We’ve been through six bizarre and momentous years that brought us covid, elections, a horrendous terror attack, and miracles on a Biblical scale as Israel defeated six enemies. The last major miracle was just a few weeks ago, with the miraculous Dubai flight, in which 180 lives were spared through enormous divine providence. Whatever happens in the upcoming elections, let us pray that Hashem will continue to help us and protect us as He has until now.
*
* *
Over the past 30
years, since his first term in 1996, Binyamin Netanyahu has spent 19 years as
prime minister. He long ago passed David Ben Gurion’s 13-year record, a feat
which seemed impossible at the time. The third longest reigning prime minister
was far behind: Yitzchak Shamir, at six years. The fact is that a lot of people
like having Netanyahu as leader. That is why they continue to vote for him.
Yet a whole “army”
of people, an entire opposition, has risen that is driven by the desire
to unseat Netanyahu. Half of this opposition is led by two right wing figures, Naftali
Bennett and Avigdor Liberman, both reminiscent of the Biblical Korach. So great
is their desire for power, and so great their hated for Netanyahu, that they
would risk empowering Yair Golan of the far-left Democrats Party, today’s
Meretz. His is the only party that still wants to create a Palestinian state.
Should Netanyahu
really quit to “give others a chance”? For my part, I don’t think it is
supposed to work like that. I think the type of people who want to be prime
minister are the type who enjoy it, who think they are good at it, and who have
enough self-confidence to believe they are doing the country a favor by filling
that position. It is the job of everyone else to try to unseat him if they
think they can do better.
Binyamin Netanyahu
has no obligations to anyone along these lines. I think he has prepared dozens
of people to replace him simply by setting a standard, by giving them someone
like him to emulate. Although he is 76, no one yet calls him “old,” and he
still carries himself like a young man, despite his telltale large ears. Ben
Gurion, by contrast, who was short, pudgy, and bald, with wild-genius hair, was
called “hazaken,” the old man, by his early sixties, when the State of
Israel was just coming into existence and before he had served a single day as
prime minister.
All that said, in
17 days, on October 27, Israel will hold its next general elections. Everyone
who wants to throw out Bibi will have their chance.
Residents of
Kiryat Arba such as myself view the upcoming elections with foreboding. We
recall the elections of 1992 that brought in Oslo. Those elections were held
after 15 years of right-wing governments. Already back then, there was a
feeling that the population was moving toward the right, and there was a
perception that there would never again be another left-wing government.
The elections were
held, and even though the right wing and religious parties once more won in the
popular vote, there was a tremendous waste of votes cast for small right-wing
parties that did not pass the threshold for getting into the Knesset.
The right-wing prime minister running for
reelection at the time was Yitzchak Shamir, who headed the Lehi Underground
during the 1940s. Lacking enough seats in the Knesset, he could not form a
coalition, and the task fell to the left wing.
Shamir’s opponent
was the left-wing Yitzchak Rabin, one of the heroes of the Six-Day War. Such is
politics that, despite the Left’s having received fewer votes, Rabin was able to
cobble together the first left-wing government in 15 years. To do that,
however, he had to include in his coalition the far-left Meretz party of Yossi
Sarid and Shulamit Aloni and grant them key positions. Without them, he would
have had to forgo his dream of making a new government. This put Meretz in the
driver’s seat, and Meretz proceeded to force Israel to carry out the Oslo
Accords.
So, in the end,
the Left came in and brought us Oslo, from which we are still suffering. We
recall all the destruction that resulted, the countless lives lost, and we
shudder. Anyone in my area who experienced that suffers from a kind of
post-traumatic stress. And we ask ourselves, can the same thing happen again?
*
* *
Here, briefly, are
four scenarios of what could result from the upcoming elections:
1) The right wing/religious/chareidi
block wins again: This is tentatively possible. Back in May, polls
were giving the right-wing block 51 seats, while giving the opposition 57.
Presently, five months later, they are giving the right wing 55 seats, versus
50 for the opposition. (Herb Keinon stated all of these numbers in the Friday,
October 9 issue of The Jerusalem Post.) Of course, to
win, one of the sides needs 61 seats, so the Right’s 55 seats does not achieve
that.
But look at those
numbers. They do not point to the opposition winning, and they indicate a trend
of the Right growing stronger as the elections approach. This is even after
four intense days of October 7th memorial ceremonies engineered as left-wing
election campaigning. And don’t forget all the elections in the past, in which
the press predicted left-wing victories yet in the end, the Right won.
