Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is trying to accomplish two conflicting goals at the same time, which, to his surprise, is not working.

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He tries to keep his Knesset members close, the ones who believed him that not only was he not chasing the illusions of the Left, but he was going to use his power as prime minister to strengthen the Right.

This way they would be able to return to the public from which they emerged as winners, confident that they had made the right exit and that criticism against them was unwarranted.

The Right should have taken steps to stabilize the bloc after the government first took office when it saw how the party leader deceived it publicly.

The prime ministers' grip on the phrase "West Bank" has become a clear sign for right-wingers that Bennett is walking leisurely along the left bank. Then the penny dropped and it became clear that Bennett did not turn to the Left in order to strengthen the Right and return with gifts, but to fortify the "Left Bank." His friends will never be able to claim that they did not see the massive writing on the wall, which began with abandoning his voters and then abandoning those elected by them.

It is clear now that Bennett is looking for a new political home. His new friends built him the old house from start to finish. Bennett's loyal adviser, Shimrit Meir, is working hard to create a "Left Bank" for him, a kind of city of refuge between Foreign Minister and PM-designate Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

Bennett, in turn, adopts her approach quickly and piously, abandoning everything that is Right. The same way as when he called Judea and Samaria "West Bank" when he was director of the Yesha Council, with the US secretary of state standing by his side.

Those words were uttered by the same person who condemned them several years prior when they were used by Lapid. Who moved closer to whom? Which ideology got swallowed up by another? Who will raise an eyebrow when Bennet's Left Bank is swallowed up by Lapid, becoming his pride?

Bennett willingly chose to abandon his electorate and fellow party members. As such, their mission is now to establish a new political foothold, as far away as possible from Bennett and his armor-bearer, Ayelet Shaked.
She too will come to understand that the evacuation of the settlements and failure to promote construction in the "West Bank" is a prelude to their entry into the "Left Bank."

Bennett has long made up his mind, which is why right-wing faction meetings have long become a rarity. He understands the plight of his party members, like Nir Orbach and Abir Kara, but has neither the time nor the urge to save them. Although they crossed the Rubicon together, nothing stops the premier from leaving them behind.

Bennett became prime minister without mandates (a number polls say currently stands at 5), but in the impending race for the same electoral spot against Lapid and Gantz, he will certainly lose. Just as he lost in the past.

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On Sunday, two murderers left Umm al-Fahm with guns and more than a thousand bullets in their bags. They reached Hadera and launched a killing spree against Jews. On Tuesday, a bloodthirsty murderer came from a village near Jenin, and after receiving a rifle and ammunition from accomplices in Israel, embarked on a killing spree against Jews in the streets of Bnei Brak. These murderers and their accomplices are Israelis who are free to move anywhere they want in the country; they don't even have to cross the hole-ridden security fence. The Shin Bet failed to spot them in time.

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The alarm bells rang as loudly as possible during Operation Guardian of the Walls, signaling the collapse of civilian security. The soldiers fought on the borders, while inside the country, on the home front, we faced unbridled riots by the Palestinians in Israel, who were part of the campaign. The Shin Bet failed at the time to provide a warning and left the home front exposed and defenseless, and today it failed in its objective to provide security in the face of terrorist mobilization aimed at sowing chaos everywhere possible.

It's not the job of the police commissioner to cope with Palestinian terrorist cells in Israel. For years now, the Israel Police has contended with a loss of control against the rise of Palestinian criminal organizations, which run their towns and villages as autonomous entities beyond the reach of the central government. The Shin Bet's argument that a distinction must be made between terrorist cells under its purview and the criminal organizations and the weapons caches they possess, which are civilian and police matters, shows that the Shin Bet has completely lost its grasp of reality. The Shin Bet needs a good shaking, must examine itself deeply, and mainly it needs its parameters to be redefined, which will allow it to apply the full weight of its power on identifying and disrupting terrorist activity among the Palestinians in Israel.

The Shin Bet's method of detecting terror cells is known: It operates a dense network of secret wiretapping and surveillance, questions suspects, makes administrative arrests, recruits collaborators and informants, and always updates its assessments as to where the greatest dangers lie. It should also be tasked with vetting Arab Israelis working in sensitive positions in the public sector.

