'What kind of human beings will we be after seeing what we've seen in Israel?'

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Jump to category:

David Grossman for the Financial Times
David Shipley for The Spectator
Daily Mail editorial board
Freya India for UnHerd

published 12 October 2023

Israel is in a nightmare. Who will we be when we rise from the ashes?

David Grossman for the Financial Times

"Who will we be when we rise from the ashes and re-enter our lives?" asks Israeli author David Grossman in the Financial Times. "Who will we be and what kind of human beings will we be after seeing what we’ve seen?" He continues: "If I may hazard a guess: Israel after the war will be much more rightwing, militant, and racist." There will be the "painful understanding that we Israelis will always have to live here in heightened alertness and constant preparedness for war", says Grossman.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

"It's finally happened. Our prisons are full," writes David Shipley in The Spectator. "Anyone could have predicted this crisis," he continues. "In the long-term we need to make prison work, reducing our high reoffending rate so that someone returning to prison become rare." But as that will take years, "right now the government needs to free up capacity in the prison system" by looking at "who can be released early", he says.

"If Labour is sincere about being the party of aspiration, imposing 20 per cent VAT on private schools is a strange way of going about it," says the Daily Mail in its editorial. The decision "will price out many parents of modest means who strive to get the best possible schooling for their children" and force thousands of pupils into "the state system because their families can no longer afford the fees", according to the paper.

"While it's commendable to try and create a sense of community for Gen Z, is converting cathedrals into nightclubs really the solution?" asks Freya India for UnHerd. Recent events involving church raves and DJ priests "hollow out the depth and meaning of religion, turning it into a commodity", she says. "Many Zoomers feel lost and disconnected" but acts like these "will only deepen this disconnect".

Explore More