There is a truism in Israeli politics. It
relates in particular to the past 40 years since the rightwing Likud party came
into power during the great upheaval of 1977 that ended the Socialist Labor party’s
hegemony: “Israeli voters vote Right and receive Left.”
As truisms go,
there has been a lot of truth to this one. As the country has been growing more
religious and more rightwing, its politicians have remained middle of the road.
The Israeli voter always wants more religion and more fearless, principled politics
than its politicians are willing to provide.
Thus, Menachem
Begin came into power in 1977. Three years later, under pressure from Jimmy
Carter, he gave up the Sinai and began autonomy talks with the Arabs of Judea
and Samaria in order to make peace with Anwar Sadat of Egypt. The price ended
up including physically evacuating over 2,000 Sinai settlers. Begin certainly
had no intention of doing that when he was elected.
In 1991, Yitzchak
Shamir, who during the 1940s was the fiery leader of the rightwing Lehi
underground movement (aka the “Stern Gang”), committed Israel to the Madrid talks
under pressure from President George Bush. The Madrid talks were likewise about
providing the Arabs of Judea and Samaria with autonomy and Israel’s possible
withdrawal from some of Judea and Samaria. When his rightwing voters complained
about this, he responded, “I can shlep
these talks out for 20 years.” Well, he lost the 1992 elections, and the Madrid
talks morphed into the Oslo Accords of the Labor party, leading to tragedy and
bloodshed.
In 2003, Likudnik
Ariel Sharon was voted into power in a race against Labor party leader Amram
Mitzne. The election served as a plebiscite about whether Israel should withdraw
from Gaza, which Sharon vocally opposed and Mitzne favored. Just two years
later, Sharon, in trouble with the law, conceived the Gaza Disengagement and
physically evacuated 10,000 Jews from their homes.
The prize,
however, goes to Naftali Bennett, in 2021.
Following the fall
of Benjamin Netanyahu’s fourth government as prime minister (Israel’s 34th)
early in 2019, there were two non-conclusive elections in April and September
of that year, which left Binyamin Netanyahu prime minister of a caretaker government,
following the failure of any side to claim a victory with 61 seats in the
Knesset. Then, in 2020, there was a third election, out of which Netanyahu
cobbled together an unstable unity government that included the central-left
party of Benny Gantz. That government lasted a year.
Then in 2021,
there was a fourth election that once again proved inconclusive. Yet this time,
a rightwing Knesset member, Naftali Bennett, head of the Yamina political
party, considered more rightwing than Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud, decided to
break the deadlock by joining the Left and forming a rotation government with
Ya’ir Lapid (who believes something different every week) of the Yesh Atid
party.
I remember one
time when I was a boy, I joined a touch football game in the middle, and when
the ball was thrown to me, I did not yet understand which direction was my team’s
goal line, so I ran in the wrong direction, scoring a goal for the “enemy”
side. Would you be surprised if I told you that nobody from the opposing team tried
to stop me?
You can always
claim that sort of “victory.” Any politician in Israel’s history could have
betrayed his values for the sake of becoming prime minister. Yet all of them had
too many scruples for it to even occur to them. Bennett was the first who
switched sides for the sake of fulfilling his personal dream of becoming prime
minister. To ensure himself the prime minister’s job, he took into his
coalition the far-leftwing Meretz party and Labor party, as well as all the
rest of the Left. He also included a few rightwing parties that, with him, had
defected to the “anyone but Bibi” crowd. Most shameful of all, he took into his
coalition Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am party, a conservative Muslim religious party
from Israel’s Bedouin south, associated with the Northern Muslim Brotherhood, a
terrorist group. Assembling all of these parties was not easy or cheap. To
bring in Ra’am, Bennett had to promise the Arabs 50 million shekels to improve
Arab infrastructure and promised, as well, to legitimize illegal Bedouin towns
in the Negev desert.
Meanwhile, the
Left moved forward with anti-religious legislation, weakening the Rabbinate’s
hold on kashrut, advanced pro-gay
legislation, and did little to stop Bedouin pilfering of sheep from Jewish
shepherds in the south or weaponry from southern army bases. They lent their
support to Biden’s nuclear deal with Iran, did nothing to stop European
Union-backed Arab construction in Area C of Judea and Samaria, and refused to
sanction Jewish construction on State land. So Yamina’s voters definitely “voted
Right and received Left.”
Still, Bennett’s
government fell in 2022, and after three years of political instability, on
November 1, 2022, Israel went to the polls and voted in the most religious, rightwing
government Israel has ever had! It consists of Binyamin Netanyahu’s
Likud party (32 seats); the Religious Zionist/Otzma Yehudit party of Betzalel
Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir (14), the Ashkenazi-Chareidi United Torah Judaism party
of Moshe Gafni (7) and the Sefardic Chareidi Shas party of Aryeh Deri (11), for
a total of a 64-seat coalition. For the first time in Israel’s history, a
majority of the coalition members are Orthodox Jews. The present government is
stable, and there is a very good chance that the government will last its full
four years. Controversies between parties were worked out in advance, in
feverish negotiations, rather than being brushed under the rug as has happened
in the past. In this coalition, the Likud is not the right wing but the left
wing.
The new government
has already gotten to work. They are faced with many challenges.
·
Bringing
back the oil fields: The
Bennett government gave up to Lebanon the oil fields located off the shore of
northern Israel. The fields belong to Israel, and there was no discussion in
the Knesset before this happened. The present government is planning on undoing
what the previous government did.
·
Strengthening the power of the Knesset: A situation has developed whereby the Israeli Supreme Court,
whose members are extremely left wing, has the final say on decisions made by
the Knesset. Yariv Levin (Likud) is the new justice minister, and he is going
to try to pass a new law, the Override Law, that makes it possible for the
Knesset to override decisions by the Supreme Court if it considers those
decisions to go against the will of the Israeli voter.
·
Making the Supreme Court more democratic: Unlike the situation in other countries, such as the
United States and Canada, where Supreme Court justices are approved by the
government, in Israel, Supreme Court justices vote each other in! The present
situation is such that most of Israel’s Supreme Court justices are an “old-boys
network” of far-Left thinkers. They have views aligned with those of the
far-left-wing Meretz party, which did not even get into the Knesset in this
election. Yariv Levin will be working to change this situation and to bring it
into sync with the international norm.
·
Working Against the Iranian nuclear program: Binyamin Netanyahu will steer Israel back on course to
stop the advance of Iranian nuclear development.
·
Protecting Judea and Samaria from European Union
construction:
The government will stop allowing the European Union to finance Arab
construction in Area C of Judea and Samaria.
·
Restoring
the rule of law to the south: Itamar Ben Gvir, a very eloquent,
energetic and highly talented lawyer, head of the Otzma Yehudit party that ran
in tandem with the Religious Zionist party, will be working to bring the south back
under Israel’s control, and to combat the chaos that exists there now, where
Bedouins routinely steal government land, steal from local Jewish farmers, and
steal weapons from Israeli army bases.
·
Combating
the inflation: Betzalel
Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist party, just as eloquent, energetic, and
talented a lawyer as Ben Gvir, will be working with Netanyahu as finance minister
to combat the inflation created over the past year by the Ukraine war. He will
also be working to make Judea and Samaria legally part of the State of
Israel.
In addition to all
that, the new government will work to strengthen Torah study at all ages, to
strengthen kashrut and proper
conversions, and to strengthen Jewish family values.
I believe that we
have an opportunity to see some great things happen, and having voted Right, I
think this is one time when I am not going to be receiving Left in return. We
truly have much to thank G-d for.
