T. Belman. If Bibi, playing the Jewish Card, gets elected, then obviously his campaign was well received by people who want a Jewish state. He will try to speak to Jews as opposed to Israelis. I think that the divide is nationalists v universalists. or between those who want Israel to be a Jewish state as opposed to a state of all its citizens.
I thought that “pay homage to their Jewish identity” is intrinsic to Zionism.
In a democratic state all citizens vote and have equal rights but not collective rights. Which means that only Jews have collective right to be a Jewish state. The Jewish character of the State is fixed.
There will be much talk about ‘Jewish character’ in the upcoming campaign – most of it from a Likud party that is led by an atheist and whose candidates seldom live by the Torah’s commandments
In the short statement Benjamin Netanyahu released on Monday after the news broke that the coalition government had fallen, he blamed it for “relying on terror supporters” and “endangering Israel’s Jewish character.” He signed off, “With God’s help, we will do and succeed.”
What is “Israel’s Jewish character”? It is one of the emptiest terms in Israeli politics, used originally by ultra-Orthodox politicians to try to convince ignorant secular Israelis of their arguments. It is entirely devoid of meaning, but that doesn’t matter. It is aimed at generating a feeling of longing for something that doesn’t exist, and hatred for anyone who can’t claim any connection to that nebulous Jewish character.
Israelis better get used to it, because they will be hearing an awful lot about “Jewish character” in this election.
Netanyahu’s proxies in the media are calling his political camp the “believing bloc.” What and who do they believe in? It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that Jews are “believers and the sons of believers,” and if you don’t believe, something is wrong with your Jewish character.
There’s nothing new about Netanyahu pulling on the Jewish heartstrings of his voters. He was well served by his infamous “The Arabs are voting in their droves” video in the 2015 election. Also his “Netanyahu is good for the Jews” campaign in 1996, after which a beaten Shimon Peres said “The Jews beat the Israelis.”
But those two cases were dramatic, last-gasp, rule-breaking attempts to shatter the deadlock. This time, Netanyahu is establishing these rhetorical parameters at the start of election season. It will be the soundtrack of Israeli life over the next four months.
He no longer has political partners who will roll their eyes at this Jewish-nationalist fearmongering, as this is the stated agenda of his far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies. On Likud’s benches, no lawmakers remain who will shift uncomfortably. Likud 2022 is no longer a party that is just “close” to or “respectful” of “Jewish tradition.” Today’s Likud is a new creature in Israeli politics: a full-on religious party led by an atheist, and with a majority of members and candidates who don’t live according to the Torah’s commandments.
The discrepancy between their political rhetoric and their private lives, their parties on Shabbat and meals in non-kosher restaurants doesn’t matter – just as long as they constantly pay homage to their Jewish identity. It doesn’t matter how hollow and lacking in any spiritual or intellectual content that identity is.
Netanyahu has no interest in projecting any Jewish value; just in using Judaism as a mechanism for manufacturing hate against those who are not Jewish. Or against those whose identity registration may officially be “Jewish,” but in their willingness to sit in the same coalition as “terror supporters” and the “Muslim Brotherhood,” have shown that they’ve forgotten what it is to be a Jew.
Twenty-five years ago, when Netanyahu was caught whispering in the ear of the elderly kabbalist Yitzhak Kaduri that “the left forgot what it means to be Jews,” it was a national scandal. Today it is policy.
Netanyahu is even free now from the necessity to pander to Israeli citizens who immigrated from the former Soviet Union. Instead, his mouthpieces accuse his big rival, Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman, of “flooding the country with goyim.”
This is going to be a very Jewish election. A Judaism of the lowest possible common denominator. Netanyahu is taking a calculated risk here. There may still be those among his potential voters who object to his prostitution of Judaism and will be repelled by his wrapping himself in a tallit of hate. But he is also working on the assumption that his political adversaries are not even on the field.
The center-left has long since given up trying to define its Jewishness. It is led by Yair Lapid, who has spent his entire career building his image as the ultimate Israeli – so successfully that there’s little room there for his Jewishness, beyond his emphasis on the memory of the Holocaust.
Netanyahu can take this risk and sell a Judaism of insularity and hate because his rivals simply don’t have the vocabulary to deal with it. Naftali Bennett could at least go to the Western Wall and pray after becoming prime minister. That’s not Lapid’s scene.
Netanyahu’s comeback is far from assured. Even the most encouraging polls for him show that a majority of Israelis don’t want him to return. But he’s already won the battle over Israeli Judaism, and he’ll use that in the coming campaign.
@Honeybee
Congratulations!
You were taught early enough whom to hate, and it became part of your brain matter, so now you don’t have to think and are able to make your political decisions quickly!
@Sebastien Zorn
The “wings” are nothing but the Anglo divide-and-rule technique which has worked beautifully for centuries to “control the mob” and to control their colonial subjects.
Note the application of the technique in the current Ukrainian crisis, abortion “crisis”, BLM, the West and Russia, etc., etc.
The only “policy” the so-called wings have is to win more power and money for themselves and their respective “sectors” while deceiving their voters into thinking that they are fighting for the country and the people.
Policy is something that is created constantly and changed as needed by consent.
: Sebastien: ” Problem is liberal streams of Judaism want to accommodate and appease the Arabs” I was taught in Saturday School just that concept.
@Reader The wings matter because they are delineated by policy. When Jews couldn’t even unite behind the nation state law that was one wing defining moment. The left is anti-Zionist, whether two stater or one.
I think left and right may gave gotten muddied when Bibi introduced the American version whiich centers on econ
@Sebastien Zorn
The problem is the Jews being at each other’s throats while paying no attention at all the threats facing the whole of the Jewish people in Israel as well as in the Diaspora.
Most of the so-called MKs there (and this includes most of the opposition including Netanyahu) should be swept out of the Knesset with a dirty broom and replaced with decent, competent people, regardless of their “wings”.
@Reader Problem is liberal streams of Judaism want to accommodate and appease the Arabs while de-emphasizing Jewish nationalism and the tribal bonds on which any nationalism rests.
Uh oh. she put on her glasses. Things are getting serious.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/355525
Has anyone considered the possibility that Bennett and Shaked’s comparatively poor social skills might have something to do with their common backround as computer nerds?
Bibi’s background is finance and diplomacy in addition to his having been an officer in an elite military battalion.
@Raphael
How about a secular state where ALL kinds of Jews live and where these Jews are a majority of at least 90% and where the religious don’t use their observance as a weapon against those Jews who are not like them and where the NGOs like Peace Now, et al. are prohibited?
Obviously, Israel is not ready yet to be a Torah state (and no one knows it better than Netanyahu and Co.) but it doesn’t mean that the alternative is to be overrun by anybody and everybody, especially by its enemies who must be encouraged to leave.
It is a very small country, and right now its purpose is not to please the “world community” but to do everything to prevent another Holocaust, as far as I am concerned.
Logically, it seems to me, “Jewish and Democratic” state was well stated here:
Israel still hasn’t answered the question of what kind of state it will be…a “Jewish” state, or a secular state, embracing all of its citizens, equally. From my perspective, Israel should be a Jewish state, but then, what do you do about everyone else? At least Bibi says that he wants to retain the “Jewish character” of Israel. You can’t do that without a “Jewish state”. That’s not an easy thing to say in today’s world, so give Bibi some credit.