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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Just imagine a conversation between TV host Guy Zu-Aretz and basketball star Omri Caspi in the latter's popular podcast.

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Zo-Aretz: "Since I started making sure to avoid extracting semen in vain, my life has drastically changed. Self-control, maturity, perfection, a major leap in the level of responsibility I am able to take upon myself. Since that moment I have become a different person."

Caspi: "What are you actually telling us – you stopped ...?".

Zu-Aretz: "Absolutely. Extracting semen in vain is a forbidden passion. By the way – also regarding sex. I'm not there anymore. Not easy, but recommended."

Caspi: "After all, you spend long periods without your partner, moderating "Survival'; it's not simple at all."

Zu-Aretz: "Listen, Omri, habits are old, and I am not anymore. When one understands what extracting semen in vain is – you can't do it. You just can't do it."

Don't worry – such a conversation will never happen on any podcast and neither on any campaign for religious strengthening. Ninety-nine percent of the Jewish craze about getting closer to, and friendlier with, Judaism (as well as Christianity and Islam), involves policing women. Men are always on the outside of this discussion. It is always okay to discuss women in the public realm, as if they were a white whale in National Geographic documentaries: display them in public, clarify what is good for them, what is appropriate for them, what they should do, what they shouldn't do, and which lifestyles they should adopt, and mainly which not – in dress, in studies, in the army, and now – even in sexuality.

No, this is not an Israeli invention. In France as well, while dealing with the legislation to prohibit women's face coverings in public places that is infuriating the Muslims, there is a plethora of video clips with religious women explaining how the burqa "releases me" and "enables me to be what I am and who I am," and that "the moment I am in it – I am finally me."

A Muslim media influencer in Great Britain, formerly a biology researcher, made matters clear in a video clip that went viral: "From the moment I decided to devote myself only to motherhood and religion – I experienced the ultimate autonomy." And there are endless examples.

Is it coincidental that we have not heard even one senior (or junior) politician making a statement that one's friendship with Judaism should be upheld in more profound and primeval ways? That they don't demand reduction and superficiality; normalizing the public debate on women's lifestyles? It seems not.

This is also the common denominator coming out just before elections. Why was this video clip put on public media?

A discussion on ties with the Palestinians or economic issues, education or transportation, are not concerning major political players these days. Without putting it in words, the timing is focusing on the modeling of women's status. The Niddah [Jewish laws pertaining to menstruation] video has been mocked and scorned, even to some critical opportunity-eds. But, in the end, someone, and possibly even the leader of the "National" party that has changed to the "Faithful" party, might even let out that "they also scorn adherence to the Niddah laws by their pure wives." Efrat, Lehava and other national purity guardian organizations, were never this close to the Prime Minister's Office.

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I don't know where the petitioners who asked the High Court of Justice to allow female soldiers to serve in elite IDF units come from, but it's clear to me where the soldiers will come from if the petition succeeds: mostly from religious Zionist ranks.

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From the prestigious religious girls' high schools or colleges in many different settlements, via a year in pre-army preparatory programs.

This is what happened following intense opposition against allowing female soldiers to serve in the Armored Corps. It was presented as a "dangerous" trend, one that would allow into the corps those who want to bring an anti-national agenda to the army. This, they claimed, would brainwash the soldiers with "extremist feminism," something that would lead to tank commanders parking their Merkavas and listening to podcasts about "women waging peace" instead. Ultimately, though, the first female soldier to become an officer in the IDF Armored Corps was Reshit Farkash, from the settlement of Eli, who studied at the Zvia Reveva Ulpana in Samaria.

When the IDF significantly widened the combat units that women could serve in, many rabbis revolted and launched a campaign with an intensity that had never been seen on the streets of Israel, entitled "If you love the IDF – stop the mixed service." I researched the campaign in depth with my colleague Dr. Dana Masad. We quickly learned that the Haredi national religious groups who funded the campaign – and it was only them – were not worried about the IDF. They were worried about the status of men, and especially the rabbis in their communities. The statistics were unequivocal: those who would rush to the newly opened units would be girls from the religious-nationalist community.

