NC: For the last ten years especially, there has been a very strong shift in Israeli mentality and politics toward the right, nationalism, toward more extremism, there is a kind of circling the wagons mentality which was also true in South Africa toward the end. “The world hates us because they are all anti-Semitic so we will do what we want.” Nothing is their fault; everything is somebody else’s fault, a lot of brutality. I mean sometimes, unbelievable. The scenes for example during Cast Lead, the brutal attack on Gaza with Israelis sitting on beach chairs on the hills, applauding every time a bomb fell. This is beyond obscenity. But unfortunately, it is a large part of the population. There are countertendencies, but they are, as far as I can see, pretty limited. When there was the Rothschild demonstration, the tent city, kind of Occupy-type thing—except if you look at it, it is pretty narrow: it is, “I want something better for me, I want to be able to get an apartment.”
