Why Israel’s Left and Its Media Fear Reality More Than Any External Enemy

Israel has no shortage of enemies.
Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, UN committees staffed by people who confuse “context” with excuses.
But none of them unsettle Israel’s political left or its media ecosystem quite like two humble objects:

A mirror. And an archive.

Not tanks.
Not rockets.
Not settlers.

Just a reflection of the present-and an honest record of the past.

Together, they destroy narratives. And that is unforgivable.

The Mirror – Where Ideology Meets Consequences

The mirror is cruel because it judges ideas not by intentions, but by outcomes.

This is precisely why the Israeli left avoids it.

The left loves ideas.
It is far less comfortable with what happened after those ideas were implemented.

• Oslo Accords: A brave peace initiative.
  Result: A wave of terror, thousands of Israeli dead, and the creation of an armed hostile entity at Israel’s core.
• Withdrawal from Lebanon: Moral, enlightened, restrained.
  Result: Hezbollah entrenched on the border with over 150,000 rockets aimed at Israeli cities.
• Gaza Disengagement: Painful but humane.
  Result: Hamas takeover, endless rocket fire, and repeated wars.

The mirror is unimpressed by “it wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.”
It reflects what did happen.

And this is the central asymmetry of Israeli politics:
The left demands to be judged by intentions.
The right is judged by results.

Reality, inconveniently, sides with results.

The Archive – A Dangerous Memory in an Age of Narrative Management

If the mirror is uncomfortable, the archive is existentially threatening.

The archive remembers.

It remembers:

• Who described Hamas as a “strategic asset”
• Who insisted Yasser Arafat was a “partner for peace”
• Who warned that the right was “inciting violence,”
  while ignoring systematic incitement against settlers, soldiers, and religious Israelis
• Who promised “there is a partner-or we will create one”

And the archive commits the ultimate sin:
It does not update itself to match today’s narrative.

Old articles, recorded interviews, speeches, op-eds-
They remain exactly as they were said.

No retroactive clarification.
No moral software update.
No “that was a different time.”

Which is why the archive must be:

• Dismissed
• Discredited
• Declared irrelevant
• Or conveniently labeled “right-wing,” meaning illegitimate by definition

The Media – Guardians of Selective Amnesia

Israeli media does not merely report reality.
It filters it.

Its power lies not only in what it shows-but in what it chooses to forget.

Thus:

• A right-wing statement from 1998 is eternally relevant
• A left-wing statement from 2010 is “out of context”

The archive threatens this power structure.
If fully accessible, it exposes patterns, not accidents.

And patterns are lethal to narrative control.

The Left Doesn’t Fear the Right – It Fears Comparison

The Israeli left does not truly fear the right.
It fears an honest comparison between predictions and outcomes.

Because when that comparison is made:

• The right made mistakes-and adjusted
• The left made mistakes-and doubled down

This distinction matters.

The right is capable of saying: We were wrong.
The left prefers to say: Reality failed us.

Reality, however, does not apologize.

A Democracy Without Memory Is Not a Democracy

Without an archive, there is no accountability.
Without a mirror, there is no self-criticism.

A democracy where positions can be recycled without cost,
where microphones are handed out without reckoning,
is not democracy.

It is consciousness management.

And when media protects narratives instead of truth,
it stops being a watchdog
and becomes a PR agency with press credentials.

Reality Does Not Lean Left

The mirror does not respond to protests.
The archive does not care about op-eds.
And reality does not change direction because slogans demand it.

The real problem for Israel’s left and its media is not the right.

It is the growing number of people who:

• Remember
• Compare
• And look into the mirror without filters

That-more than any external enemy-is the true threat.