To help his agency quickly restore quiet, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar requested approval to demolish the homes of the Israeli murderers and accomplices. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, however, reportedly opposes such a measure as he believes it could ignite a broad conflagration or, it must be said, tear apart his government. It seems the violence already ignited in Bnei Brak, Hadera, and Beersheba isn't enough to sway the pendulum.

The significance of the Shin Bet applying its force to detect terror cells and monitor the illegal weapons caches in the hands of criminal organizations in Arab communities is de-facto returning to adopting the fundamental elements of the military rule imposed on the Arabs of Israel between the years 1948-1966. The military government's regulations allowed for the confiscation of property and demolition of structures, the expulsion of residents, the restriction of movement without a permit, and mainly for the Arabs to be closely monitored. The problem is that although it's easy to implement this governmental measure, it will take many years to restore the trust to the point where it can be scaled back and annulled.

Any moves to buttress the Border Police with reinforcements and raise alert levels are also important in strengthening the deteriorating sense of security among Israeli citizens. However, such measures have nothing to do with actually stopping terrorist cells from committing their murderous acts. This activity is solely the mission of the Shin Bet. After all, even MK Mansour Abbas, the main pillar of the Bennett government, called several months ago for greater Shin Bet involvement against the crime in Palestinian society in Israel.

One final note: These are not easy days for any Jew. Eleven dead and dozens wounded in a short period of time. Even in these tough times, however, we must silence and banish those who chant "death to Arabs." We must remember that the majority of Arabs are innocent and law-abiding and that they are also suffering at the hands of those who use terror and murder as tools.

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Several hours after Tuesday's terrorist attack in Beersheba, Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai said in a statement that the police had no prior indications of the attack.

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Residents of Beersheba and the region did not know whether to cry or laugh in the face of such a hollow statement. Not only was the perpetrator of the attack a known Islamic State sympathizer, who tried to join the organization, but was caught and jailed in Israel instead, but in the past month alone, the country has seen eight terrorist attacks.

For years, Negev residents have been warning about civilian terrorism raging in the area and the police's inability to deal with it. Each and every one of them has cautioned about the fine line between civilian and security terrorism that has been waning.

Local official Nir Gal explains to anyone who would listen that security in the Negev is deteriorating and has reached a new long, and unless immediate measures are taken to confiscate illegal weapons and increase judicial punishment, the residents will take the law into their own hands. Others beg for immediate cooperation between the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police.

Perhaps the most vital warning is that of Public Security Minister Omer Barlev, who said that it is obvious that the sense of security in the Negev decreased the moment local Bedouin residents – a minority of the population – armed themselves and took to terrorize the highways during Operation Guardian of the Walls. Unfortunately, the matter has continued until now.

The police continue to insist they are helpless in the Negev, as does Beersheba Mayor Ruvik Danilovich, who claims his hands are tied. Meretz MK Yair Golan blames former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Right for the attack. He is immediately followed by Barlev, who condemned Beersheba residents for protesting against police inaction, saying they should be "ashamed" of themselves.

But journalist Almog Boker is unafraid to speak up. A Beersheba native, he explained how his hometown has changed throughout the years as follows: his friends are scared to walk the streets alone at night, afraid to drive on the highways, afraid to let their children go for a run. They can be sexually harassed, attacked on the highway, demanded money in exchange for protection, or get robbed at home, work, or the gas station.

We must tell the truth without sugarcoating. Most attacks are perpetrated by Bedouins from the periphery. They are the ones who create fear and panic in the city, Boker said.

The responsibility rests on the police and the public security minister, who has proclaimed that his actions have greatly contributed to the Negev, compared to his predecessor. In practice, Barlev is disconnected from reality.

Obviously, the entire Bedouin sector cannot be blamed for the rampant civilian and security terrorism in the Negev. Most of them are law-abiding citizens. And yet, the time has come for the government to change its course and outline a clear plan of action that will put an end to lawlessness in the Negev.

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Seventy years ago, on Jan. 27, 1945, the Auschwitz death camp was liberated. The Nazis built the death camps to advance the "Final Solution" to the problem of the world's Jews, after finding mass shootings to be too inefficient, slow, and public a method.

