The disagreements in Israel’s polity are mainly over ethos
and values, not borders, security, faith, or economics.
The forces of civility and tolerance are in the minority.
The dominant camp (if we can trust the polls) is the one that thinks it knows
the Truth, that its political adversaries must be crushed, and that those who disagree with
them are “leftists,” “Reform,” and collaborators with the Muslim Brotherhood.
When Naftali Bennett turned over the running of the
government to Yair Lapid, he talked about how hurt he was that so many Israelis
aligned with the Netanyahu-led Opposition felt that their world had been
gutted when he formed a broad-based left-right government with backing from one of the Arab parties. He said that he heard their voices and respected their feelings. If
Israeli citizens are troubled, so is he. Every sector of the country will
sometimes find itself in power and sometimes in opposition. It was just
not acceptable that a considerable chunk of the population went into mourning
when the other half formed the government – and that it would be best if the
two halves could unite to create a big tent government.
In other words, Bennett called for reconciliation and
healing. He said we are a divided country and the only way to move ahead is to work together.
The Likud-Hardal-Haredi Netanyahu-led Opposition’s response was disdain.
Despite achieving the fall of the government, generosity is not in the Likud-Hardal-Haredi Netanyahu-led
Opposition’s vocabulary. Forget Churchill's remark, “In War, Resolution; In Defeat, Defiance; In Victory, Magnanimity…”
Having employed a scorched earth approach to drive Bennett
from office, including blocking crucial legislation in the national interest to bring him down, the Likud-Hardal-Haredi axis responded to Bennett’s
departure in the meanest of spirits.
Hardal ultra-Orthodox and hyper-nationalist chief Bezalel Smotrich "explained" that Bennett’s decision to quit political
life was not made of his own volition but was the result of a public so fed up
with him that it vomited him out. Vomited.
And Sephardi Shas Party boss Aryeh Deri (an ex-con who
only recently copped another plea) mocked Bennett, the first Orthodox prime minister,
for forming a government that was, he claimed, the most damaging for Jewish
identity in Israel’s history.
Just the opposite was true.
Moshe Gafni, the Degel HaTorah Lithuanian boss, said that
God had punished Bennett for going to Moscow to see Putin on a Saturday. Bennett
was trying to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine. We have seen the bloody
cost and dislocation of their fighting. For this, said Gafni, God gave Bennett his comeuppance.
Gafni’s understanding
of the Creator is not my understanding of the Holy One.
Netanyahu’s idea of
what Jabotinsky would have done in these times is the anthesis of how I understand what Jabotinsky stood for.
The Bibi-led Likud-Hardal-Haredi axis must create an illiberal ecosystem
of anxiety, demagoguery, disorder, and disruption. It can't afford to give Lapid a day
of grace.
Let them pursue their values. I will stick with mine. Even
if I am in a permanent minority.
Last night, Prime Minister Lapid gave a heartfelt address
to the nation. For more than half the country – those associated with the Bibi-led
Likud-Hardal-Haredi axis his remarks fell on deaf ears and closed minds.
Whereas the rest of us have a prime minister we can be proud
of.
***
Prime Minister Yair Lapid gave the following
speech this evening (Saturday, 2 July 2022):
“I want to start by thanking the 13th Prime
Minister of the State of Israel, Naftali Bennett. For your decency, for your
friendship and for leading the government this past year to economic and
security achievements not seen here for years. A special thank you for allowing
the citizens of Israel to see this week an orderly transition between people
who keep agreements and believe in one another.
The State of Israel is bigger than all of us.
More important than any of us. It was here before us, and will be here long
after us. It doesn’t belong only to us. It belongs to those who dreamed of it
for thousands of years in the Diaspora, and also to those yet to be born, to
future generations.
For them and for us, we must choose the common
good; that which unites us. There will always be disagreements, the question is
how we manage them, and how we make sure they don’t manage us.
Disagreement isn’t necessarily a bad thing so
long as it doesn’t undermine the stability of the government and damage our
internal resilience. So long as we remember that we all have the same goal: a
Jewish, democratic, liberal, strong, advanced, and prosperous Israel.
The deep Israeli Truth is that on most of the
truly important topics - we believe in the same things.
We believe that Israel is the nation-state of
the Jewish people. Its establishment didn’t begin in 1948, but rather on the
day Joshua crossed the Jordan and forever connected the people of Israel with
the land of Israel, between the Jewish nation and its Israeli homeland.
We believe that Israel must be a liberal
democracy in which every citizen has the right to change the government and set
the course of their life. Nobody can be denied their fundamental rights:
respect, liberty, freedom of employment, and the right to personal security.
