YNET

“The infiltrators are a cancer in our body.” In one easy wave of hand Knesset Member Miri Regev tried to intimidate her listeners. I, who meet cancer patients on a daily basis, was horrified.

In the morning after, Regev tried to explain that she “used the term cancer with the purpose of demonstrating their negative spread within our society.” Her clarification only showed that indeed her intention was to instill an infectious fear of an uncontrollable disease that takes over the body, erodes it, until it withers away and dies.

History is full of people who used cancer as a metaphor to describe negative phenomena. Trotsky called Stalinism “the cancer of Marxism”, Nixon’s adviser used the word “cancer” to describe the Watergate affair, and the Catholic church used it for centuries against its many enemies, among them of course Jews and other oppressed minorities.

Miri Regev knew what she was doing very well. The word cancer brings up a wide range of thoughts and feelings that lead to despair, and the feeling of loss of control. In her excellent book, Illness as Metaphor (1978), Susan Sontag argued that the use of terminology such as “extreme,” “fatal”, “malignant,” “incurable,” and “aggressive” to describe cancer leads people to lose their wits and regard cancer as a wild beast.

That’s why Regev’s sin is doubly worse. She did not only attack the residents of the poor communities, the refugees, and self-image of the Israeli society, but also cancer patients. The metaphors and myths attached to this disease only worsen the patients’ suffering. And the patients are many. The language used to describe and write about the disease, says Sontag, is responsible for the disease’s demonization. This language is responsible for the diseases’ terrible image and only strengthens the public’s opinion that it is necessarily fatal.

I have been treating cancer patients for many years, and if there is one striking feature I can use to describe cancer it is that it’s not racist, it’s universal. Cancer doesn’t discriminate between people. I treated men and women, white and black, those with deep pockets and those with nothing. All had the same disease, the same pain, the same fears, complaints, crises, and joys. In the patient’s chair incredible friendships are born between patients of differing opinion, colors, and backgrounds. One disease unites them and under sad circumstance the commonality between all human beings is made clear. The (short and surprising) road is paved towards equal dialogue on an equal platform. That is where the common and the uniting lives.

A shot from the gut

Treating cancer means using compassion, sensitivity, caution, and a balanced combination of knowledge and data. The exact opposite of what Regev and her friends are doing in the Coalition – to shoot from the gut without thinking, to plant hatred and destruction, and then consider yourself a brave savior. As someone who is well acquainted with side effects, I can say with complete confidence that the use of poisonous words is dangerous, and can even come back as a boomerang.

The use of primordial fear of a disease, the use of racism and hatred of the other only creates distance and erosion. It’s an easy and mean tool in the hands of someone who wishes to inflame and incite the masses, an easy tool in the hands of bottom of the barrel politicians who try to climb to the top. Those who get hurt on the way – the healthy and sick Israeli public – don’t interest these agitators.

Thankfully, Miri Regev is not entrusted with treating cancer, and can’t do any more damage than she has already done. Though, her words embarrass the parliament in which she sits and the party of which she is a member. The damage and shame she has caused to the Israeli public, to cancer patients, to the state of Israel, to us all, is profound.

Miri Regev and her friends in the ruling party and the government continue to cynically ignore their responsibilities. They embarked on an orchestrated propaganda campaign against the victims of their neglect, used cancer as a racist metaphor, and entered us all into a dark page in a long line of dark pages in a history whose writing began in the Middle Ages.