She’s nice, Or. She runs a “footsy volleyball” club with her boyfriend – volleyball with the feet. Slim, muscular, they fell in love on this beach in Ashdod which overlooks Israel’s largest industrial port and its refinery. On weekends, they go to raves, dancing in nature. For two weeks, she has also been a journalist. Channel 14 took it for a test. At 21, Or Tzaidi, without studies, without CV, without connections, writes articles for the website of this low-budget but very popular comment vortex. Acquired by the Israeli right, his young channel contributes to normalizing a discourse with genocidal overtones, in the ninth month of the war in Gaza. “They want young people, new blood”says the young woman, who would prefer to write posts on social networks, but you have to start somewhere.
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They have an eye, its editors-in-chief. But Tzaidi is completely in tune with the times. She wants to live lightly. She wants “speak the truth”, like its champion, the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir. In the eyes of Gold, this illiberal homophobe who believes in the supremacy of divine law and that of the Jewish people, is a “democrat”. It does not seem to him to be an obstacle to feminism. The racial war against the Arabs that he advocated his entire career? “We know today that we cannot live together. There is no solution, but we can reduce the problem”believes Or. The policy of hunger and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, for which he is campaigning? “They will leave voluntarily, if Israel offers incentives”she wants to believe.
We would easily forget it, on this incandescent Friday when Ashdod takes a dip in the sea, before Shabbat dinner: the hell of Gaza opens barely twenty kilometers to the south. But there are a few reminders: these cranes at a standstill, these empty construction sites, for lack of Palestinian workers, banned from entering the country during the war. These posters bearing the image of Israeli Hamas hostages, which are fading and disappearing. When did we stop sticking them in town? Gold and his friend, Ruben Dray, cannot say. After six lean months, their foot-volleyball business resumed in March. Recently, they organized a tournament in support of Hamas captives, at the request of families who are working hard to ensure that they are not forgotten.
In this bastion of the Israeli right, we think a lot about the hostages. But it’s a way of mourning. They get in the way. Their ordeal legitimizes war. But there is no question of Israel putting an end to it to free them, thanks to an agreement negotiated with Hamas. “There aren’t many nuances in my town, sighs the great poet of Ashdod Sami Shalom Chetrit. It seems like we have a football team playing somewhere and we have become a crowd of supporters. We shout empty slogans: “Together we will overcome”, “Total victory”, “Bring them home.” »
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