling it the supreme form of bliss.

In Hitler’s eyes, Wagner infused his art with Nazi Germany’s cult of death, especially the death of a soldier falling in battle. George Orwell wrote that “Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them, ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.”

The Nazis turned the October 1914 battle of Langemark, Belgium, into a heroic myth that fed into the ideology of their death cult. A soldier who was slaughtered there wrote his family beforehand, “We are Germans; we fight for our people and shed our blood and hope that the survivors are worthy of our sacrifice.”

Death on the battlefield ensured martyrs an eternal life, serving as a force of renewed life for the homeland. “The individual,” explained Hitler, “should come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole.” Göring stated that “the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”

Last Tuesday, I published a TV review in Haaretz (in Hebrew), in which I told of a youth about to be drafted who said that his brother, who died during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014, “died with a smile on his face, doing what he loved doing best.” He, too, was looking forward to death. Here we have the Israeli death cult, the glorification of death on the battlefield.

“It’s called patriotism,” historian-journalist Yoaz Hendel tweeted me, “and without the commitment and trust in the need to fight for this country, you wouldn’t be able to continue pounding [he used a vulgar Hebrew equivalent] your keyboard.”

There are never any right-wing comments without such vulgar insinuations. Scorn and abuse are an integral part of such a worldview. I asked Hendel whether someone who dies without a smile on his face is less patriotic, and whether children should be taught that one dies happily on the battlefield. “Anyone who isn’t raised on ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,’ with all the difficulties this entails, won’t fight for his country,” he tweeted back.

This is pure fascist propaganda. The wish to die in battle with a smile on one’s face is defined as patriotism. Pure and simple. Children should be taught that it’s good to die this way for one’s country, otherwise they won’t fight. In other words, as Hitler believed, the Jewish child in Israel “should come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation.” The individual fulfills himself by sacrificing himself in battle for “his nation,” with a smile on his face.

Naturally, glorification of death produces a craving for it – the noble end. It turns out that the Arab word for martyr, “Shahid,” means “patriot” in Hebrew. Following the Göring line of thought, Hendel rebuked me for a lack of patriotism, presenting me as a parasite, “pounding away” on my keyboard.

Later that day, Hendel summed up the death of renowned actress Ronit Elkabetz with the words, “Oh well, another actress gone.” I guess she wasn’t Brünnhilde.