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Around 3.5 million Jews, along with tens of thousands of Romani, prisoners of war, and others, were murdered with poisonous gas. The annihilation of Europe's Jews, which trickled over into North Africa, was methodical in such camps, where only a small minority was kept alive to provide forced labor or serve as undertakers. British intelligence had precise information on the number of Jews who lost their lives in the camps in 1942 thanks to a telegram dispatched in January 1943: 434,508 at the Belzec death camp, 101,370 at Sobibor, 713,555 at Treblinka, and 24,733 at Majdanek. To these numbers was added the inconceivable number of those who perished as a result of the inhuman conditions of the cattle cars in which Jews were packed together en route to the camps.

In a speech to the Reichstag in January 1939, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler spoke directly about the extermination of the Jews, saying: "Today, I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."

A poster bearing this quote was disseminated in 1941 following an order to hang it in every government office.

Why was there such a deep-seated need to carry out this methodical extermination campaign? What made the Jews different from other people in Europe? Why was it that only their elimination down to the very last individual would lead to the murderers' redemption? Jew hatred is the result of Jews not comprising a "normal" religious group. The Jews in general did not look like a "natural" nationalist minority due to their lack of a territorial base as well as the strong religious component of their nationalist identity and their "cosmopolitan" tendencies. The Jews were perceived as a unique minority differentiated from other similar groups.

Judaism was seen by its enemies as joining together elements of primality and uniqueness that did not fit in with the basic concepts of the political community in the European nation-state. A strong and principled group developed among many sectors of European society that believed Jews could not be part of the nationalist project. This rejection was framed in modern, secular, nationalist, and racist terms, the likes of which is seen in modern antisemitism, that paved the way for the negation of the possibility for Jews to become part of new European nations.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day remains necessary still today, not just to ensure the memory is honored but for the very intransigent and methodical struggle in various arenas against Holocaust denial. The path of Holocaust deniers is aimed at eliminating Nazi crimes and continuing harm to Jews. Their ideas are disseminated among not just radical groups but also in academic articles. They argue that the Holocaust is a Jewish invention and that six million Jews were not in fact murdered. There were no gas chambers for the mass annihilation of the Jews, and there was never any intention of killing Jews.

Some historians have adopted a method that sees them dilute the Holocaust to the point where they argue it was a negligible and inconsequential detail. To their minds, many genocides have taken place throughout history, so there is nothing unique about the Holocaust. Another argument they make is that Holocaust remembrance is a testament to the existence of an anti-Nazi propaganda machine created by world Jewry in coordination with the US. They further argue that the Holocaust was created by the Zionists to justify the State of Israel's establishment and the deprivation of the Palestinians' rights to Palestinian territories.

The struggle is underway. On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, each and every one of us must dedicate a moment of silence, introspection, and contemplation to what was done during the Holocaust and keep in mind that we were meant to remember and not to forget.

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The great mystery of Israeli politics is how and why the Likud movement hasn't broken up in the face of the pressure being deployed against it by the political forces, from within and without, who have united together in order to bring it down. What does this mystery of the 30-35 mandates, which are an integral part of the loyalty the Likud enjoys, mean?

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When Likud was the dominant force in the right-wing coalition, we were told day and night that this cohesion and loyalty could be explained by the largesse of power that was distributed to its supporters. Today, Likud is in the opposition and the largesse of power has moved to the Left, but despite this, all the possible manipulations for its break-up have failed.

Why? The main goal of those attacking Likud was never Binyamin Netanyahu. That was always a futile goal. Netanyahu is the means being used to advance the attackers' strategic goal, which was and still is the dismantling of the party into fractious parts, and in so doing to destroy the movement. The attackers' main intention is to strive for the dismantlement of the internal democratic idea that is at the heart of the party.

The dream of the attackers, who are today led by Yair Lapid, is the creation of a collection of tiny parties devoid of ideas, for example, New Hope and Yamina, who exist close to the Knesset's electoral threshold, and struggle with one another until blood flows and they disappear. The goal is the creation of a template of parties, from Left and Right, who exist close to the electoral threshold and whose weakness forces themselves to be reliant upon him. However, it is also clear to Lapid that the political camp he has created, and which he is reliant on, is a table with three legs, sometimes two, and its instability is paralyzed in the face of the presence and stability and of the Likud movement.

