It’s a tale of twos, a story of firsts and of seconds. This Shabbos, two days ago, was the first of two Shabbosim during the Nine Days, during which we mourn the loss of the two Temples. Shabbos morning, in Daf Yomi, Temura 15, we learned about the Jews who came up to the Land of Israel with Ezra the Scribe following 70 years of exile. Some of those men were old enough to recall the idolatry the led to that exile, and the gemarIt’s a says they wept over it.
If those men could weep over the idolatry they witnessed in their childhood, idolatry that led to their 70-year exile, I can weep over the political missteps taken 27 years ago during the 1992 Israeli elections, political missteps in which I took a modest part.
In 1992, the right-wing population of the country was already larger than the left-wing population and logically should have been expected to win those elections, as had been happening for 14 years. There was a pervading sense in Judea and Samaria, my home, that the Israeli population had irrevocably changed and would never again vote in a left-wing government – i.e., a government in favor of giving away parts of Judea and Samaria for a false peace, a “piece” of paper. Yet the Right, complacent after 14 years of victories, split into small splinter parties. In terms of the total popular vote, the Right won, but thousands of votes that had been cast for the splinter parties were squandered, when they failed to pass the voting threshold (the minimum number of votes necessary to get a Knesset seat). The Left was ushered in, and the result was the Oslo Accords – and thousands of deaths.
Days before those elections, I had been uncertain whom to vote for – there were so many fine choices! Rabbi Eliezer Waldman’s Tehiya list, which combined idealistic settler rabbis with intellectual secular politicians who believed in protecting the Land of Israel; Geulat Yisrael, the party of Rabbi Eliezer Mizrachi, who broke off from the Agudah party because his views were more akin to that of settlers; Major General Rehavam Ze’evi’s Moledet party, which publicly advocated “transfer” of Arabs out of Judea and Samaria to preserve the Jewish majority; Torah VeAretz, the party of the intensely pious and zealous Rabbi Moshe Levinger, whose efforts had spearheaded the settling of Hebron and subsequently the rest of Judea and Samaria; the intensely hawkish but secular General Rafael Eitan’s Tzomet party; or the National Religious Party, the traditional mainstay of Israel’s religious Zionists, which, more than any other party, looked after the interests of Israel’s religious-Zionist school system.
I did something I had never done before. At the end of a visit to our town’s Chief Rabbi Dov Lior to ask some halachic questions, I had inquired, on a whim (and a twinkle in my eye), realizing I was doing something irregular, “HaRav, does the Rav have a suggestion for whom to vote for?” And Rav Lior, likewise with a twinkle in his eye, for the same reason, had responded, “I think one could do worse than to help out Rav Moshe in these elections.” He was referring to Rav Levinger, Rav Lior’s old school chum from Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav. (He later publicly expressed regret over having publicized his opinion.)
A month before the elections, in a reserve duty, one of my Israeli army buddies had taken me aside and had said to me, slowly, “Rafi, you’re not going to win this time. The people aren’t with you,” and I had stared at him uncomprehending. “How could that be?” I asked myself.
Well, there were a lot of right-wing parties, but sometimes, more is less. The election results were very close, and the Left won.
I can recall the morning after those elections as though it were yesterday. I was in my office, which I, as a translator, shared with three Torah scribes (four quiet people seeking quiet). My fingers were trembling. Construction had suddenly ceased on the Jewish neighborhood being built in the empty land between two established neighborhoods of Kiryat Arba. I was in my late thirties, and my apartment mate Ronen was in his twenties, but we were moving around that apartment like old men. Ronen smiled a sad smile and asked me the question that all settlers asked one another in the weeks to come. “Who did you vote for?” and I answered, “Rav Levinger.” Ronen looked at me, shook his head and said, “You got off easy. Small change! Rav Levinger didn’t get in but you only wasted 3,700 votes. I voted for Tehiya! We wasted 32,000 votes!”
Anyone who lived through that election will never forget it. After 14 years of quiet growth, there were 120,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria. But with those elections, which brought in a Labor government resting on the political platform of the far-left-wing Meretz party, our homes, our very lives, were on the line.
