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Home , Bezalel Smotrich, Isaac Herzog, Israel Prize, Miriam Peretz, National camp

Dangerous Despair By Ben-Dror Yemini Yedioth Ahronoth – June 1, 2021

This isn’t going to be easy. And until it happens, the entire country is going to be on edge. The temperature is rising and so is the incitement, which is peaking once again. We’ve seen this before. We know how it is liable to end. We can only hope that that doesn’t happen this time. Just one thing is perfectly clear: the fraud campaign that was mounted by Netanyahu’s machine to shift blame away from and onto . The truth is the other way around. Smotrich, and no one else, prevented a right-wing government with the from being formed. Everything was in place. Naftali Bennett and were prepared to join. But Smotrich vetoed the idea. The center and left ought to send him a bouquet of flowers. And now, he of all people, is repeatedly telling the bald-faced lie that “Bennett prevented a right-wing government from being formed.” That lie deserves to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. All the talk about “right” and “left” is a fallacy. The elections were never about the settlements, annexation or a Palestinian state. They weren’t about the justice system or a boxing match between Second and First Israel either [a reference to Avishai Ben Haim’s reductive theory that explains every political development in Israel through the lens of a battle between first a secular, aloof and Ashkenazi “First Israel,” and the traditionally- observant, authentic and Sephardi “Second Israel” and its champion, Netanyahu]. These elections were about just one thing only: Bibi—yes or no. The public spoke, and the pro-Netanyahu bloc failed to win a majority. This was the fourth consecutive time that Netanyahu failed to win a majority. But he has refused to take the hint, which was thicker than an elephant’s leg. He wants to drag us into another election. That would be bad for Israel, but Netanyahu wants to gamble on all of us. That isn’t the way a person who presumes to be the representative of the ought to act. Doing so is tantamount to kicking aside Israel’s national interests. He has no qualms about wasting billions of shekels, and then wasting billions more, to send the roulette wheel spinning round again and again in hope that he might finally win. It was rather ludicrous to hear Netanyahu accuse Bennett of breaking his promises. Is there anyone who has broken more promises than Netanyahu? He said that he wouldn’t agree to another alternating premiership arrangement, but yesterday he offered a three-way alternating premiership arrangement in an act of sheer desperation. He made a promise to Gantz only to trample it underfoot. He accused Bennett of forming a “dangerous left-wing government,” even as he is prepared to offer nearly every party in that government the world over. He knows that a right-wing government could be formed if he would only step aside and allow a different candidate to lead. But he doesn’t want a right-wing government. He wants a Netanyahu government. Netanyahu is going to make the most of every single hour out of the numerous hours left to try to set a fire. Every hour that passes only makes him more desperate, more inciting and more dangerous. That is sad, especially since he is one of Israel’s most talented statesmen. But lurking behind that statesman is a dangerous man. His speech, a speech that brimmed with incitement and manipulations, made it patently clear that Israel needs a different leadership. It needs a responsible leadership, a nationally-minded leadership and a leadership that unites. The current-day Netanyahu is the opposite of all those.

Wednesday’s presidential race is a microcosm of Israeli Jews’ deeper divides By HAVIV RETTIG GUR @ TOI

Israel’s is set to meet Wednesday to choose between two candidates for president, and , a pairing that represents almost exactly the stereotypical two halves of Israel’s Mizrahi- Ashkenazi divide. Peretz, 67, is the incarnation of the warm, long-suffering Moroccan Jewish mother. Born in , Morocco, raised in the ma’abara encampments that housed so many immigrant Jewish families who fled the Arab world in the 1950s and 1960s, she was a teacher and a mother of six. Two of her sons, Uriel and Eliraz, fell in battle — Uriel in Lebanon in 1998 and Eliraz in Gaza in 2010.

