Prime Minister Naftali Bennett arrived at the Knesset plenum on Monday full of fighting spirit. Unlike his first speech a month ago, when he was visibly excited and making an effort to stick to the written text, this time, Bennett was trying to project a sense of freedom and laid into Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and the former Likud ministers as if to justify the message he sent out to a few weekend editions about how much he was enjoying his new role.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
But Bennett didn't appear to be enjoying himself at the Knesset podium. Between his attacks on the Opposition lay helplessness and major personal distress. At the podium, Bennett looked like someone who was trying to manage on the big kids' field, use their language, and even needle them as if he shared their status, but in truth, was far from that. And Bennett was the first to feel it. In the hours he spends alone in the glass box of the Prime Minister's Office, he is the only one who sees the big, empty space that surrounds him from all sides.
Bennett's speech attacking Netanyahu on Monday night was a perfect example of the entire purpose and essence of the current government. It appears that the government that presented itself as one of change and healing was never that, and the years of attacks on Netanyahu as if he were the sole source of hatred and division were empty from the start – just empty attempts to engineer people's thinking, not much more.
The same goes for the repeated claims about the Likud-Haredi-Right coalition's attacks on democracy. Here, too, it turns out that the Right has a lot more to learn from the Left about everything having to do with governability, steamrolling the Opposition, and trampling the Knesset or any other institution of power that stands in its way.
Even if we ignore for a moment the theft of the public's opinion on which the current government was established, everyone thinks that this is a government that rests on a shaky coalition with a razor-slim majority of a single MK. That's how it is in the plenum, and that's how it should have been in the committees, as well.
It was the people who decided how the Knesset mandates would be split up, not political wheelers and dealers. The rearrangement of the election results so that the coalition will have a majority of at least two MKs on all the important committees should have sparked outcry from all the same people who hold democracy dear. But everyone's silence just goes to prove that some things are too much to ask for. Now the Left is in power, and we can't bother it.
Above all else, the thundering silence of Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy, who was supposed to protect the home of which he has been put in charge, and not allow political players to divide the committees as if they were playing cards, stands out.
But even the Knesset speaker's hands are tied. In his party (Yesh Atid) there are no primaries or democratic processes. The power of senior party members comes solely from the good will of the unchallenged party leader. There is no way of moving ahead of or around him – they must get to Yair Lapid's heart. If Lapid doesn't want the Opposition to have appropriate representation on the committees, the Knesset speaker can do nothing to stop him, as long as he is from Yesh Atid, of course.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