Furthermore, even the trial of Netanyahu, which was supposed to be the political tie-breaker and to pulverize the Likud, hasn't been successful for them. The country has broken up into two: those who believe in Netanyahu's innocence and those who clamor for his removal and are convinced of his guilt even before the evidence has been heard. When the legal cloud, led by the attorney general, clears, it becomes clear that he believes that the removal of Netanyahu was delivered into his hands as a mission from God to save "the Jewish people." But the same people, in whose name the attorney general speaks, stand amazed against the circus of futile proofs that fade away in the slightest breeze. In any event, the same part of the Jewish people, the Likud members who have been essentially excommunicated by the wise attorney general, are steadfast in their support of Netanyahu. The legal-political assault has not led to the anticipated erosion and crisis.

There was a similar result for every effort made by Lapid and his part to attract Likud members. Again and again, he offered junior and senior Likud figures the whole world if they would abandon the Likud and join his ranks. The result, in short, was nothing. Gideon Sa'ar's party, built on failing princes, thought that Likud members would march in their steps. In practice, Sa'ar no longer exists as a right-wing alternative. Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked jumped ship so they could lead the country, but in so doing abandoned every promise and political idea that they previously held. The Right responded accordingly and denounced them from within. Even now that Sa'ar and Bennett have taken the reins, the people who voted for them are distancing themselves from them and see them as the worst combination for Israel's image.

If so, what is the secret of the mystery of Likud's strength? Simply, Likud is the only arena for national dialogue, pluralism and democracy, and creates a partnership between diverse groups regarding the nature of Israeli society and culture.

On the Left, the dominant discourse is concerned with the oppression of the other, silencing him and making him disappear under the guise of progressivism, but the Likud movement isn't run on the basis of a lordship of silencing and exclusion, instead, it sees the growth of nationwide participation as the central element of its activity. While the Likud movement has a culture of equal democracy, and against it stand Lieberman and Sa'ar, Bennett and Lapid, for whom the results of all party activities are known in advance, it has become a center that still stirs and unites its members, whether the movement is in the coalition or in the opposition.

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Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken, one of the leading figures of the Israeli Left, vigorously opposed President Isaac Herzog visiting Hebron for a candle-lighting ceremony on the first night of Hanukkah. To make his reservations about Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria clear, Schocken said this week that the parents of Shalhevet Pass, a 10-month-old baby who was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood of Hebron in 2001, were the ones responsible for their baby's death.

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"Shalhevet Pass was killed because of the irresponsibility of her parents, who thought it was possible to raise children in a combat environment, and the Welfare Ministry, which in a normal country would have removed children from war zones," he wrote.

So the victims were to blame, according to the Left, proving its deep hatred for the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria in general and Hebron in particular.

I took an imaginary stroll through "war zones," and there I met Amos Schocken's grandfather, Shlomo Salman Schocken. Back in those far-off days, when Salman Schocken was in the Land of Israel, the entire country was one big war zone. Schocken's conclusion was to leave the Land of Israel and move to New York. Like his grandson, the grandfather thought that the most important thing to do was to move away from war zones.

Those were the days of World War II. On one side, there were Lebanon and Syria, which were under the rule of France's Vichy regime, which was pro-Nazi, meaning that the German air force could use its bases in Syria to refuel and bomb British targets in Iraq. On the other side, a much bigger threat was the German army under Erwin Rommel, who invaded North Africa and quickly made his way toward the Suez Canal. The Germans reached Al-Alamein, some 100 km. (62 miles) from Alexandria, and it was clear that they would not stop at the canal that connected Asia to Europe, but would continue north, seizing control of all the sources of oil in the Middle East.

The Germans were so certain of their impending victory that SS officers in Rome were poring over maps of the Jewish community in the Land of Israel and dividing Tel Aviv, Rishon Lezion, and Haifa into small neighborhoods and areas so they could be quickly and easily "purified" of Jews. The fear that the British lines of defense would fall led to existential fear, and plans to build fortifications on the Carmel ahead of a suicidal battle got underway. The Carmel was supposed to serve as the Jews' last stand and offer them a few days' respite.