Until then, the IDF – the national army in a democratic country – cooperated with a community that sought to replicate its own gender inequality, and allowed it to create a reality where only its men would benefit from the "military capital," i.e., the "Israeli capital" (exposure to social media, attractive professions, status within Israeli society). The women would automatically receive an exemption and would be sent to do national service. All of this was liable to disappear before the surprised eyes of the religious Zionist rabbis, who had spent millions on the campaign. What did they claim? Everything from fears that recruiting women would make the aggressive IDF weak and it would lose the next war, to claims that their integration into the army would make them impure and they wouldn't establish a family.

Now, with the opening of the gates of Unit 669, Sayeret Matkal, the navy commandos and the Shaldag Unit, the rabbis are threatening again. This time: a threat that the IDF will become an army of tribes. As mentioned, it's not the army's status that worries them but their status in their communities. If the data in my possession is also in their possession, they know that the first to compete for these attractive roles will be religious-nationalist girls, who, upon completing their army service, will be more Israeli. And those who care less about the rabbis are the ones who won't stay at home, but will go on to have careers where there are both men and women present, and they will become more independent. They will leave the rabbis in the domestic sphere, and they themselves will be in the public sphere.

Smotrich's threat "to abandon a recruitment cycle" won't be realized (and not for the first time). If so, there will be a recruitment cycle that will abandon him, at least at the polls.

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There are many myths about former prime ministers who, upon encountering a "sleeping," lackluster army, whose leaders were more interested in what David Ben-Gurion called "careerism" than actual security –thankfully were able to discover "oases" that operated completely differently than the rest of the IDF and inspired a new fighting spirit.

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The first such example is Unit 101 under Ariel Sharon, Danny Matt, Meir Har-Zion and their comrades. Established after a string of failures on the part of the IDF, the unit carried out reprisal raids, and despite its short lifespan, created a model of unwavering determination, fighting spirit, high operational standards, and desire to make contact with the enemy, instilling these values in the army as a whole.

The second such example is Operation Defensive Shield during the Second Intifada. Up until that operation, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had been forced to absorb countless terrorist attacks while spouting such slogans as "restraint is strength" after inheriting a tired, bureaucratic army. He was finally able to find a few brigade commanders who told him they were his "Arik Sharons" in the IDF.

The truth is more complicated. Neither Unit 101 nor those brigade commanders in Operation Defensive Shield would have spontaneously emerged without the leaders in the highest echelons above them (David Ben-Gurion and Sharon, respectively) conveying two messages.

The first message was that the defense establishment must change course, without compromise, and that henceforth promotions would be only be earned by defeating terror and achieving success on the battlefield.

The second message was that they had their commanders' backs. Unit 101's operations, some of which were controversial even at the time, as Operation Defensive Shield certainly was, wouldn't‎ have been seen through to the end had the fighters not felt that those above them would support them upon their return to base, no matter the public or international outcry over their actions.

Similarly, Naftali Bennett has inherited an army reminiscent of those that Ben-Gurion and Sharon tried in vain to deploy: cumbersome, untrained, unskilled, and mainly – led by those who, to put it lightly, don't crave initiative. The army is commanded by a chief of staff who immediately fell in love with public relations – launching his "Tnufa" (momentum) multi-year plan, which is essentially a campaign that has been known by many names, produced by his image consultants. In reality, though, he has canceled more initiatives than any chief of staff before him while molding the army as a static, technological force incapable of imposing deterrence or victory.

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Prime Minister Bennett, as someone who once claimed IDF soldiers "are more afraid of the Military Advocate General than [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar," must take a page from Ben-Gurion and Sharon. They also inherited a tired, lethargic general staff comprised of generals who prefer to contain problems and avoid out-of-the-box action and taking risks. These types of officers currently exist within the intermediate ranks of the IDF. Bennett needs to locate them and build his own Unit 101. He needs to talk to them, empower them, and forge the IDF's new spirit with them. They are the ones – when the need arises for a Protective Edge 2.0 – who will get the job done and they are the ones who will be promoted.

If he doesn't do so, we will get more of the same leadership, weakness, and avoidance. We'll get more of the same officers who espouse caution and inaction, care more about their pensions, and mostly just want to finish their tenure "in peace," without any commissions of inquiry and without doing their actual job: providing security.

