At the end of the great protest, Benny Gantz will be elected prime minister and it will rightly be called a grand, fateful, perhaps even historic success – the judicial coup will be stymied and Benjamin Netanyahu and the right will be defeated.
Indeed, the protest should not be taken lightly. The signs of its success have already been reflected in the surveys, like the dramatic one on Channel 13. The Likud’s to 20 Knesset seats could harbinger the end of its rule; Gantz’s meteoric rise could signal that his star has ascended. Months of effective civil protest will end with Prime Minister Benny Gantz. There’s no greater success on the horizon.
The absolute majority of demonstrators would be very happy with this result. Gantz may not be exactly who they wanted, but he is certainly exactly what they wanted.
Gantz is a mending of ways, a return to “normal,” “sane,” “representative” Israel, the one that had “gone down the drain,” which had been so beautiful and pleasant. Gantz is the return to the peace and quiet that the good Israelis had so wished for in recent years, the years under the compressor’s relentless pounding.
Gantz is the end of Netanyahu, and what more could the protesters desire. The great curse will have been lifted from them and Israel will return to what it had been.
But a protest that ends with a return to routine is an appallingly misguided protest, a small, retail protest. A protest that ends only with restoring the previous order is bound to leave a sour taste and frustration. Gantz will restore order, but this order was to begin with a rotten, sick order.
Gantz will set up a central government, with those and the others, things will get back on track, the IDF will resume being a “value” in the state’s moral code book. Israel will again be representative, respectable like all the protesters had wanted so badly.
Itamar Ben Gvir will go back to knocking down vendors’ stalls in Hebron, Bezalel Smotrich will continue pining for a second Nakba and the bad old Israel will be back big time.
There had been an aberration in the form of an extreme rightist government, it was removed thanks to the protest, disaster has been averted and now everything will look so beautiful.
Gantz will be the hero of the peace camp, Yair Lapid the hero of democracy, the Supreme Court the beacon of justice and of course, Avigdor Lieberman, let’s not forget him, the hero of enlightenment.
One picture demonstrated all this more than a thousand words. Supreme Court President Esther Hayut attended a Gevatron concert marking the choir’s 75th anniversary, and the audience rose to their feet and applauded the heroine of their social class.
What is missing from this moment? The place is the Mann Auditorium, the performance was the Sea of Sheaves and the audience was appropriate. One cannot imagine a more representative mix of the camp of those who yearn for a return to normalcy, which is the heart of the protest camp.
The Supreme Court president is received there like a rock star such as she never dreamed, not even in her younger years as Esti Avni of the Central Command’s entertainment troupe. Had she run against Gantz, she might even have beaten him too.
The craving for “normalcy,” real or imagined, is now the name of the game. Even a rather dull court president, who heads an institution without a single real liberal or leftist judge, is now the heart’s desire of the normalcy seekers.
And what is this normalcy everyone now yearns for? A deep, bleeding ethnic gash that has grown even wider now.
Militarism that is deeply embedded in society, whose depth has only been enhanced by the protest.
A society whose exclusion of Arabs has only been emphasized in the protest.
A state with an insane defense budget at the expense of all other things.
The most religious state in the Western world, which has no separation between state and religion.
A Supreme Court that is the greatest legitimizer of the occupation.
A settlement project – set up by the left and center and expanded by the right – which is nothing but one big, ongoing war crime.
Tens of thousands of asylum seekers whom Israel mistreats disgracefully, and more and more plagues and diseases that Gantzism doesn’t even think of healing.
That’s what we’re dreaming of. That’s what we want to return to.