electionsnotes Flash 90
Gabe Ende: The Critical Importance of Leadership in the State of Israel
There are at least four intrinsic, “built in” factors that make it difficult to maintain Jewish sovereignty in Israel.
The most prominent factor is that even within the pre-’67 “Green Lines”—excluding east Jerusalem, inter alia—there is an Arab-Palestinian minority of 20% that justifiably demands complete equality and we have seen that attempts to ignore this– even on a “declarative” level, such as in the shameful “Nation-state Law”—fling us into highly regretted situations.
The second is the hysterical insistence of the large majority of ultra-Orthodox “Hareidim” that the privileges that they have amassed since 1977—in particular the “blood privilege”, which exempts them from the risks of serving in the IDF—not be tampered with. The result is that well over 10% of Jewish males legally–and mainly fraudulently– dodge the draft as ” full-time Torah studies”. The Hareidim act as if this privilege was part of the Torah handed down at Sinai and are cynically oblivious to the injustice and demoralization that their scandalous position enjoins.
The third is the political fanaticism that the connection between Am Yisrael ( the People of Israel ) and Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) is producing, particularly in Orthodox religious circles. The extreme right/ “messianic right”/militant settlers/”hilltop youth”/ Kahanist fascists are pushing an agenda which in many respects is a mirror image of that of Hamas—and they manage to foil just about every initiative that is not to their liking.
The fourth factor is the enormous sensitivity of the Israeli public to the lives of our sons and daughters, which enables our enemies to achieve near-strategic objectives simply by kidnapping Israelis and holding them as hostages. This phenomenon has no parallel elsewhere and all attempts to mitigate its consequences—even through legislation—have proved futile.
The combination of these factors constitutes a threat to the very future of the country—but there is a countervailing factor that provides us with the potential to contend with the threat. It is not an educational system geared to nationalist brainwashing, which several of the new ministries and departments assigned to deputy ministers were established to implement…It is not a policy of annexation or deportation… It is not the attempt to legislate the supremacy of Jewish interests… It is not implementation of the slogan to “Let Zahal (the IDF) Win”…The significant factor is of a simpler character: the election of a political leadership that is sensitive to the values and concerns of all sectors in our society, the opposite of the orientation of Bibi’s “complete-complete” right-wing coalition.
There is no doubt that had Netanyahu been endowed with such sensitivity, he would have halted the attempt at regime change ( facetiously characterized as “judicial reform”) before the crisis developed its monstrous proportions and sharply divided the nation. The writing was writ large on the wall. The Defense Minister desperately pleaded with Bibi to listen to the concerns of the army’s General Staff but to no avail. And this is the work of the highly acclaimed political maneuverer who had repeatedly engineered compromises to protect Hareidi sensibilities, who had lowered himself to metaphorical “tuchos-licking” to prevent Ben Gvir from bolting the coalition, “the magician” who always managed to contrive creative solutions by pulling a political rabbit out of his hat! No one was more experienced at defusing crises than Bibi.
But in the issue at hand, he refused to budge. Though the particulars of the so-called “judicial reform” did not at all surface in the election campaign, his inclination to compromise in order to prevent a blow-up had run dry. He decided, in fact, to view the crisis as an opportunity to “crush the left”, to achieve a “complete victory”, to emerge as a hero to his radical base no matter what the consequences—and no less important, to deliver a chilling warning to all who might dare to impugn his honor.
The culminating Knesset vote provided him with two grand “victory photos”. In the first he demonstratively turns his back on the Defense Minister, preferring to chat with Yair Levine and Ben Gvir rather than listen to Galant’s plea to delay the voting until after a meeting with the IDF’s Chief of Staff on the military implications of the schism that the vote was bound to intensify. The other photo reveals a jubilantly rejoicing coalition, such as after a major sporting opponent has been trounced.
Netanyahu and his supporters indeed achieved “complete victory”, but at the expense of a major deterrent in the eyes of our enemies: the unity of our people. The results were revealed in tragic clarity on October 7.
The populists of the right can blame “the left”/” the elites”/”the traitors”/the “disloyal IDF pilots”/ the “unmotivated IDF commanders” and other expletives conjured up in their sinister delusions—but the decisive factor was the disgraceful leadership of Benjamen Netanyahu.
The inescapable conclusions are to convene elections before the year’s end and to send Bibi, Sarah, and their spoiled son Yair to an extended vacation at their spacious home in Caesarea. Perhaps the courts will grant the PM an act of kindness and save him from prison.
In a country with built-in centrifugal forces such as Israel, a Prime Minister incapable of understanding the imperatives of his position cannot be tolerated.