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Like most countries, Israel is seeing two relatively stable ideological outlooks when it comes to what action Israel should take in the Ukraine war.

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On the neoconservative side, we see mostly talk about the need to be smart, not right. This translates to preaching about keeping the Russian player a friend of Israel in the Middle East. Those who espouse this view talk about Israel as having been abandoned by the US on the Iranian nuclear issue and "thrown" to the wolves by Europe, and say it will have to swallow the Russian aggression.

They say Israel should remember that international relations are pragmatic, not empathic, and that Russia – not Ukraine – is the one allowed us to maneuver in Syrian airspace to bomb strategic targets.

From the "new Left," we are reading on Israeli and international sites that neither Israel nor European member states ("little Satan") who have followed the US (the "great Satan") have any legitimacy to condemn Putin's actions, since they are the true occupiers (globalization, capitalism, "the occupation"). They are part of the Western colonialism of which NATO is the ultimate symbol, and the ones that pushed Russia into behaving brutally, and now cannot criticize anyone who has been pushed into a corner.

The neoconservatives surprise us with their willingness to give in to Putin and urge that he not be angered. These are the same people who pressed former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to clash with former US President Barack Obama in Congress prior to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, when Israel was much more dependent on him than it is on the Russians now – that same administration gave Israel one of the most generous defense aid packages in US history. On the other hand, the people of the new Left aren't surprising anyone – they have framed many aggressors and romanticized victims of the West, from Yasser Arafat to various leaders of evil empires.

In my opinion, neither of these is a view to be adopted. Sometimes it is simply appropriate to look reality squarely in the eyes. At this time, we should recall Israel's pointless squirming on the issue of the Armenian genocide: what did Israel gain by its governments' supposedly rational avoidance of recognizing the genocide of the Armenians? Did it strengthen our relations with Turkey? Did it ensure that Turkey's Erdogan would stand by our side? Of course, it did not. In the future, for the sake of preserving our ties with Russia, will the government ban representatives from attending memorial ceremonies for those who fell in the Ukraine War, if the Ukrainian community in Israel decides to hold them? Will deputy ministers be forbidden to take part in a university panel on the war as a needless act of aggression? Will it warn the embassy in Kyiv not to place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?

It would be good if Israel's government officials, and their colleagues throughout the world, would understand that on certain moral questions, Israel is like the child in "The Emperor's New Clothes." In a minority of cases, the right thing to do is also the wise course of action, both in terms of conduct and in terms of morality. It both liberates us from the need to weigh every step and walk on eggshells, and allows us to describe the reality as it is. This war is a criminal act of Russian aggression. We can and should say it.

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On the eve of the first Gulf War, based on materials that were not all authentic, and on a very real sense of Kuwaiti anxiety the American public was exposed to the distress have those living under the danger of Saddam Hussein invading their country.

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When President George H.W. Bush declared that the United States would not stand aside and would send military forces to the area,  American public support was sky-high.  This even though no American denied that Bush would rake in profits from the war. After all, every just war is lucrative for arms companies or politicians.

But Bush taught America that her values were being trampled – national honor, personal honor, liberal honor, and democratic honor –and that there are moments when one has to fight the ethos of evil in the name of the ethos of good.

Studies found that Americans continued to support the war, even after they learned that some of the horror stories published about the acts committed by the Iraqis in Kuwait were exaggerated and that it was doubtful that Saddam Hussein even had non-conventional weapons.

Media studies conducted in the wake of the war showed the power of leadership: When leadership is determined and charismatic, it is stirring and convincing. The "liberal society" that is "sensitive to loss," that is "apathetic" or "individualistic" is not necessarily so.

It is in the power of the leader to shape agendas and mass psychology. It was then and it is today. But no leader has stepped into the current vacuum and those that are supposed to be the models for the free world,  who are supposed to fight for its values, have instead chosen to be, at the very best, pundits or public opinion analysts.

