Clarity is bliss. I know some of you are anxious, terrified, uncertain, pessimistic and even heartbroken regarding what you're reading about Israel these days.
But there's a silver lining to the November 1 election. There's a translucent quality to what's happening here, a lucidity concealed by years of masquerading and denial about the very foundations of the Israeli republic.
Successive governments have conveniently painted over core and defining issues. The occupation, the future of the West Bank, relations with the Palestinians, religion and state, the absence of a written constitution, the role of the Supreme Court, the correct balance between the three branches of government, the electoral system’s deficiencies – none of these have been dealt with deeply and seriously.
Instead, Israel has developed into a wild patchwork of Basic Laws, governance and governability, until they all converged and heavily strained the already fractured Israeli democracy and its tribal society. The confluence of democracy, the separation of powers, the Supreme Court and “the occupation” is compounded by political toxicity and hatreds, so it's natural to fear that Israeli democracy will crumble under the burden.
This had to happen at some point, so the question is: Where is it all going and what kind of Israel will emerge on the other side? Disclaimer before you continue reading: I don’t know.
“Discourse” and “debate” are two patently misleading terms being used to describe contemporary Israeli politics. The repetition of these words leads to a misperception – that a “Federalist Papers”-quality dialogue is going on between two countervailing philosophies of government, governability, the constitution and the separation of powers.
Nothing is further from the truth. Underway in Israel since the November election is a coarse, crude, vulgar and profane free-for-all of identity politics.
Yes, there are the small issues of democracy being assaulted and civil rights being questioned. There's the coalition politics resulting in a tyranny of a minority on some issues, a tyranny of a majority on others. This vociferous political “discourse” is toxic, populist, demagogic and replete with half-truths and outright lies. It's anything but civil and educated “discourse.”
Most characteristic of this political (so-far nonviolent) civil war is the nauseating abundance of isms. Read the newspapers, watch TV, listen to the radio or take a dip in the political cesspool of social media and you’ll come across several isms used in one hyperventilating sentence.
You'll get fascism, elitism, majoritarianism, liberalism, pluralism, authoritarianism, Bolshevism, conservatism, victimism and the two omnipresent conversation-enders: whataboutism and bothsidesism. Every political interaction is infused with several of these isms, many of them used incorrectly and hurled at the wrong point of the shouting match.
However complicit the liberal half of Israel – aka the infamous and maligned “left” – may be in this state of affairs, the whole story is mostly about Benjamin Netanyahu. It's not about right-wing policies, conservative doctrines or the question “Who’s really in power?” It's about one man, even if Israeli politics was vocal, rude, hectic and divisive way before him.
No one has contributed more to unraveling the social fabric, deconstructing democracy, destroying checks and balances and orchestrating a hateful public discourse than Netanyahu. The corrosive rhetoric, quasi-fascist attributes and cult-like demeanor that he and his acolytes have introduced to Israel will take a long time to cleanse. This is evident in the various demonstrations, protests and petitions inundating Israel in recent weeks.
This won't abate, and it's exactly where the isms dominate the conversation. Unifying narratives and values such as Zionism, security, the Israeli army, mutual commitment and shared destiny have all been subject to hyper-identity politics, as acidic and incendiary language abounds.
The knee-jerk reaction is to describe the right wing as fascist, illiberal, racist and messianic. These lunatics, Netanyahu’s handmaids, are dumb, anti-science and anti-expertise, devoid of ideas.
According to the right, liberal Israel is an out-of-touch elite whose members usurped power through the Supreme Court and the media. They're patronizing and discriminating against the “real people” (as populists all over always refer to themselves). They hide behind higher education and cosmopolitan values that are alien to most Israelis.
If you’re American and this sounds familiar, you’re right. This is the fault line afflicting most Western democracies today. As for Israel, go try to find common ground to cohabit.
Herein lies the big difference between the United States and Israel in terms of societal cleavages. You can live in New York or Chicago and not really be affected by the MAGA voters and values of south Florida or Texas. But Israel’s size, geopolitics and sociocultural setting make such a bubble impossible.
All these toxins and energies were suppressed for decades. The mitigating circumstances were “the security situation” and the ameliorating effects of proportional representation, however much criticism this system has drawn in recent years for being dangerously dysfunctional.
American readers should look at it this way: It's impossible to condense “The Federalist Papers,” the Constitutional Convention, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision allowing judicial review, the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act into one legislative campaign.
When that's accompanied by the Palestinian issue, extreme identity politics and a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the two sides, there's very little to look forward to. When the undertone of the entire confrontation is vengeful and emotional, little common ground can be reached.
When the sole motivation for this isn't judicial reform or a recalibration of relations between the three branches of government, but one man’s quest to extricate himself from a corruption trial, the chances for a substantive debate are zero.
Being both the pyromaniac and the firefighter isn't unheard of. Netanyahu is trying hard to portray himself as one, fanning the flames in Israel while reassuring the world, particularly the United States, that he can put out the fire. Whether he's a pyromaniac burning down his own country or a moderate politician held hostage by his far-right coalition partners is irrelevant. What's clear is that it all seems out of control.