1 Her fame is a function of her character. Thrust into the public limelight by a long string of tragedies — her husband Eliezer passed away in 2003 from illness — she embraced the persona of the weeping mother, a kind of biblical Rachel who used her unique place in the Israeli public consciousness to advocate for solidarity and reconciliation across the battlements of the country’s sometimes bitter culture wars. A book about her hardscrabble life became a runaway bestseller. She has won numerous awards for teaching, lit a memorial torch at the national Memorial Day ceremony on Mount Herzl in 2014, and was awarded the in 2018. But her legacy, at least in the public imagination, may be her easy smile, evident at every public appearance and every public talk, a sign of her insistence on soldiering on after the loss of her husband and two sons, a national symbol of grit, solidarity and triumph over life’s many tribulations. Herzog, 60, is the left-wing Ashkenazi elite personified. There are no ramshackle ma’abarot in his past. A well-heeled attorney by profession at one of the country’s top firms (which was founded by his father), his family story is as close as one comes to Israeli royalty. He is the grandson of Israel’s first Ashkenazi , Isaac Herzog, for whom he is named, and the son of former IDF major general and then president . His brother Michael is a retired IDF brigadier general. His aunt Suzy was the wife of former foreign minister . And on and on it goes. Herzog now serves as chairman of the . Herzog, too, is a respected figure in the Israeli public imagination, though a less colorful or emotive one. In his 15 years in the Knesset, he became known as a soft-spoken and mild-mannered manager. He ran respectful campaigns and declined to take part in the kind of angry political feuding that have since come to define the country’s fractious politics. As minister of welfare from 2007 to 2011 and as opposition leader from 2013 to 2018, he cut a striking contrast to politicians like . An open race The two figures thus mark a stark choice between two opposite and deeply familiar Israeli personas, between longsuffering Moroccan Jewish motherhood and soft-spoken Ashkenazi gentility. That divide seems to favor Peretz. As does the public: A Knesset Channel poll on Tuesday found a 43 percent plurality for Peretz, with just 27% for Herzog and 30% undecided. Peretz is personally right-leaning, like the majority of Mizrahi Jews of her generation. That fact is reflected in the poll. Among right-wing Israelis, Peretz is favored 55% to 21%. On the left, Herzog wins, but only just: 38% to 34%. But it is Israel’s 120 MKs, not the public, who elects a president. And what politician wouldn’t favor motherhood over gentility? In a right-leaning Knesset, does left-wing leader Herzog have a chance? The simple answer is an emphatic yes. The Knesset elects the president by secret ballot. Once behind the voting parition, an MK is free to choose whoever they wish without personal consequences. That’s why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to endorse Peretz over Herzog, repeatedly saying Israel was blessed with “two worthy candidates.” It’s not that he doesn’t have a preference. But he doesn’t know which way the race will go and doesn’t want to be seen backing the losing horse. He knows, too, that his public backing for one candidate may push his opponents to unite behind the other. At the same time, the race has brought to the fore the odd way that Israeli identity politics play out on the ground. Peretz has found surprising support on the left, and Herzog on the right. One left-wing intellectual who backed Peretz explained that while the liberal Herzog would be a better face for Israel to the world, the greatest danger to the country in the coming months and years isn’t criticism from outside, but the social and ethnic rifts within. A call for calm from the Moroccan mother Peretz, he reasoned, would do far more to quell Arab-Jewish tensions the next time they spike than a similar call from Herzog. Meanwhile, a series of right-wing politicians, including at least one MK from far-right Religious , have backed Herzog.

2 Herzog has played up his family’s religious background and framed his yichus — his pedigree – as anchoring his commitments to the country as a whole. Meanwhile, Peretz has talked of her commitment, “in every fiber of my being, to each and every citizen of Israel,” as well as to Israel’s diplomatic standing, where her personal touch would be an advantage. In an op-ed published Tuesday, she wrote, “I have seen in the eyes of world leaders how much tremendous blessing the human and personal connection between individuals can bring to the world.” The presidential race between two symbols of one of Israel’s underlying cultural divides has become a race to unify, to reach across the aisle, to assure Jews and Arabs alike, left-wingers and right-wingers and everyone in between, that they will be heard and respected. Whichever of the two candidates becomes Israel’s next president on Wednesday, the race itself has already marked a stark contrast to the general course of the country’s politics.

