On Silence, Comfort, and the Loss of Purpose – The Crumbling Gray

By: Warda Saada There is a large group in this country that continues to speak in the name of moderation, responsibility, and love of the state — yet insists on not looking at what is actually happening within it. A group that declares its commitment to democracy, but struggles to say a basic truth out loud: a state that does not belong to all its citizens, and that does not see all human beings living under its control, is not a substantive democracy.

While Arab society in Israel is grappling with rampant violence, the abandonment of lives, the collapse of law-enforcement systems, and selective policing — people speak of “complexity.” When homes are demolished, infrastructure neglected, and basic rights denied in the name of planning, law, and order — you ask for patience.

And when Gaza is destroyed, when unprotected civilians pay with their lives, when the Strip undergoes a humanitarian collapse with no moral justification — silence prevails in the name of security.When violence expands in the West Bank, land expropriation intensifies, a regime of two legal systems takes hold, and the very concept of equality completely erodes — it is preferable not to know.

Not to see, because seeing demands a position.Not to know, because knowing demands action.Not to feel, because feeling reminds us that there is responsibility.

But a state for all its citizens cannot exist on repression.There is no equality without recognition of injustice.There is no security without rights.And there is no morality that applies only to one group.

Those who occupy positions of influence — in the media, academia, the economy, and the security establishment — choose caution. They have microphones, access to committees, and influence over public discourse and policy. Yet they use this power mainly to avoid disruption: to frame, to soften, to explain, to normalize.

Thus, silence becomes complicity.Not through shouting — but through daily practice:through media framing that blurs harm done to civilians,through academic language that disconnects policy from its human consequences,through an economy that continues to function as if there is no war, as if there is no occupation, as if there are no invisible citizens.

The vision of a state for all its citizens requires speaking an uncomfortable truth:that there is no democracy with a civic hierarchy,that there is no equality when one law applies to Jews and another to Palestinians,and that there is no shared future without responsibility for human life — inside the Green Line and beyond it.

But this truth threatens those who have built for themselves a comfortable political existence:half-criticism, half-responsibility, half-conscience.Present in all centers of power — yet avoiding real confrontation.Influential — but not oppositional.Speaking of reasonableness — even when it serves as a pretext for injustice.

And in a reality where Arab citizens of Israel are abandoned,where Gaza is bleeding,and where the West Bank is being eroded day by day —there is no neutrality. There is a choice.

Whoever chooses comfort over equality,silence over responsibility,and denial over morality —is not “the voice of reason.”They are the barrier that protects injustice from change.They said they were “fine.”But they are not.And their disappearance from the arena is already underway — not with noise, but through complete assimilation into a gray moral landscape.

A state for all its citizens is not an empty slogan.It is a commitment to equal rights, to human security, and to dignity for every person — without preconditions, without preferred identities.

And the question is not who is extreme.The question is who, among those who have the power to influence,is finally willing to say:this is not what democracy looks like — and we are no longer willing to be partners in it.The time has come to embed the values of a state for all its citizens.