On despair - Ronen Tal in Haaretz:

‘Sagi, a scholar of general and Jewish philosophy who teaches at Bar-Ilan University, provides answers to the questions that disturbed him in two new books. The first, "From Despair to Hope," is a work of philosophical inquiry into grief, consolation and hope, intertwined with recollections of the personal journey the author underwent after his mother's death and during the war. The second, "There Is Hope: A Philosophical-Existential Journey" (Idra Publishing, Shalom Hartman Institute; in Hebrew), shifts the philosophical gaze to the concrete arena of life in the present.
"There Is Hope," the shorter and more accessible of the two, opens with a discussion of the experience of despair.’

‘"Today there is the digital media space, whose players forge a world of meaning that isn't always connected to the facts outside. These media hide the beauty you see, for example, in hospitals, where – with the exception of the Smotrich family, perhaps – there are Arab and Jewish patients in the same room, and everything is fine. Even the most rabid right-winger will go to the pharmacy and take the medication handed to him by an Arab pharmacist, and will not say, 'You intend to poison me.' "In everyday life we ease up on the ideological pathos – but then it reignites and when it reignites it's dangerous. The politicians are constantly trying to capture us, and part of our struggle must include not seeing ourselves through them."’

(…)

‘How would you have decided if you had faced this dilemma? "According to Israeli law and IDF tradition, a manifestly illegal order must not be executed. The problem is that in the present era the term 'manifestly illegal' has become irrelevant. Manifestly illegal is what happened in Kafr Qasem, when Border Police identified civilians and nevertheless fired at them [killing 49 people, in October 1956]. But when you operate a plane or a drone from a distance of kilometers, you have to trust the person who is supplying you with the information – that they are indeed providing a true report – and the problem is that the chain of trust was damaged.
"If I had reported for duty, I would have rigorously examined every order I received, because the possibility of not reporting for duty is tantamount to my abandoning Israel's citizens completely. It's a dilemma without an absolute solution."’

(…)

‘In the latest issue of Ofakim (Horizons), a journal published by the Hartman Institute, Sagi wrote about the concept of national unity that dominates public discourse, as reflected in the slogan "Together we will win" – a phrase that seeks to cancel the individual in favor of the collective and presents a nonexistent idea of perfect unity. One can also surmise that an article he published in Haaretz (Hebrew edition), headlined "In Gaza, too, every person has a name" – referencing a phrase that is evoked on Holocaust Remembrance Day – wasn't popular in his synagogue.
"I asked: Were they [Gazans] not created in God's image? It is not written that God created only the Jews in his image but that all human beings were created in that image. That is the halakhic and Talmudic tradition. And the fact that I present a universalistic approach as an internal Jewish position drives many of them crazy. Part of the reason I have been marked by the right as an enemy of Israel is that it's impossible to pull the wool over my eyes. I know the Jewish texts."’

(…)

‘"Absolute certainty characterizes fascist regimes and also the totalitarianism coming from the left. I assume that Likud voters are also people who hope. And that even the more ludicrous figures among their MKs go home at the end of the day to their families and hope, just like you and me."’

Read the article here.

Most probably that your enemies and opponents also hope, but what are they hoping for? I’m equally unsure about the question whether we should dwell in despair.
Don’t dwell in hope. But despair?

Universalism is highly unpopular among the rightists everywhere, and there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about it (Schmitt) but completely without universalism morality is just another power game.