Shlomo Salman Schocken, who at the time was head of the steering committee of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, left for New York, leaving the university broken as its leadership fled the war zone. The senior administrator Schocken left behind, David Werner Senator, sent Schocken a telegram containing an urgent call: "General fear. Your absence continues. Losses … Serious financial problems. Recommend strongly that you return quickly."

Schocken declined. New York was the better option. At the start of 1942, Schocken notified the university in a telegram that "I cannot leave America at this difficult time." Schocken's biographer, Anthony David, tells us that even the professors who remained and admired him – Gershom Scholem and Shmuel Hugo Bergmann, Akiva Ernst Simon and Martin Buber – burst out laughing. They were particularly amused by the indirect way in which Salman informed them that he did not intend to return. Most of them saw the telegram as fear wrapped up and sold as vision.

According to Amos Schocken's reasoning, as rockets rained down on the Tel Aviv area – all its residents should have left their homes and moved away from the war zone. When Katyushas fell on northern Israel, people there should have left, and when rockets hit Ashkelon, the people should have fled. My recommendation to Schocken is that he visit Ashkelon and look at the 40,000 new housing units being built, and realize that New York is not our option.

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The Likud is the largest and most significant party in Israel. The changes instituted by Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and their colleagues in the early 1970s, as members of the opposition, led this movement to the leadership forefront impacting every facet of our lives. This empowerment is predicated on the Likud's character as a unifying social party. For decades, Likud was able to mend the social rifts that could have morphed into those very "detached" tribes poorly evoked by Reuven Rivlin, who in his infamous "tribe" speech said our society would be split and privatized, with a vague nationalist backbone, in which Zionism is waning, to be replaced with a country of all its citizens bereft of its unique Jewish character. The Likud, however, strived for and forged broad national unity. Within this context, the Likud's most important creation was the establishment of the Sephardic middle class.

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For nearly 40 years, the Likud party successfully labored to create a new class, which previously didn't exist, and which became one of the most important foundational unifiers in our society. It's not for nothing that Rivlin ignored this group in his vision of tribalism. With its actions, the Likud prevented Israel's disintegration into disconnected, alienated tribes. With that, the forces that had previously enjoyed systematic socio-economic advantages never came to terms with the Likud solidifying a lasting grip in most of the major cities and the periphery and becoming a dominant force.  This development forced them to look in the mirror and face their resounding failure to foster social unity. They viewed the new forces in the Likud as an ideological threat, and no less importantly, a threat to jobs and their access to resources that once belonged only to them. Resources of wealth and employment once passed down through inheritance were opened to competition. The Likud ruined their party.

The Likud's fundamental tenet is to cultivate equal and open competition and oppose a system that only serves the privileged class. From this vantage point, we can better understand the efforts to dismantle the Likud and re-anchor these systematic privileges, which will again give them the power to decide who is worthy of getting ahead and whose path will be blocked.

Israel's system of higher education in the early 1970s, prior to the Likud's ascent to power, served one sector of the population only: the Ashkenazi middle class. Anyone who examined this system saw how one-half of the population was offhandedly oppressed and excluded. It was a system of evil and heartless academic tracking implemented by the Labor party. Look at this system today – in terms of accessibility, even if complicated and problematic and full of upward mobility traps that preserve the power of the privileged class, it is completely different than before. The Likud managed to spearhead reforms, which ultimately opened the door to a large and strong Sephardic middle class that doesn't need to ask for, rather receives its rights on the basis of mutual competition. Those positions once earmarked for one particular group became fair game under the Likud in open and equal competition. Anyone who thinks the foundations of inequality are gone, however, is lying to himself, but the foundation of competition is growing stronger and turning into a symbol of new unity.

The ill-disposed reaction from the privileged class has become more dissenting and violent. They view this competition as a danger to their status. In their eyes, the Likud represents the dismantling of their bastions. Their employment in the municipalities, schools, corporations and government ministries, which once belonged to them without contest, have become arenas for fairer competition. Their status has eroded. The members of the advantaged class now face one question: What must they do when the social gaps in Israel are closing in the wake of the Likud's successes? Should they embrace the Sephardic middle class, or rather launch an aggressive and anti-democratic protest movement that seeks to "restore past glories?"

The Likud movement is at the very heart of the deep change taking place in Israel, which explains the hysterics of the privileged class. Consequently, many smart people have interpreted the Likud's efforts through the prism of a zero-sum struggle between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Nothing could be more absurd. The struggle the Likud is leading is for national unity and against tribal disintegration.