We believe we must always preserve our
military might. Without it, there’s no security. I am the son of a Holocaust
survivor. A 13-year-old Jewish boy who they wanted to kill and who had no one
to protect him. We will defend ourselves, by ourselves. We will make sure we
always have the Israel Defense Forces, an army with undeniable strength, that
our enemies fear.
One night in the winter of 1944, in the
Budapest Ghetto, my grandmother called out to my father, and told him: ‘My
child, you don’t know it, but today is your Bar Mitzvah. I can’t bake a cake,
your father won’t return.’ My grandfather perished in the Mauthausen
Concentration Camp.
‘But there’s one thing I can do.’ And she took
out a small bottle of perfume, Chanel 5, which was the perfume of elegant
ladies before the war. We’ll never know how she kept it all that time. She
shattered it on the floor and said ’at least it won’t stink at my son’s bar
mitzvah.
We believe that Israel is a Jewish state. Its
character is Jewish. Its identity is Jewish. Its relations with its non-Jewish
citizens are also Jewish. The book of Leviticus says, ‘But the stranger who
dwells with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love
him as thyself.’
We believe that so long as Israel’s security
needs are met, Israel is a country that seeks peace. Israel stretches out its
hand to all the peoples of the Middle East, including the Palestinians, and
says: the time has come for you to recognize that we’ll never move from here,
let’s learn to live together.
We believe there is a great blessing in the
Abraham Accords, a great blessing in the security and economic momentum created
at the Negev Summit with the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Morocco and that there
will be a great blessing in the agreements yet to come.
The people of Israel won’t dwell alone. It is
our job to continue to strengthen our position in the world, our relations with
our greatest friend and ally, the United States, and to harness the
international community in the struggle against antisemitism and the
delegitimization of Israel.
We believe that it’s the job of the government
to uphold the law, and the job of the law to uphold the standards of
government. The law is what protects us from corruption and violence. A court
is what protects the weak from the strong. The law is the basis for our lives
together.
We believe that the Israeli economy must be
based on free market principles, on the creativity and dynamism of Israeli
technology, and that our job is to protect those who have nothing. To provide a
fair opportunity for every child, everywhere.
We believe that the Iranian threat is the
gravest threat facing Israel. We’ll do whatever we must to prevent Iran from
acquiring a nuclear capability, or entrenching itself on our borders.
I stand before you at this moment and say to
everyone seeking our demise, from Gaza to Tehran, from the shores of Lebanon to
Syria: don’t test us. Israel knows how to use its strength against every
threat, against every enemy.
We believe in, and pray for the well-being of
our soldiers and police officers, in the air, at sea, and on land. As it’s
written in the prayer for the well-being of IDF soldiers, ‘May the Almighty
cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them.’ We
won’t be quiet and won’t rest until our sons are returned: Hadar Goldin and
Oron Shaul of blessed memory, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed.
There’s something else that we believe in:
that we’re allowed to disagree. Freedom of expression is a fundamental
principle. Freedom of the press is a component without which democracy cannot
survive. It’s incumbent upon us to put effort into revealing the facts and
understanding the Truth.
The great Israeli question is actually why in
a period in which we have wide national agreement on all the important topics,
the levels of hate and anxiety within Israeli society are so high? Why is
polarization more threatening than ever?
The answer is - politics. In Israel, extremism
doesn’t come from the streets to politics. It’s the opposite. It flows like
lava from politics to the streets. The political sphere has become more and
more extreme, violent and vicious, and it’s dragging Israeli society along with
it. This we must stop. This is our challenge.
The State of Israel — Israelis — are better
than this. Here, there’s brainpower, imagination, and strength that can’t be
found anywhere else. The Israeli economy is a pilgrimage destination for the
entire world. Precisely in a time of global crisis, our potential grew. We know
how to change, to improve — we just need to do it together.
There are two photos hanging in my office in
the Knesset, one alongside the other: David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. Two
political rivals, but also the two most important Prime Ministers we’ve had.
They often argued, but they also always remembered they had the same goal:
building the strength and moral character of the State of Israel.
This goal is greater than all that divides us.
Our test is not whether or not we win the argument, but rather, if we learned
to find a way to work together with those who don’t agree with us.
Many people who didn’t vote for this government
are listening to this speech, many people who don’t and won’t support it. I
thank you for your willingness to listen. I ask to work together with you for
the good of our country. I’m committed to serving you as well. I embrace the
words of my predecessor, and want to repeat them: we are brothers.
The challenges before us are immense. The
struggle against Iran, terror at home, the Israeli education crisis, the cost
of living, strengthening personal security. When the challenges are so great,
we can’t let disagreements consume all our strength. In order to create a
common good here, we need one another.
Our children are watching us. What do we want
them to see? We want our children to see that we did everything to build a
Jewish and democratic, strong and advanced, benevolent and good Israel.
Only together will we prevail.
Thank you.”