This weekend we saw one of the feeblest media displays of leadership. At first, it was President Joe Biden who, as if he were a  CNN pundit, said that he was "convinced" Putin will invade Ukraine in the coming days, to awaken public opinion not in the world but among the American public. He even sent Ned Price the State Department spokesman to act as a pundit as well.

Price's reaction to the concentration of Russian forces on the border was: "I was a soldier myself… You don't do these sort of things for no reason and you certainly don't do them if you are getting ready to pack up and go home."

The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, a great admirer of Winston Churchill, went one step further, when, in a series of interviews, he estimated that not only is Russia planning to invade Ukraine from the Donbas region in the east, but that it was also likely to invade at the same time from Belarus and the area surrounding Kyiv.

These are two leaders, who, had they given parallel addresses stating that the free world is in danger and that they had decided that their militaries would do everything in their power to stop this Russian madness, would most likely have received unprecedented popular support that would have swept other countries. Only this time, they sufficed with punditry, expecting or perhaps even imploring for spontaneous reactions from civil groups or veterans who would beseech them to act. They never thought for a moment, God forbid, to do something proactive.

These are not leaders who create an agenda. At best they are readers of the public's agenda, treading delicately to create a small experiment and see if its results give them legitimization to send another squadron or declare more sanctions. Biden and Johnson it appears are not aware of the fact that leaders have the power to shape the framework the tone, the position, and the political psychology of the public and the media. Instead running away from leadership as fast as the wind can carry them.

We must end here with a note about the Israeli arena: Should we face a similar precipice,  the danger of a multi-front invasion or a missile attack that would be difficult to stand up to, we should not expect automatic assistance from friends that call themselves allies. They will turn to public opinion in their countries and explain Israel's distress,  they will explain that perhaps soon Jews will be slaughtered in Jerusalem.

They will feel out public opinion to see if it leads to a demonstration in Washington that implores them to send some kind of assistance to the only democracy in the Middle East. We will receive sympathy and empathy, but until we receive real military assistance, we will have to stand we will have to face the inferno by ourselves.

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An organization steeped in academics like Amnesty International is one from which you have certain expectations. The damning report it published last week on Israel will not be accepted even as an essay by any university, which is why it may not be as terrible as you think, rather its existence may attest to the problematic and childish nature of its authors and proponents. 

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First: the report sets a clear goal in its sights in advance. Its prelude states that its authors are gathering every bit of information to determine whether Israel's "discriminatory laws, policies and practices" against the Palestinians "amount to apartheid." Wait for it – they do. When this is the purpose of the study, it will always meet it. 

In the same way, had Amnesty wanted to issue a report on the question, "Does the IDF's conduct in a conflict imposed on it by the Palestinians make it the most moral defense force in the world?" it would probably reach a favorable conclusion. 

The report mixes three different themes on which it bases its apartheid accusation against Israel. The first is colonialist logic, or – to use a less sterile term – the very existence of the Jewish state. The authors state that alongside Israel's inception as a Jewish state it enacted the Law of Return that, like other laws, enabled the "preservation of Jewish demographic hegemony."

They deal with expulsions during the 1948 War of Independence – of course, without giving context or mentioning the existential threat to the fledgling state –  run through the 18 years of military rule and emergency regulations, and come up to the Nation-State Law.

The second is a territorial-security logic, i.e. the "occupation." Here the report touches on everything that has happened since 1967: restrictions on movement, oppression, splitting the Palestinian territories into enclaves, and the fact that within Jerusalem, 150,000 out of 358,000 Palestinians live in areas separated from other parts of the city, negating the right to nationalism, residency, and the damage to familial life. This is all familiar, and not entirely untrue. 

The third theme derives directly from the aforementioned, namely accusing Israel of crimes against humanity. According to Amnesty's math, all of the Palestinians who were killed since 1967 were victims of the regional conflict, killed by Israel as part of a systematic process of elimination pursued alongside depriving the Palestinians of their rights. 

So what is the message of the report? After all, there is no apartheid here, and Amnesty is presumably not trying to encourage the Palestinians to vote in the Knesset elections, nor does it assume Arabs Israelis living within the Green Line long to put so-called Israeli colonialism behind them and become part of the Palestinian state.