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If Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps are not unique then Nazi crimes are no different from other twentieth-century crimes.

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The correct description for Yair Lapid's speech before the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism can be found in the poem by the Israeli poet Alexander Penn: It was or it wasn't? Naivety or stupidity? Even in the left-wing press they said: "It is doubtful if Yair Lapid thought about the significance of his speech before he delivered it. Had he thought about and understood its significance beforehand, it is doubtful that he would have delivered it." (Nir Guntaz, Haaretz, Feb. 17). In any event, the harm done by this speech is serious, and is liable to have far-reaching ramifications for the Jewish people.

Why did he say these troubling things at all? The Alternate Prime Minister and Foreign Minister "normalized" antisemitism and its most serious consequence in the twentieth century – the Holocaust. In a single breath, Lapid dismantled the idea of antisemitism's uniqueness, which led in the modern era to the Holocaust for European Jewry, almost completely eliminating them from the face of the earth. He transformed the most violent hunt and cruel murder that was ever carried out against any group into something similar to any violent conflict. And if the Lapid who leads the camp today thinks like this, why silence those who, for political purposes, seek to dismantle the Holocaust's meaning and turn it into one of many banal violent episodes, thus draining it of its significance.

Yair Lapid, perhaps inadvertently, has entered the Historikerstreit ('Historians' Dispute), which took place in Germany in the 1980s, when a historical approach developed which focused on the interpretations and meanings of the Holocaust, without descending to the level of Holocaust denial. Its advocates sought to diminish the uniqueness of the Holocaust, claiming that it was similar to other genocides.

The aim was to "normalize" German identity and to remove the burden of guilt that hung over the country decades after these horrific crimes were committed. These same German historians insisted that other victims of the Second World War should be highlighted alongside the Jews, and that of course it was forbidden to forget the suffering of the German people itself and the suffering of the Wehrmacht soldiers fighting the Red Army on the Eastern Front. Their goal was to revive German patriotism and to save Germany from the darkness of the Nazis' conduct, declaring that the mass murder by the Germany army and the extermination camps' factory of horrors were, overall, a "preventative measure" that was taken by the Germans out of fear of the Soviets.

The historian Saul Friedlander responded to this approach by arguing that the Nazis and the antisemitism they carried with them were a negation of all life and a sort of death cult. According to him, the Holocaust was such a horrific event that it was nearly impossible to articulate in everyday language. Friedlander views Nazi antisemitism as historically unique, since he claims that Nazi antisemitism was unique in being a "redemption antisemitism," that is, a type of antisemitism that could explain the whole world and offer a kind of "redemption" to its followers. He subsequently concluded that Nazi antisemitism was unique when compared to Jew-hatred from time immemorial because it was comprehensive and "redemptive," and in this sense, it solves its believers' problems. In light of this, he argued that Nazi Germany and its adoption of genocidal politics was not and could not be understood as a normal historical episode.

There is a decision at the heart of Yair Lapid's speech to call an end to the Historikerstreit, with unimaginable success for those who have sought to diminish, to minimize and to normalize antisemitism and the Holocaust in comparison with other crimes and injustices which took place throughout history. Antisemitism's normalizers are now rejoicing: if Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps are not unique then Nazi crimes are no different from other twentieth-century crimes.

Our view is different: the antisemitism which broke out in the heart of Europe and engulfed everywhere the Germany army and Hitler's emissaries went is unlike anything in history.

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From the moment the elections wrapped up, Naftali Bennett's path has been rife with distortions and lies that shattered any trace of statesmanlike behavior, truth, or trust in public life. His frenetic, left-wing government is now leading the State of Israel toward grave danger. Every single one of us must oppose this government and act to bring it down.

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The madness of the campaigns to annex Yamina's Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked to the government, on the basis of votes they fraudulently garnered, is unprecedented and leading us to new depths of fraud.

Bennett and Shaked repeated the same line ahead of the election: We commit to being right of [then-] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and we will form a government with him. The fraudsters made this lie the central anchor in their political existence.

