The April 9 elections to the 21st Knesset will be the 15th time since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War that Israel’s citizens and soldiers will exercise their democratic right while ruling over millions of disenfranchised Palestinians. There were times when the exhortation “down with the occupation” merited a place of honor in the political discourse, alongside the word “peace.” Under the decadelong regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, such talk has made way for a discourse of annexation and incitement. It is as if not saying the word makes the occupation disappear.

On Feb. 16, Channel 13 news anchor Oshrat Kotler, referring to a report about Israeli soldiers who beat up two Palestinian detainees, commented that 18-year-old soldiers were deployed in the territories and “come back human animals. That’s the result of the occupation.” Her comment generated outraged reactions on the political right, not because she had used the word “occupation” — they were careful to sideline that — but because she had “dishonored Israeli soldiers.” Her bottom line — “that’s the result of the occupation” — was ignored. According to the right-wing worldview, if you do not react to the occupation, it does not exist.

How does a state that boasts of being a democracy deal with its continued control of another people? There are various ways. Netanyahu, for example, depicts an alternative reality. Thus, in a March 2018 speech at the annual convention of the pro-Israeli American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby in Washington, he had the supreme gall to compare the values instilled in Americans by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King — “freedom, justice, peace and hope” — with those cherished by Israel, while ignoring Israel as an occupying, discriminatory power that oppresses and depresses. It would be interesting to know what value he thinks is embodied in his warning to right-wing voters on election day in March 2015 that Israel’s Arab citizens “are heading to the polling stations in droves.”

The chair of the New Right party, Naftali Bennett, wondered in 2013 how anyone could call Israel an occupier in its own home. “After all, this is our home,” he said. Two years later, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely of the Likud Party demanded that Israeli diplomats “return to the basic truth about our right to this land” when representing the country abroad. In addition to discussing Israel’s security and diplomacy needs, she added, “You should stress the biblical and historic link of the Jews to the Land of Israel.”