In this sense, it is an own goal. Although many of the facts mentioned in the report are true and unfortunate, they are also the product of a painful and complex reality, historical or contemporary, and these issues will not be resolved as long as the situation is not correctly diagnosed.

In politics as in medicine – a misdiagnosis can lead to an intervention the results of which are potentially disastrous. The first theme expressed in the report, which deals with issues that will be solved with the improvement of civil rights, has nothing to do with the second theme, which touches on the need for a diplomatic solution. 

Moreover, paradoxically, there will be those who will argue that providing a solution to the third theme (combat ethics) may actually make the "occupation" much more "friendly." 

In short, there is no need to rush to debunk the report as ideologically biased, as its authors have failed methodologically.

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Former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot's recent decision to speak up on various issues is not unlike similar statements by his predecessors. He is concerned. Everyone is always very concerned – but not about military issues, only social ones. 

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Iran is dashing toward a nuclear bomb. Hezbollah is accumulating precision weapons, Hamas is agitating the situation on the ground in Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and the Bedouin are about to ignite the Negev. But what worries Eizenkot, the 21st commander in chief, is the internal cohesion of Israeli society.

"I think the rift in Israeli society, the decline in governance, the decline in confidence in state institutions, in the courts, the rise in crime – all of these are the greatest threat to Israel's future," he said.

Eizenkot is not alone in his concerns. Retired generals and intelligence community officials are often "concerned" – but not by the military reality they left behind, rather from events taking place in arenas in which they have no understanding.

Their insistence on dwelling on such issues is akin to shirking responsibility for the media agenda. This way, they don't have to face the hard questions about the discrepancies between their status as prominent defense officials and the lack of security they left in their wake. 

In the wake of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in 1995 then-Israel Security Agency Director Carmi Gillon positioned himself as the moral compass as part of the "investigate the incitement" campaign against the commission of inquiry tasked with investigating the security debacle that allowed the assassination to take place.

Gillon branded himself as a trustee of the ethics discourse, an expert on rhetorical relations and political conduct, spoke on political stages, and was hosted in every arena as the herald of the message "words can kill." 

But just as Eizenkot did not deter Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or the pro-Palestinian elements who infiltrated the Negev when he was in uniform, Gilon did not fail versus Rabin assassin Yigal Amir as a rhetorician. He failed as head of the Shin Bet. His self-branding as a "concerned expert on internal processes" and not as a (failed) personal security expert, helped him not only avoid the difficult questions but to become a sought-after lecturer – a classic case of "from shame to fame."

After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a concept was adopted by which we should look to Israeli society to find where the blame for the war lies. Words like "hubris," "arrogance," and "militarism" were used to explain what led to the horrific unfolding of events, and it was not the military from which accountability was demanded rather Israeli society. 

Since then, chiefs of staff have come and gone, as have military campaigns, commissions of inquiry, and generals who, in the absence of military achievements, prefer to pass themselves off as sociologists who analyze social situations. After all, most of them have degrees in social sciences as Israel has no academy of war sciences.

All that is left, as demonstrated well by current IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, is to use a public relations campaign to paint one's term in office as triumphant. When Kochavi retires, he will surely want to be interviewed about the state of education or health and he will surely argue that these are the troubling issues that demand a solution. After all, why address military issues, if one can skip the social ones?

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IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi's tenure has created one of the biggest discrepancies seen thus far between rhetoric and conduct. Kochavi's predecessors turned the IDF into an army without a mandate for victory, an interest group fighting to "peacefully co-exist" with terrorism and constantly failing to stand up to it but protected its senior staff, command centers, and systems.

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Kochavi came into the job speaking a different language. There was never a chief of staff who said the word "victory" so many times – in workshops, in published plans for the IDF, in lectures. He was marked as the "victory chief of staff." It looked like the DNA was about to change. Even when he encountered a high-tech company that boasted about taking the "best and the brightest," he was angry.

But in Operation Guardian of the Walls in May, Hamas' underground "Metro" shelters remained safe ground for them. Divisions of tanks didn't come rolling in over the heads, and Kochavi didn't demand that they be brought it. If they had, we can assume the Metro would have been abandoned instantly. This past Saturday, two rockets landed off the coast of Tel Aviv and it appears that Kochavi's senior staff rushed to order the IDF Spokesperson's Unit's media department with much more determination than they showed in issuing commands to the operations branch – the main thing was to explain that the rockets had landed in error, and contain the event.