The main concern of Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid's party for years was how exactly to transfer the Likud's Knesset seats to their side. Election after election, they failed in this effort. They tried every trick in the book to promote this agenda: They brought in former IDF Chiefs of Staff Benny Gantz, Gabi Ashkenazi, and Moshe Ya'alon to lead the party. It was a tripartite dream. The former security officials would give Netanyahu the fight of his life, or so they thought. No, nothing worked until the cunning Trojan horse in right-wing clothing eventually went with the Left.

The goal of the left-wing government is now to blindly lead us and convince us they are "restoring deterrence and not giving in to terror," as Yamina MK Nir Orbach recently tweeted. Yet who would believe him? This is the same man who "missed" a phone call from his spiritual leader Rabbi Haim Druckman when the latter had hoped to talk to him about his decision to go along with Bennett and join the coalition. Now Orbach wants to put a positive spin on his joint effort with the Left, which saw the establishment of an irresponsible and uninhibited government and adorn it with a throne of security and determination.

This might work with the Israelis, but does anyone really believe US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, or British Prime Minister Prime Boris Johnson buy into this sham? When they talk to Bennett, they won't understand his personal weakness and the shaky government he formed. After all, no Western government has ever been as electorally deficient as Bennett's.

Bennett's sham government is the implementation of politics in the post-truth era. This kind of politics pushes traditional political discussions to the sidelines, focusing instead on personal opinions while bestowing secondary importance to facts.

Does Bennett care that the vast majority of his voters oppose his joining a left-wing government? How can it be that the same man who failed to make it past the electoral threshold in 2019 is now the prime minister?

The consciousness engineers, led by the Haaretz newspaper, led the opposition to Netanyahu and framed it in such a way that anything he did was illegitimate and extreme. They created and encouraged a war between the "good" and the "bad." Every fact about Netanyahu was negative, pessimistic, and polarizing. Bennett is the clear outcome of this post-truth culture that positions itself as the one genuine truth.

Yet Bennett will pay for his actions. The day is not far off when he and his loyal party members will once again need to look their voters in the eye. Perhaps 2019 will repeat itself and Bennett will find himself looking for a few hundred voters willing to get him past the electoral threshold.

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The time has come for the Likud to establish a shadow government. The immediate task of Israel's largest party is to establish an effective system for parliamentary oversight of the polarized and divided government led by Yamina party chief Naftali Bennett.

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From Day 1, the Likud's shadow government would present alternatives to the incumbent coalition government and its policies. This would be a practical expression of the Likud as a critical opposition force that seeks to march back to power. Even after the recent upheavals, the Likud movement leads all other parties in both the coalition and the opposition by a huge margin, and it will be the one tasked with replacing the sitting government in case of regime change.

As opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyahu will head a group that comprises an alternate cabinet with a comparable representative for every minister. The existence of a strong and consolidated opposition that accompanies every single issue handled by the coalition is an essential component in the correct and critical management of a democratic government. The shadow government will assist in formulating policies and legislation through constructive criticism, opposition to the government's proposals, and the amendment of proposed legislation. At the same time, it will help advance its own policies to increase the chances of the opposition winning in the next elections.

Incumbent Naftali Bennett is the most faltering prime minister to lead Israel since its founding, and the unified stance around his leadership is the stuff of illusion. In practice, the new government has five different prime ministers, each of whom sees themselves as steering policy in a direction that suits their worldview. Many in this government now set to run outsized ministries have zero experience. The public must be kept abreast of its activity, and the party that must maintain close public oversight through a shadow government is the Likud.

Just like the short-lived government of then Labor-leader Ehud Barak that entered office in 1999, Bennett's government will soon be nothing more than a passing episode. Do you remember how Barak promised those rejoicing at his election that "this was the dawn of a new day," meaning the end of the ultra-Orthodox Shas' party's political power? Well, we're in the same situation, except this time around, Shas has been replaced with the anti-Netanyahu slogan "anyone but Bibi." The masses gathered outside the Prime Minister's Residence on Balfour Street celebrated the ousting of the Likud from power. In practice, Barak led the State of Israel to a terrible place in record time. Bennett appears poised to follow in his footsteps.

In 1999, Barak's supporters thought they were the winners. Now, too, they believe the Likud's time in power is over. Not even close. We aren't weak, and we are ready for the great struggle that lies ahead.

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