How the anti-Netanyahu Camp Lost Right-wingers Like Me

T. Belman. Over the years, I posted many articles by Ms Gordon. Then I didn’t hear from her for a long time. Now it appears she is writing for Haaretz. Big surprise.

She admits in this article that she supported Bennett’s government until she didn’t. In her reasons for breaking away she made no mention of the most important one, at least from my eyes, was Gantz’s policies in Area C. Because she is a settler herself, I would have thought that Gantz was a major concern to her as well. Perhaps Haaretz intervened.

I’m a religious Zionist settler, but I wanted to vote (again) against Benjamin Netanyahu. This is how the anti-Bibi bloc lost my vote

By Evelyn Gordon, HAARETZ

[..]

First was the deal on a maritime border with Lebanon. Here’s how most rightists saw it: The government capitulated completely to Lebanon, traded tangible assets for empty promises and then, together with its media allies, lied about it.

For instance, this was no “compromise,” as Lapid and the headlines claimed; Lebanon received 100 percent of the maritime territory it initially sought by upping its demands halfway through the negotiations and then retreating to its original demand. Lebanon didn’t “recognize Israel”; both sides signed commitments to Washington, not each other. Israel’s coastal security border (the so-called “buoy line”) received neither Lebanese nor international “recognition”; it was merely acknowledged as the status quo, which can change. Hezbollah has already declared it occupied Lebanese territory.

Gas rigs on both sides won’t create “mutual deterrence”; Lebanon’s rigs will be owned by major European corporations, so Israel would never attack them. U.S. President Joe Biden’s “security guarantees” don’t even bind his own administration, much less future ones. And Israel wasn’t given “financial compensation”; it will receive nothing from the area it ceded. Even payment for the bit of Lebanon’s field in Israeli waters must be negotiated with the European companies, and if Israel doesn’t swiftly accept their offer, it may find itself under attack by Hezbollah.

Finally, this capitulation occurred because Hezbollah threatened to attack and Washington exerted heavy pressure, leading both the militant group and America to believe such tactics work. That makes pressure for further concessions more likely, and increases the risk of war down the line. All this sparked fear of similar capitulations on more vital issues. And rightists won’t vote for left-leaning parties if they don’t trust them on security.

The second issue that turned me away was the decision to admit any Russian or Ukrainian with a Jewish great-grandparent – potentially hundreds of thousands of people – into Israel “until the war ends.” That effectively means forever, since no government has succeeded in deporting migrants in large numbers. Indeed, Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman already advocates giving these Russians and Ukrainians citizenship. This decision therefore undermines Israel’s Jewish majority – a Jewish state’s most basic requirement.

But it also sends a disturbing message about what “Jewish” means to the left. After all, why prioritize these non-Jewish Ukrainians and Russians over other non-Jewish Ukrainians and Russians unless you somehow consider them “more Jewish?” Yet most of these migrants have zero connection to Judaism; they probably never even met their Jewish great-grandparent. This is a definition of “Jewish” that strips the term of any identifiable content.

Rightists understand that issues of religion and state require compromises, but they can’t accept an Israel with no Jewish content at all. They will never vote left unless they are convinced that the left sees “Jewish” as meaning something more than bloodlines – and unless it can show that it won’t imperil our Jewish majority with influxes of non-Jews.

Finally, there’s the left’s ongoing democracy problem, which differs from the right’s but is no less real. One aspect of this problem is the nonstop effort to quash ideas it opposes by branding them “anti-democratic,” “fascist” or “human rights violations,” even when they aren’t. This went into overdrive during the campaign.

Take, for instance, legal reform. Israel’s judicial appointments system is anomalous in the democratic world, due to both elected officials’ minimal role in the process and sitting justices’ involvement. Its Supreme Court has exceptionally broad definitions of standing and justiciability and employs a unique standard of reasonability, making it particularly interventionist. And no other court in the world accords “constitutional” status to Basic Laws approved by a mere quarter of parliament. How is wanting to make our system more like that of other Western democracies “anti-democratic?”

This isn’t mere semantics; it goes to the heart of what democracy is. If people can’t debate competing ideas about the most basic aspects of self-governance – the mechanisms of government, the balance of power between its branches, how to balance competing rights and values – without one side trying to shut down the entire debate as “anti-democratic,” no democracy can function.

Moreover, it’s devastatingly counterproductive. A generation of Israelis has been convinced that “democracy” and “human rights” aren’t important values; they’re merely empty words deployed as bludgeons to suppress any idea leftists dislike. It’s why so many have no problem with genuinely anti-democratic ideas today (see, for example, the 37 percent of Jewish respondents in a 2020 poll who think it’s okay for Israel to annex territory without giving the Palestinians living there citizenship or even legal residency).

In my view, this demagoguery from the left has done more long-term damage to democracy and human rights than Netanyahu ever did. And if both sides are undermining democracy, rightists will always choose their own; at least those parties will do other things they value.

Some of my friends ultimately voted for Bibi’s bloc. I still couldn’t; I threw my vote away on a small party. But for rightists like me, a Bibi victory isn’t disastrous. Alongside many things that appall us, his government will enact many policies we support. That isn’t true for leftists.

So was ignoring our concerns worth it? Only those now ruing Netanyahu’s win can answer that question. But shouldn’t they at least be asking it?

Evelyn Gordon works for Haaretz’s English edition. Her articles have appeared in Mosaic Magazine, Commentary Magazine, Azure, the Jerusalem Post and Jewish News Syndicate.