The latest battle in the War of Independence It's taken different forms over 73+ years, but as its core, it's the same war. The issue is not 1967 -- it's 1948. Daniel Gordis May 30

In 2003, we had to send our kids to school with gas masks. This was me, with our youngest child, making sure that his fit tight. That, too, was the War of Independence. Twenty years ago, more or less, we were having dinner at the home of friends in Sha’ar HaNegev, a small community situated very close to the Gaza border. In the midst of the standard dinner chit-chat, we heard an enormous boom, and the entire house shook. I looked at my wife, she looked at me, but no one said anything; we just kept eating and talking. A few minutes went by, and again, an enormous boom – and once again the house shook. No one so much as acknowledged the tank firing away just a few hundred meters from where we were seated. We’d never had dinner to the sound of tank fire when I was growing up in suburban Baltimore, and eventually, I couldn’t quite sustain the nonchalance. “What is that, exactly, that we’re hearing?” I asked, trying to sound as calm as our hosts looked. “Oh, that,” our host responded. “What you’re hearing is the latest battle in the War of Independence.” I feel a sadness in Israel these days that I don’t recall ever having felt before. Ask people how they are, and they scrunch up their face, as if to say, “How are any of us?” How, actually, are you supposed to be when you’re still fighting your war of independence, while much of the world –including many American Jews, more on whom below – has decided that you don’t deserve independence, that you’re the one country in the world that ought not exist? China can build concentration camps for the Uighurs, Syria can slaughter hundreds of thousands of its own citizens and turn millions into refugees, Russia can invade countries and poison dissidents, Saudi Arabia can dismember people, hunt down gays and lesbians and repress women – but Israel is the country that doesn’t deserve to exist? Apparently. You have to admire at least one thing about Hamas: they’re honest. Article Six of the Hamas Charter explicitly notes that their goal is to “raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.” That, by the way, doesn’t mean territorial compromise with Israel. When they chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” that is what they mean. Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar explicitly told British TV last week that Israel has no right to exist. What is extraordinary is not that Hamas believes that, or what they are honest about it; that I get. What is stunning is that the international community – including many Jews – makes a conscious effort not to believe them. Other than Hamas (among others in the Palestinian world), few institutions or people state explicitly that Israel has no right to exist. They don’t need to; that, after all, is the point of saying that a country has no right to defend itself against attackers who explicitly call for its destruction. Israel’s enemies have other ways of making the point: The UN Human Rights Council has just established the first “ongoing” commission of Inquiry into Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. No other country, no other conflict, has ever merited this. But Israel does? 3 Anyone who is surprised, though, has not been following the HRC for years. Of all the countries in the world, how many are a standing agenda item of the HRC? Just one, of course – Israel is standing agenda item #7. Anyone wonder why Israel has no intention of cooperating with the HRC inquiry? The New York Times published an array of photographs of Palestinian children killed in the fighting, with the heading “They Were Just Children.” They were, indeed, just children, which makes their deaths horribly tragic. I don’t know a single Israeli who is not pained by that loss of life. (There may be some, but I don’t know a single one.) Yet does anyone ask why Hamas situated its rockets where those children, who are without doubt entirely innocent, live, while it seeks to bomb ? Here’s the question I just can’t answer: What would the world have us do? Keep hoping that Iron Dome works, until it doesn’t? The Times also noted that 67 children were killed in Gaza, while two children were killed in Israel. The imbalance in the number of dead – around 250 in Gaza and about 15 or so in Israel – is ostensibly an indication of how “unfair” the battle was. But this comparison in the numbers of victims leaves me very confused. The Allies killed about 350,000 - 500,000 German civilians during World War II. Yet “only” 40,000 Brits died in the Blitz, and virtually no American civilians were killed on American soil. Would all those people (yes, including rabbis, a prominent one of whom accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” but backed down under pressure) pointing to the imbalance in the number of casualties therefore claim that the Allies conducted an immoral war against Germany? Do the categories of good and evil still matter? Does it make any difference at all who caused the war? Along with the UN HRC and the NY Times, we can now add several dozen American rabbinical students, who published a public letter claiming that “Israel has the military and controls the borders[.] How many Palestinians must lose their homes, their schools, their lives, for us to understand that today, in 2021, Israel’s choices come from a place of power and that Israel’s actions constitute an intentional removal of Palestinians? Sloppy writing, I tell my students, is evidence of sloppy thinking; they’re not just closely correlated – they’re one and the same. “Removal of Palestinians” – where? Gaza? The ? Or did they mean the Sheikh Jarakh legal battle (about which Israel’s Supreme Court has yet to rule – we’ll soon be posting for subscribers a podcast with a legal expert explaining the issues in that case). But how is Sheikh Jarakh, which is a neighborhood in East , related to Gaza, where Palestinians are losing their homes their schools and their lives? Summon your fortitude, and read the letter – because it’s a window into where part of the American Jewish community is headed. And then search for the word “Hamas.” Not there. Search for the word “exist.” Not there. Search for the word “terrorist.” Not there. How is it that Frank Fleming, the columnist and satirist, gets it, and they don’t? None of this should really surprise us. Ten years ago, I wrote a few pieces, one of them in Commentary Magazine, asking “Are Young Rabbis Turning on Israel?” I took a lot of heat for that piece, but I didn’t really care – I knew what was coming, for the signs were everywhere. Now they’re just undeniable. Read that letter from the rabbinical students, and then recall that neither the UAE nor Bahrain, which recently signed normalization agreements with Israel, recalled their ambassadors or said anything nearly as critical of Israel as did these rabbinical students. And then let this sink in – the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and even Egypt – are far more sympathetic to Israel than are significant swathes of American Jewish life. Rabbinical students have a right to believe whatever they’d like. All I would have asked of them, before signing that letter, is this: read the Israeli press (which, I acknowledge, is mostly in Hebrew, which I realize is an issue) and ask yourselves: Israel has had four elections in the last two years, and in none of them has the occupation or the conflict with the Palestinians been a campaign issue— even for the left-leaning parties. Why is that? Why is it that during this latest conflict with Hamas, not a single left-wing Israeli party critiqued the government, calling for a halt to the operation? Is it because Israelis by the millions are morally calloused and need American progressives to teach them ethical thinking? Or might it because many of those progressives live in or around Tel Aviv, and they took some offense at Hamas trying to kill them and their children? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, about whom more than enough has been written, recently (implicitly) called Israel an Apartheid state. That, of course, is another way of saying that it should be dismantled. And that wasn’t surprising; she might have been channeling Bernie Sanders. 4 AOC also said that Israel isn’t a democracy. That was a bit surprising, given the conduct of the Congress of which she is a member. This week, Israelis are going to get a new President (on Wednesday), elected by the Knesset that they – including Israeli Arabs, which is odd in an Apartheid state – elected, and quite possibly, a new Prime Minister as part of a broad coalition that (at least as of this writing) will likely include parties from the far-left to the right-of-center Naftali Bennet. If that happens, and Bibi Netanyahu is finally unseated, there will be Israelis who will be happy and others who will not. (Columns about both the new President and the (possibly new) PM forthcoming.) What they will have in common, though, is their understanding that flawed though the system is, the democracy works, and it’s real. While the UN HRC and the New York Times and AOC and some American rabbinical students all assail Israel for the crime of not being vanquished, here’s what’s worth remembering: If you want to make sure that Israeli leftists and the rightists bond together, all you have to do is remind us that you think we shouldn’t exist. In the face of that immoral absurdity, this is actually a pretty united country.

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