2) The
elections end in a deadlock: Neither side wins, Netanyahu remains caretaker
prime minister, and further elections are scheduled for half a year later. This
possibility is just as real as the first, and maybe more so. Israeli elections
ended in deadlocks four times during the past eight years. Three times – April
2019, September 2019, and March 2020 – new elections were immediately called.
One time, in March 2021, following another such election, Bennett created an
improbable coalition relying on Arab leader Mahmoud Abbas. Such a deadlock
could happen again now. In the long run, it is not good for the country, but it
is far from the worst scenario. It allows the right wing, under Netanyahu’s
stewardship, more valuable months to consolidate its construction growth in
Judea and Samaria from the past four years and takes pressure off of the
chareidim.
3) Netanyahu makes
his promised “broad national government”: This is the least likely
possibility. When Netanyahu said this, he was referring to leaving out the chareidim
and including parties such as Bennett and Lieberman and maybe Eisenkott. Netanyahu
could not have been serious, because it is impossible. Those three wouldn’t
touch this with a 10-foot pole.
4) The Left wins:
Our greatest fear is this: For the Left to win the election, some combination
of the following possibilities has to occur: a) Winter, Smotrich, or Ben Gvir
have to not have enough votes to get into the Knesset; b) the Left has to
invite all the Arab parties to be part of the coalition; or c) the chareidim
have to go with the Left to see if they get a better deal.
None of these are
likely. The parties of Winter and Smotrich and Ben Gvir are all doing fine. Bennett
and Lieberman would really have to flip their lids to allow the Arab
parties into the coalition. And the chareidim are not presently considering
any such possibility, despite suggestions of that sort four months ago.
*
* *
What is the worst
thing that could happen if the Left does win? A central accomplishment of the
present government over the past four years is that they have taken over large,
empty tracts of land in Area C of Judea and Samaria and placed thousands of
young Jews there. They have founded at least 11 new Jewish cities there. They
have legalized tens of thousands of dunams of Jewish farms. But on much of this
land, there is no permanent construction, only young families living in trailer
homes. We fear a left-wing government evacuating young Jews, destroying their
trailer homes, and cancelling the legal changes made over the past four years.
But I don’t think
even this is likely. The Knesset today is too right wing. People have changed.
Even those who survived Oslo and the Disengagement and remained leftists were
deeply affected by October 7th. And they are more religious, too.
Nor is Gadi
Eisenkott, head of the leftist Yashar party, the largest opposition party, the
same as the party of Yitzchak Rabin. Eisenkott has a sister living in Yakir, in
Samaria. And he has gone on record as opposing a Palestinian state. As for
large-scale initiatives like Oslo, they are unlikely. In 1992, there were
150,000 Jews in Judea and Samaria. Now there are 550,000. A Palestinian state
is increasingly unviable. I think the clock cannot be turned back. Any action
by the Left, even erasing the gains of the past four years, would be going
against the wishes of most of their constituencies. Those constituencies are
now right wing. They just don’t like Bibi.
*
* *
For years, I have
been giving candies to the bareheaded soldiers on my way home from sunrise davening
and learning in Chevron on Shabbos morning. I say, “Thank you for making it
possible for me to walk down to Chevron in the dark,” and they respond, “Thank
you for protecting the Land of Israel for us.” Lately, I decided that the
soldiers look so intelligent and so healthy that I was corrupting them with
just candies. I therefore added sliced carrots, which I peel myself at 5:00
a.m. before heading out for Hebron, carrying them with me in a thermal pack
with ice. After two months of not being sure what to say, I now hand them a few
candies and say, “This is for you,” and then I hand them a bag of carrot slices
and say, “And this is for your mother.” They all laugh, and they all take the
carrots, and it breaks the ice. So, the people remain strong. I believe there
is a limit to what Yair Golan would be able to do to change things in the
direction he wants.
Anyway, we’ll soon
see how right I am about anything. In parashat
Eikev (Devarim 8:1-6), the Torah talks about the hunger and hardships of
traveling in the desert for 40 years. Suddenly, it says, “Your clothing did not
become tattered, nor your feet bruised these 40 years” (verse 4). Rabbi Moshe
Alshich asks why this upbeat point is suddenly mentioned. He answers that
Hashem is telling us that even when things are hard, Hashem always sends us
miracles that are part of life, so we don’t forget that Hashem is constantly
watching out for us.
I think we have
seen this idea amply fulfilled over the past six years.
