Only last Shabbat, three Jewish Israeli women were arrested in the Israeli city of Herzilya. Their crime? Leaving flyers on the seats of a local synagogue with photos of six hostages still held in Gaza with the phrase "let my people go."
The synagogue was chosen on purpose - it is the synagogue of Yuli Edelstein, a Likud lawmaker who knows a thing or two about captivity - a former refusenik who spent three years in a Soviet gulag before making Aliyah.
More recently, Edelstein is known for yelling "get out of my sight" at the aunt of an Israeli hostage who was protesting at the Knesset.
It's impossible not to see the rank hypocrisy in Edelstein's behaviour, it would be laughable if it weren't so sad and depressing.
Israel, the Jewish state, created so that no Jew would experience the powerlessness and helplessness of captivity from which Edelstein himself escaped, is all but ensuring powerlessness and helplessness for the 101 hostages still languishing in captivity in Gaza.
We've written many times about what an affront this Netanyahu government is to our Jewish and Zionist values. But perhaps we should no longer be surprised. Not because we should recognize that this is the true face of Zionism - we would staunchly disagree with such an assessment - but because this is the true face of Kahanism, and Kahanism has replaced Zionism as the guiding ideology in Israel's current government.
Whereas Zionism promised the Jews not only the right to a state, but impressed upon us the responsibility of having a state, as stated in its Declaration of Independence, "The State of Israel will be ready to cooperate with the organs and representatives of the United Nations...", Kahanism enacts no such responsibility as it wields its power.
The disciples of Kahane advise Israelis "What will you tell your soldier's mother, that you sacrificed her son to protect Arabs? Kill him first. Don't wait for all doubt to be removed! Show no mercy to him or on all the cruel Arabs who live there!"
And how do we know that this is what Kahansists are saying? Because the booklets espousing this worldview are frequently left at Edelstein's synagogue, among others - and no one leaving these on the seats has ever been arrested.
Likewise, in almost every instance of settler violence in the occupied West Bank, there are seldom arrests of the settlers engaging in the violence, despite the IDF looking on as the events unfold. Often times, staunch supporters of Israel will claim that arrests cannot be made without investigations, that there must be time for law enforcement to do their job - and that would maybe be true if we did actually see any investigation or follow up, but at this point, we're far past this argument.
One only has to look at the frequency with which arrests happen when the alleged perpetrator is in opposition to the current government - protestors, hostage families, even young women who happen to be at the beach at the same time Ben-Gvir decides to take a stroll in the sand, to see that this is not a matter of investigative resources but rather, systemic discrimination.
This discrimination separates society into two incredibly foreboding categories - those who uphold illiberalism, authoritarianism, and Kahanism, and those who don't.
While the categories were once "Palestinian" and "Jew", which was bad enough, the addition to today's form of systemic discrimination - one that discriminates against anyone who does not uphold Kahanist values and behaviours, is a frightening development for Israel that may not be so easy to overturn.
The more recent news of the attacks on Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon further indicates this path of isolation for Israel. While an impressive tactical victory for Israel, a short-term win absent a long-term strategy to put an end to the war or return residents of the north and south safely to their homes counts for little more than increased fear of an inevitable retaliation.
All of these actions betray the very core of Zionism because Jews are not safe in their own land, in their own country. They are displaced in the thousands, and fearful for their lives.
When the far-right wave their Kach flags, and sing "Kahane Lives" this is not a wish or a prophecy, it is a statement of fact. For those who believe that an end to Zionism will mean an end to a Jewish state, they are in for a sobering wake-up call, because an end to Zionism is more likely to instead give rise to Kahanism in its place.
We must fight to free the hostages, and then we must fight to free ourselves from the grip of Kahanism embracing us faster than we may realize.