When the story broke about the Bar-Ilan mathematics professor suspected of planning a grandiose terror campaign aimed at forcing Arabs to leave Israel, I found myself thinking back to a documentary released just weeks ago by Israel's state broadcaster, Kan 11.
The parallels are striking. Two elderly men, both alone, both embittered, both abandoned by their partners, both suffering from delusions of personal grandeur. Both hatched wild, grandiose political schemes that involved violence, sabotage and terror to satisfy their own political fantasies.
But despite the uncanny similarity between the cases, there is one difference that tells you most of what you need to know about the state of Israel today: you will not be seeing a flattering documentary from the state broadcasting corporation anytime soon celebrating the alleged saboteur from Bar-Ilan.
For those unfamiliar with the case, just a few weeks ago Kan 11 released a documentary, produced in partnership with the corporation, devoted entirely to the story of Zion Cohen, a 70-year-old kibbutznik from Merom Golan who became a political extremist and anti-religious activist and decided to embark on a burning campaign of sabotage against religious institutions in the state.
The film is a deranged and deviant display glorifying violence and extremism. The documentary describes in minute detail Zion's preparations, dubbed in mock-heroic fashion "The Match" and portrayed as someone who "ignited a revolution."
His violent, extreme and undeniably malicious actions are presented almost like an action hero. The film shows Zion preparing explosive and incendiary devices, but instead of depicting a sad and desperate man doing something unconscionable, the film works overtime to present "The Match" as a kind of MacGyver, cleverly manufacturing explosives right under the nose of the evil regime.
Entire minutes of the film are devoted to footage of Zion doing physical exercise as a dramatization of the "physical preparations" he needed to make for his sabotage operations, and even an incident in which he killed a peacock with a sharp weapon is presented as a moment of boundary-breaking triumph.
The first thing I found myself asking when the story of the Bar-Ilan professor broke, who planned deranged schemes to carry out terror attacks against Arabs in Israel with the goal of creating a transfer, was whether the Israeli broadcasting corporation is planning to make a heroic documentary about this deranged old man as well.
Will we get to see the documentary department of the Israeli broadcasting corporation go out of its way to describe the stubbornness with which the professor pursued parties who would assist his plans? Will entire minutes of state broadcasting be devoted to him sitting and solving mathematical equations and arriving at the conclusion that transfer is the only mathematical solution to the situation in Israel? If he kills an animal in preparation for an attack, will the moment be presented as some kind of heroic breaking of chains?
For some reason, I don't think we need to worry about it happening. I doubt the extent of the corporation's desire to glorify the extreme delusions of right-wing individuals, unlike their strong desire to praise every deranged leftist old man.
But in the end we will have to wait and see. Perhaps in a year or two we will be treated to a trailer flashing across the corporation's screens for the film "The Gunman: The Professor Who Fired the Opening Shot for Transfer." But somehow, I doubt it.
