Watching the endless current affairs broadcasts feels like watching a football game that is all played in injury time: the players are already very tired, everyone’s nerves are frayed and lead to over-aggressiveness, but nevertheless they continue to play until the final whistle in the hope that it will still be possible to change the result. About four months after the events of Black Saturday and days away from another hostage deal that might bring an end to the fighting, it can be said that Israeli television – just like the Israelis themselves – might want to move on but has no idea how. Between proper news releases and soft current affairs, even the few reality shows in our lives such as “The Next Star” (Keshet 12) or “VIP Eating Car” (Network 13) offer escapism but actually talk about war, not to mention the cessation of commercials in which even the heroes of the war became presenters ( Just yesterday I came across a campaign by the singer Raviv Kaner for a construction company). With all this weight on the eyes that already thought they had seen everything, still the interview conducted last night by Yair Sharky and Haim Levinson (“Sharky Levinson”, Keshet 12) with Daniela Weiss managed to stun me.
Weiss, for those who don’t know, heads the Nahala movement and is the one who organized the return to Gaza conference held earlier this week in Jerusalem. The conference attracted dozens of members of the Knesset and ministers who spoke, sang and danced – and above all called for the establishment of a Jewish settlement in Gaza and succeeded in raising the flames of division in Israeli society to new heights. To Weiss’s credit, it should be said that, unlike our politicians who change their opinions according to the internal polls of that morning, she has been consistent in her opinions for decades – she advocates for what is known as the complete Land of Israel, and if we reduce it to less washed-out terms (and this is not a woman of nuance) she wants to expel the All Israeli Arabs to other countries. Although it was not her first interview and she came straight from what is considered an achievement for her, it was evident that Weiss came to the studio particularly charged, perhaps it is because she watched the interview that preceded her with the former head of the Shin Bet Carmi Gilon (for whom it was indeed a first interview), whose positions are opposite to hers , or maybe this is the usual state of accumulation of someone who is used to being angry.