One can assume that Kochavi planned something else. It's still possible. In the past few years, the IDF has been busy waging PR operations in the enemy's home front. If only the chief of staff would use his skills to shape the thinking in the General Staff, or Israel, and devote his fourth year in the role to daily contact with Israeli society. There is a strong need that will change the reason why the General Staff resists using the ground forces – its view that Israeli society cannot accept casualties and is not willing to pay the price needed to oust the leadership of Hamas from the Gaza Strip.

Let the army under his leadership publish the results of research he has certainly ordered about the importance of raiding the Hamas command centers in Gaza – a complicated effort that will lead to a demilitarized Gaza Strip, something to which the current leadership there will not agree. Let the army report the military cost of such an operation and discuss it honestly, along with the civilian cost of not taking action, and demonstrate courage. Because pushing off action like this for the "next guy" to handle means rockets of a quality and in a quantity that in a dual-front war (in the south and the north) no Israeli defense technology will be able to counter in a manner that can guarantee that life in Israel will go on as normal.

Kochavi has to launch a campaign for public opinion and talk to Israeli society. He needs to make sure that the path as he sees it in the General Staff's headquarters, which holds back from any maneuvers and sacrifice, is the right one. If it is, then he should decide to shape thinking, build spirit, make it clear to society what role the IDF plays and what it means to be a sovereign nation. And if he finds out that society is determined, strong, and is being treated with a defeatist attitude, he should campaign the decision makers in society's name and argue that the chief of an army of the people should speak for the people and demand security in their name.

Reading society is the weak link. As long as the axiom in the General Staff is that when faced with violations of sovereignty the people should only activate its cyber or air defenses will not lead to victory. At least Kochavi can win hearts so that his successor can keep them safe.

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There has been a lot of preoccupation recently with Naftali Bennett's six-month anniversary since taking office as prime minister of Israel. Reading statements by the right-wing and national religious camp, I couldn't help but notice a common denominator: most of them did not look at the coalition through the prism of its contributions to policy at all.

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Rather, their criticism toward the current government focused on the "discourse of identity," which also sheds light on the tenure of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who set up a camp based on identity alone ("right-winger through and through") without being required to bring this about in policy.

Religious Zionist Party MK Orit Strook claimed this week that a government that includes Arab MK Mansour Abbas is illegitimate because it promotes values that go against the Zionist narrative. The fact that a Muslim lawmaker is promoting a policy of building a Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem – that she and her colleagues failed to promote in previous right-wing governments – is of no interest to Strook.

Theirs is a "discourse of identity" not a "discourse of policy."

At the same time, lecturer and opinion-writer Eithan Orkibi criticized members of New Hope – established by Gideon Sa'ar, who is now justice minister – for joining a party that was anything but authentic. This is in contrast to the Likud, which Orkibi views as the only "true" political party with long-standing traditions.

Journalist Haggai Hoberman – who has monitored every political move by all ministers and MKs for decades – pointed out that the Bennett-Lapid government is one that, compared to its predecessor, promotes right-wing interests that have stalled for years.

The expansion of 3,000 housing units in Judea and Samaria, construction of Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, and – the one I find to be the most exciting – the construction of Jewish settlement in the Golan Heights. Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government was content with a mere sign that said "Trump Heights," which, by the way, also reflects the rest of its contributions to national policy. It's about actions, not words.

Two types of "national right-wing camps" are emerging before us. One seeks actions and policies and consists of individuals who will change the prime minister or the mayor they support, or their bank or health fund when they feel dissatisfied with their service. The second's main priority is not policy. Its members seek a sense of identity, family, culture, and belonging, and most importantly, legitimization for who they are.

So what is it that kept Netanyahu in power for so many years, seeing that he did not build a single settlement in Samaria but became the prime minister of many right-wingers? These were probably members of the second type, who wanted him not for settlements, but for language and identity, which exempted Netanyahu from doing actual work and with social media posts sufficing.

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