It’s impossible not to envy the right for its forward charge. Here’s a dream: The center-left wins the next election and forms a government that includes the radical left, which sets its tone. The new prime minister lets his extremist partners dictate policy: Without them, he has no government. The new government sets out immediately to change the face of Israel, following plans drafted in advance. The laws of the judicial coup are repealed. Nothing can stop the onrushing train but the protest of the right, which is incapable of stopping it.
The Knesset passes laws meant to effect a separation of religion and state. Within a few weeks, public transportation on Shabbat and civil marriages are made possible. The kashrut laws are rescinded, as are special allocations to yeshivas, which are now funded as public schools are. Asylum seekers are discussed with the aim of naturalizing most of them; citing their important economic and societal contribution, the government sets a quota for refugee admissions.
At the same time, the government announces that it is lifting the blockade of the Gaza Strip. The prime minister says he is willing to meet with the Hamas leadership. Marwan Barghouti is freed from prison, and Israel lets the Palestinian Authority hold presidential and legislative elections. The right protests, but the government is determined. Phase 2, which is even more extreme and ambitious, begins.
Israel announces that in five years a true general election will be held, for the first time in its history. Everyone with an Israeli, whether blue, orange or green, may participate: one person, one vote, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The Green Line disappears, as does the Law of Return. Israel adopts an immigration policy like that of most countries, based on quotas and transparent, equal criteria. Settlement construction is halted completely until a fair planning and building policy is formulated for the West Bank.
The new government declares the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners and examines the possibility of renewing diplomatic relations with Iran in exchange for the suspension of the nuclear program. Israel changes, to the sound of global applause. The right’s protest slowly ebbs, after it realizes that the government has no intention of blinking.
There’s no point in continuing to dream, since all this will not happen. The left and the center will never be so determined: They never knew what they wanted, and above all they always moved to the right before every measure they took. Their language was always compromise and maintaining the status quo. Revolution was beyond their capacity and particularly their reserves of courage. “Territorial compromise” or “functional compromise” that never went anywhere, or “preserving the status quo” vis-a-vis the Haredim. Small and measured steps that sought only to maintain the ever-deteriorating existing situation.
Now the right has come, and it’s going in an entirely different direction. One can only envy it. It rushes ahead without taking prisoners and without blinking. As their cowardly party colleagues remain in the background, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and MK Simcha Rothman, the chair of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee – together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who does not try to stop their charge – are changing the face of the country. They know that any pause or compromise would destroy their project: not a dictatorship at the end of the first act, but the groundwork for a dictatorship.
The right understands what the left never did: There are abysses that cannot be crossed with a few small steps, but only with one leap, frightening and dangerous. Just look what happened to every interim agreement Israel signed out of cowardice. Nothing. The right wants to bring down the disaster in one fell swoop. It knows there is no other way.
The right gallops ahead, and that gallop is dangerous and threatening. It is liable to end very badly, but there is no other way to bring about change. It is no coincidence that “only thus” (“Rak Kach”) was the campaign slogan of Meir Kahane’s Kach party. His students learned it well, and now they are in the government.