What hasn't been said about the Likud Knesset list – it's been called populist, extremist, anti-state, far from the path of Menachem Begin, and of course, very very right-wing.
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There have been discussions on top of discussions about how very right-wing the list is – is it too far Right? Will it boomerang on the Likud and Benjamin Netanyahu if it's so far Right? Will the "moderate Right" flee because it's so right-wing? So here's a different take – all this talk about how right-wing the list is, all the astonishment about how the Likud "has never been so right-wing," is the best thing that could happen to the Likud and Netanyahu himself, who on the recent anniversary of the disengagement from Gaza managed to avoid being labeled as the person whose support for the disengagement allowed it to be approved.
If we look at the list, we find that this is a party that mostly knows how to speak filth about the country's legal and law enforcement systems and masquerades as Begin's party from the 1970s while actually being an Opposition party that has never shaped any policy. So what is so right-wing about it? The first group of MKs who have shot up on the list are center-left. Their positions on settlements and security, if they even exist, should be different than those of Lapid and Gantz. Eli Cohen and Yoav Gallant (who came in from Kulanu), Nir Barkat and Avi Dichter (from Kadima) and also Miri Regev (who eventually joined Likud) couldn't identify Alei Zahav or Kida on a map. This is not a list that will stand up for ideology against daring future peace plans.
The second group is the "new right-wingers" – or the ones who spend time in studios on Netanyahu's behalf. Proven right-wing successes? Amir Ohana served in an executive role as public security minister. Has Israel's public security situation – never mind Israel, the situation in the Negev, the level of policing, collecting illegal guns, commitment to handling "protection" schemes of any other issues there – become significant while he was in charge? Did the residents of the south feel that one the issues of law and order, sovereignty, classic "right-wing" matters, crossed his desk, they had been made priorities? Did Ohana get up every morning and bang on the table for more and more law enforcement to be deployed to the south? Or did he do it to earn screen time to make it clear that he was part of the "new right" who wasn't scared of the elites? Lots of talk, zero action.
The same goes for Yariv Levin, another of Netanyahu's media bodyguards who is now labeled part of the hawkish and dangerous new Likud. But wait a minute – is there a reason to depend on Levin? Is there anyone on the Right how can show us any reform, bill, settlement, or any other right-wing success that Levin promoted? Initiatives that threaten the legal hegemony were blocked by the Netanyahu-Aharon Barak axis, but in other areas? Nada.
The discourse about the Likud being right-wing and anti-state helps Netanyahu and his list earn legitimacy with right-wing voters who want to promote a right-wing agenda but will wind up voting for a party that's all talk. A protest party that when it was in power didn't promote a national policy, which was only capable of insulting "heads of the elite" in the media and rushing to the aid of its leader during his legal troubles. New settlements? A free economy? Implementing actual sovereignty? Who worries about that. Is this dangerous right-wing ideology? It's mostly a waste.
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