Two Children, a Mother and a Grandfather

Can Israel end its Cold Civil War? Today Reminds us that We Can’t Escape Politics

On yet another difficult day in Israel one turns to look inwards and wonder about where the future lies. Here in Israel we have been waiting for nearly a year and a-half for so many things. We have been waiting for victory, for the destruction of Hamas and the evil that is Gaza. We have been waiting for the missiles to stop. We have been waiting for the reservists to return to their natural state of being at home. We have been waiting to see all the hostages returned and we have been waiting to bury our dead.

Most of all, we have been waiting for our leadership to catch up to the spirit of the people. As the first four of the too many murdered hostages including two red-headed children and their mother and an 86 year old grandfather have now been returned, one must think beyond the evil that caused this to what is happening inside the country. Thankfully, we have, so far, been spared the tweets and pronouncements of the country’s leaders and the trite comments of its media personalities. This will end though. We know that. The respect that the entire country is giving to four innocent victims of the cruelest that the 21^st century has to offer is the same joy that the country gave at the release of the young women and concern at the situation of the returned men.

But ,never has the distance between the people and the leadership of the country – political, security, intellectual, cultural – been greater than this morning.

We turn today and ask one question: Can the cold civil war that we are enduring end?

Like much of the west, Israel has been in a cold civil war for the past decade or so. In Israel, due to the existential nature of everyday decisions it has been more acute. There is enough blame to go around but it hit its height in 2023 with the proposed reform of the justice system and the protests against it. It took an embarrassed vacation in the first months of the war but started up again – although on a lower flame. The war, which in every other country and every other time would have been the trigger for a national unity government, instead caused the political leadership to fracture yet again. Netanyahu, as Prime Minister could have made the first step in causing unity by declaring outright that all need to come, that old hatreds need to be put aside and that there are no pre-conditions on either side that this is a war government and nothing else. The Prime Minister also needed to go to his coalition partners and tell them, pointedly, that all the old demands and coalition agreements are void and that we first defeat this evil and only then can we get back to business as usual.

As for the opposition, Yair Lapid, official leader of the opposition, should have been the first to put away his loyalty to the Kapalnists and joined the government without any demands. Instead, he demanded that Netanyahu get rid of Ben-Gvir and Smutrich first. In other words, he didn’t want a national unity government but a government that he could control. To their credit, Gantz, Eizenkot and Sa’ar agreed to join and be part of the decision making process – but they left after a few months under pressure from the Kaplan gang (although Sa’ar returned again and is now Foreign Minister). In addition, the opposition in the Knesset has not stopped its personal attacks on members of the coalition in the ugliest fashion. Lieberman, for example, who tries to position himself to the right of Netanyahu, can’t go a day without attacking him personally, no matter what is happening. The fact that he refused to ever take a stance, one way or another, on the current or past hostage negotiations shows his corruption and cowardice.

The head of the far left Democrat party, Yair Golan has taken poisoned conversation to new levels, matched only by Ben-Gvir at his worst. Golan doesn’t just criticize his opponents but attacks them with a viciousness that one assumes he used on the battlefield – most especially the religious-Zionists who have sacrificed so much during this war.

As for other members of the government, Smutrich has a knack of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, even if he doesn’t mean it and Ben-Gvir’s ugliness proves to me that his mouth is what interests him more than any specific policy proposal. And as for the ultra-Orthodox haredi parties they have not been willing to budge one inch on their demands to stay out of the army while receiving money from the government. Laws proposed by Shas leader Aryeh Deri, like the one that allows him to appoint 800 new rabbis to government positions were always meant to increase his power and not to serve any actual purpose. Even this was not abandoned after the war started. For Deri, the war needed to end quickly so he could get back to doing what he does best – amass power and spend other people’s money. The rest of the haredi parties have not been much better, attacking not only the anti-religious left but the religious-Zionists too – insulting and demeaning them on a regular basis – not in spite of, but because of the sacrifices they have paid.

So, can Israel end its cold civil war?

The answer will come only from other leadership. The current leaders are too tied to their petty hatreds and arrogance to be able to reach across the aisle and convince others to vote for them. Everyone is playing to their “base” and has no desire or ability to reach beyond it. That is the source of the cold civil war.

Holman Jenkins, writing in the Wall Street Journal regarding Europe and using Trumpian language, wrote: “First things first: A big, beautiful broom is needed to sweep out the deadwood and worse clogging up the West’s leadership pathways. It will take time to bring to the fore those (usually to be found among the world’s 40-year-olds) ready to do the job that needs doing now.”

Israel needs the same thing. The same old, same old of Netanyahu, Lapid, Gantz, Lieberman, Golan and all the rest, all with the same ideas and same ugly words need to be swept out and replaced by the 30 and 40 something men and women who have spent months doing reserve duty, have lost businesses and harmed their families because of it and who have more than earned the right to “throw the bums out” and replace them.

That being said, it is not clear if any of the existing parties can be home to these new leaders. We will assume that there will be reservists on the left and on the right who will want to help move the country forward in politics and besides the Likud, all the other parties have no process in which to change leaders. And even with the Likud there is little chance someone can replace Netanyahu in an internal primary – although one never knows. Lapid, Gantz and Leiberman are the heads of their parties not because they won internal primaries (there was sort of an election for Lapid, but not very serious) but because they have wealthy backers and they make all the decisions including who can run for the Knesset. The new Democrat Party has combined the old Meretz and Labor – both of which held primaries- but it is not clear if that will continue since Yair Golan seems to have taken control of them.

Where does this leave Israel – more in need of fresh leadership than any other country as it is in the middle of a cold civil war? On the one hand, the cold civil war will not turn hot, much to the disappointment of Ehud Barak, I am sure, because it is only the fringes who think the apocalypse is a good thing. The apocalyptic ideology does not exist in the Israeli mainstream but only at the extreme fringes like Ehud Barak on the far left and a few minor rabbis and their followers on the far right.

So how does Israel end its cold civil war? The current leadership is not just “part” of the problem, they are the problem. There is not a statement that comes out of their mouths concerning their opponents that does not contain venom.

Today of all days, no one wants to think “politics”. But the only way forward is through politics and a new, more honest, more dedicated leadership. This new leadership, sure to rise, will bring an end, not to political differences and not to impassioned debate – but to the cold civil war that continues, even today, to tear at the country’s spirit.