Elected members of the public do not compete with each other for the role of "King of Discipline". Not because everyone is forced to do good. Not because everyone is treacherous. Simply because most people have a degree of self-pride, and they do not think their whole role in life is to be the "voice of their master." 

Does not cancel itself. Shasha-Biton // Photo: Adina Wellman, Spokeswoman for the Knesset

Take, for example, Netanyahu. When he was deputy minister, he supported the bill proposed by the opposition for the direct election of the prime minister. He explained that this was an important regime change that would prevent the need for various and strange exercises to ensure the election of the prime minister, because the people would elect him directly and the Knesset could only distrust him in special circumstances. . The Likud, which was then in the last months of its rule, vehemently opposed this law, seeing it as an attempt by Labor to create a situation in which a charismatic candidate on its behalf could be elected even if the Likud had a relative majority in the Knesset. Netanyahu, rightly so from his personal point of view, believed that the job offer opens up the possibility, in the future, of gaining public support, even if the Likud has fewer supporters in the Knesset elections.

The issue of direct election was one of the hottest on the political agenda. I vehemently opposed it, fearing that the method would diminish the major parties and make the personal issue far more important than the party platform. The intra-party debates did not end until the moment of the vote, but in both parties "factional discipline" was imposed, which meant opening the door to sanctions against those who would vote against the party's position. 

There was a great deal of tension ahead of the vote in the second and third readings, which took place on March 18, 1992, three months before the elections that brought "Labor" back to power (the 1992 elections were still held in the old format). The Likud voted against the law, and Netanyahu was among the few who violated factional discipline. He did so not as an ordinary Knesset member but as a deputy minister, and moreover - a deputy minister in the Prime Minister's Office, with Yitzhak Shamir leading the opposition to the law. 

The result was 55 in favor of the law and 32 against it. Netanyahu was very proud of the move he made. His faction did not punish him, neither on the eve of the election nor after it. This did not prevent him from being elected Likud leader, and it is likely that the law paved his way for prime minister.

In the summer of 1999, when Ehud Barak formed his government, he offered Prof. Yuli Tamir, who was considered a rising star in the field of philosophy, to serve in his government as a "personal appointment." July had already gone through her political baptism of fire in Peace Now, enjoyed great appreciation for it in liberal circles, and many welcomed Barak's unexpected decision to appoint her Minister of Absorption and Aliyah, even though she was not a Member of Knesset. She made an important contribution to the government and its decisions, but one day I saw her in the Knesset, and her face was not like yesterday. I asked her what happened and she said that in a certain discussion she voted against Barak's opinion, and after the discussion ended he threw it at her: "I invented you!".

It is clear that Yuli greatly appreciated the appointment to Sarah, and it is true that there would not have been a political power group behind it that could have pushed for such an appointment, had Barak not decided to appoint her on his own initiative. But he appointed her because he estimated that her contribution to the government would be significant, and not so that she would do his will all her political life. He appointed her because she is an independent soul, and when she was in office, he scolded her for her independence.

I do not know former Knesset member and minister Dr. Yifat Shasha-Biton, and I assume that there is a big gap between my and her positions, but her insistence on her position as chair of the special Knesset committee on the treatment of Corona stems from her unwillingness to resign from the predatory party apparatus. And is not willing to be a puppet on a string operated by Netanyahu and his men. Without such people, right and left, there will be the Knesset of the "People's Congress," whose decisions are applauded.