1.
Years overseas far from the madding crowd have given me the opportunity to view Israel from a different perspective. Many of the debates that I am familiar with from the past seem to regurgitate themselves. From a distance, they seem like an argument between children playing in a sandbox. From a distance, the challenges and dangers that Israel faces dull the differences between worldviews and shine a light on what we have in common.
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In any event, these endless and exhaustingly recycled arguments are futile. What we have here are different interpretations of Zionism, different possibilities for Israel's path. In most of these arguments, we do not try to persuade, rather we simply declare our point of view. Beyond the amusement for viewers and listeners, there is no real dialogue in which each party sees the claims of the other as a legitimate matter and debates them.
Is what we are hearing in public discourse, since the crystal-clear results of the elections, anything new? "The end of democracy" and "Fascism" have been with us since the establishment of the state. As I write, I am looking at a poster with two images: Menachem Begin shaking his clenched fist in the air at an election rally and Benito Mussolini speaking with his arm raised in the Fascist salute. The headline on the poster reads: "The same salute, the same content". Below the images of Begin and Mussolini, the caption makes a comparison between "Il Duce" and "the leader" (The quotation marks are in the original) In other words, Begin is not only a fascist but also not a leader. The poster is signed "The Workers' Party of the Land of Israel" (Mapai, i.e. the precursor to the Israeli Labor Party). So, did anything happen after Begin was elected prime minister?
The threat of a halachic state is no more than a scarecrow. Shulamit Aloni made a career out of it and after her, other well-known politicians took things to greater extremes hoping to gain the votes of the ultra-Secular. Did anything like that even happen? Did we go in that direction? On the contrary, under the rule of the Right, Israel became more open and liberal. See what goes on in public on the Sabbath today compared with what we were familiar with in our youth. Those who complain bitterly over the introduction of Jewish studies into schools, themselves studied far more of the same subject in their youth. In all indexes measuring democracy over the past years, we have seen how, contrary to the discourse of fear, democracy in Israel has grown and strengthened. Now we are being threatened with "civil disobedience." The level of provocation rises in accordance with the reaction of the other side. And the land is filled with madness.
2.
These vivid public arguments are theater in which we are participants of our own free will. What is said in most of these debates and talk shows? "We are not the first; the outgoing government and its members did similar things, and what hypocrisy it is to preach morals to us" and more such statements aimed at justifying the actions and the direction of the incoming government. The deeper significance of these statements however is that we desire legitimization from the losing side. Our ideological and political rivals determine for many among us the boundaries of political legitimacy and legitimate public thought. This is a testimony to the well-known lack of confidence and even inferiority of the conservative, right-wing camp. The roots of this phenomenon are to be found back in the early 20th century, when the pioneers of the Second Aliyah, the socialist avant-garde, came to Israel. Whoever reads their works notices that despite the fact they were a minority, they felt and acted as if they represented the majority. They acted as if they were in charge, and the future was theirs, while the spokespeople for the old Yishuv (pre-state Israel) and for the First Aliyah, whose numbers were far greater, spoke as if they represented a minority on the defensive. Thus, we hear endless quotes from the leaders of the outgoing government and their spokespeople, not in order to argue with them, but as if to say: "If they did it, then we can as well." That isn't how we should act. That isn't how to create a real toolbox for public leadership. It isn't enough that the Right won the elections. Power begins, first of all, from consciousness.
3.
If you really want to rule you have to aspire to lead history or at least to lead the nation in this historic period. Historical consciousness is a sine qua non: To where do we raise our eyes and set our vision? If being in power is just a function fulfilled by those elected to the institutions of the state – an important role and that's it – we will always remain in a position where we are justifying ourselves: "We can, because they did." That is the way that those whose consciousness and perception were for years dependent on the legitimization of the opposing political camp. Statements such as "they did so as well" imitate the ideological and political rival and that is the opposite of an independent consciousness.
It is still the losing camp that sets the boundaries of legitimacy of public discourse, not because it has power (traditional media is weak in comparison to social media) but because the other camp accepts this as a methodology and echoes the bitter cries of the end of democracy and other such fallacies. Why do we ask spokespeople for the outgoing government, and its supporters, to agree to our actions? Because they did the same thing when they were in power? That in itself is a mistake. When they were able to, they didn't carry out their policies because we did so before them. They didn't ask us for legitimacy (the adjective radical hasn't stuck to any representative of the left). They behaved as if they were in charge and sought to lead history. I'm not talking about a grade card for the previous government – even if it didn't excel and often failed. That isn't the point. I'm talking about possessing an independent consciousness through which one acts and changes.
4.
My friends, you were elected to lead. Charity begins at home, in other words in our consciousness. When Menachem Begin was elected, he noted that our camp had walked 46 years in the desert since the 17th Zionist Congress in 1931 when Ze'ev Jabotinsky ripped up his membership card and resigned, together with his colleagues, from the World Zionist Organization, leaving the stage to David Ben-Gurion and his party. Since the first political "upset" (Mahapach) 45 years have gone by. Now, more than 90 years later after Jabotinsky's walkout, we can free ourselves from the need to ask for legitimization. We must cease the comparisons and cease searching in the other camp for affirmations of our ideas. Only those who are in a state of spiritual or mental slavery look into the eyes of their masters to see whether their behavior satisfies their desires. We must strengthen our conceptual and conscious independence and clear our thoughts from background noises – from verbal provocations – and focus on our goals, principles, and ideas.
Those ideas are well known: First and foremost, a reform of the judicial system and the return and the resurrection of the balance of powers. At the same time, we must return governance to those parts of the land where it has been lost, and with it restore personal security; the result will be the strengthening of the Negev and the Galilee. We must deal with terrorism, both external and internal, and we must fight the antisemitic propaganda spread around the globe by the Palestinian Authority, especially in the institutions of the United Nations. On the economic front, we must continue to remove bureaucratic obstacles to deal with the cost of living and especially with the housing crisis. We must strengthen our grip on the Land of Israel and support the pioneers in Judea and Samaria. In education, we must restore the requirement to study history, Bible, and literature and allow those who wish to strengthen Judaic studies. Through thousands of years, the Jewish People built a great textual and intellectual skyscraper; our children should visit it there.
This term in power, we must be reborn and rebuild ourselves; a renaissance. More than anything, we should know that not only are we allowed to, but it is our duty to govern and to implement our ideas. Don't ask for permission. Just do it! That is the will of the people in these elections. That is the test of maturity for our camp.
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