* * *
Today, there are 500,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria. It is the fastest growing section of the country. There is no Arab “peace partner”; no physical place to put an Arab state without, G-d forbid, throwing 100,000 Jews out of their homes; and no interest on the part of the vast majority of the population in throwing those Jews out. The left side of the political map is in disarray. The number of Knesset members who publicly advocate the left-wing political positions of the Labor party from the Oslo years is not more than 15. Many thousands of young, secular Israeli men with pony tails study at Ariel University in the heart of Samaria. There is an American president whose ambassador to Israel owns a home in Jerusalem and is a major supporter of a yeshiva in the Samarian town of Beit El. There are 30 to 35 Knesset seats occupied by people who call themselves “centrists.” They say they’re not left-wing (“There’s no partner for peace…”) but they’re not right-wing either (“The settlers only care about one thing…”).
Yet in slightly over a month, for the first time in 70 years, Israel will be holding its second election within a year. There is a political impasse. It suddenly looks as though neither side can win. Neither side won in the elections of April, even though on paper, 65 Knesset seats were won by the Right and only 55 by the non-Right, including the Arabs, who claim they would never agree to be in an Israeli government. It is predicted that in the new elections taking place in a month, neither side will win once again. The reasons for this are complex, but the main problem seems to be as follows:
Avigdor Liberman, originally from Russia, heads a secular right-wing party that for the first time has gone out on a limb over anti-religious measures. Liberman has said – and he said this in the last elections as well – that he will not support a government that does not force the chareidim to do army service. Avigdor Liberman lives in Nokdim, a small, mixed-religious/secular town in Eastern Gush Etzion. During the Oslo years, his town was almost evacuated by the left-wing government. And now he is making an issue out of this? Out of forcing chareidim to do the army!? Nobody else on the Right has any interest in bothering the chareidim. Only Liberman. To call the man “pig-headed” would be a major compliment. What does he want? Does he want to be thrown out of his home?
Can Netanyahu get 61 seats without Liberman? He couldn’t do it in April, and it doesn’t look good for September either.
In order for Netanyahu to win 61 seats without Liberman, the rest of the Right has got to be totally united, without any wasted votes. It is true that the situation on the Right is better than that of the Left, which has two medium-sized, far-Left parties with no logical difference between them, but I don’t know if it is good enough.
On the Right, there is the Likud. To the right of them will be a large religious Zionist party, the United Right, which has done a moderately good job of patching together at least three smaller religious Zionist parties representing liberal, moderate, and devout streams among religious Zionism. They can hope to earn 10 or more Knesset seats. That said, two other religious Zionist parties – Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit with its origins in the ranks of Rabbi Meir Kahana, and libertarian Oslo battler and cannabis legalizer(!) Moshe Feiglin’s Zehut party – have not been included in the party and intend to run on their own. How that happened is a matter of debate. But the bottom line is that if neither passes the voting threshold (the minimum number of votes needed to win a seat in the Knesset), they may waste precisely the votes needed to beat the Left without counting Liberman.
And G-d-forbid if the Right doesn’t win. If the Left somehow wins, with Benny Gantz’s “centrist” Blue and White party being asked to form a government, there could be a very dangerous dynamic, in which this large centrist party, similar to 1992, is forced to adopt the platforms of one or both of the small, extreme-left-wing parties. The coy Arabs, who say they will never sit in a left-wing government, may, G-d forbid, discover that under certain circumstances they are willing. Such a government might not be able to sign a dangerous peace treaty – that seems too far-fetched. But 15 years ago we were witness to unilateral disengagements, and as far-fetched as those may seem, we cannot know that they won’t be tried – or carried out – again.
* * *
Everything G-d does is for the best. Back in 1992, the women of Hebron, feeling under siege and suffering from negative press about settlers and Hebron, fought back by developing “Shabbat Hebron” and Hebron’s major chasidic music festivals of Chol HaMoed, which really put Hebron and Judea and Samaria on the map. The entire country, with their fingers burnt by the Oslo experience, moved in healthier directions. Ronen, my sofer-stam friend from the office, went on to study marketing and became a major fundraiser for Hebron, raising millions of dollars to buy Arab homes to enlarge the Jewish community of Hebron.
We cannot know what direction this political impasse is leading to. What is G-d trying to teach us? What role does Avigdor Liberman play in it? There is something to this, but I can’t fathom it yet. Whatever it is, I pray that G-d teach it to us without our having to suffer.
Raphael Blumberg has lived with his family in Kiryat Arba, Israel, since 1984. The author of a biography about Rabbi Boruch Milikowsky, Raphael works as a translator.
