We must not all be dragged once again - only three months after the formation of the government - into the districts of slander and defamation • The responsibility is on Netanyahu, first and foremost • In other circumstances, personal, legal or political consideration was understandable, but not in the current situation • Opinion

• Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ganz

  Photo: 

  Olivier Fitoussi / Flash 90

Do not take us there again, to the fourth election in a row, in less than two years. Do not drag us all one more time - just three months after you form a government - into the realms of hatred, incitement and slander; To the mud and slime, to the language of sewers and spins and the denial of the legitimacy of entire publics. We must not fall into the water again. 

We have been there throughout three consecutive elections, in which we have lost vital parts of our normalcy. Our language has become a party and an accuser, inclusive and contentious. Among too many of us, hatred or disagreement with the other became a built-in and inherent lacquer, until it became our primary identity definer. Too many times we have lost the ability to express an independent opinion and view unrelated to the position of the other. Only the opponent and his attitudes defined and shaped us, until we lost our selves, and almost forgot who we are.

Now this government, which has promised to bandage our wounds; A long and healing raise for tears and crevices; Establish a reconciliation cabinet; To give us back some of the sanity and normalcy, and to remind everyone that alongside the tribal war in Israeli society, there is also "Together the Tribes of Israel"; Now this bipartisan government is threatening to flee this critical arena and deny its promise and destiny. 

Netanyahu: "Israel does not need elections, Israel needs a budget" // Photo: Knesset Channel

It must be said honestly: the ultimate responsibility for what will or will not happen in the next 48 hours rests - by virtue of his position - first and foremost with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Not just about him, but first and foremost about him. He can be the most just, the smartest and most talented, or the most wrong, the most failed and the most cunning. It is not relevant at all. He's my prime minister, and yours and all of us's. Of those who chose him and of those who did not choose him. Netanyahu was elected to office by a large majority of Knesset members, after 1.3 million citizens gave him their votes. The supreme responsibility, therefore, rests with him and not with Ganz, also and especially in the realm of reconciliation and inner peace between all parts of our conflicted society. 

Any other consideration - personal, legal, political - can be legitimate or understandable in such and such circumstances, but not in the present circumstances, of rising unemployment, health and economic corona affecting almost every one of us, and post-trauma from three election campaigns, each bleeding more than its society .

Mr. Prime Minister and Mr. Deputy Prime Minister - Do not run away to the elections again now. Each of you has made a huge political concession, and paid high political prices, so that a government can finally be formed that will serve us, the citizens, in one of the most difficult hours in the health and economic history of the State of Israel. To go to the polls now is to betray us, the voters; It is to put the political before the matter; The personal before the rule.

Sit together. Fix the breakdowns. There is something to fix! Keep the agreement you signed. And bet on each other, and mostly believe in each other. Roll up your sleeves and work for us, and not for one political interest or another. Work together not to look good - but to be good.

If, God forbid, you act differently and drag us all to the elections again, there is a tangible danger that, as in an entire trial, God forbid you will cut the baby (us) in two, and that Israeli society will not stand for it again.

Your first priority is to turn us into a united society. Not uniform; To assimilate in all of us that the whole - both political and public - is greater in its power and ability than the sum of its divided and divided parts. To turn us again into a society that knows how to distinguish between the careless and the main, into one that does not see the political opponent as an enemy, but a wrong brother or a legitimate and good-looking bar plugta. 

This can only be achieved by restoring trust between you and us. This is the key to success or failure. Fourth elections will shatter the remnants of the trust that remains in you, the one you promised to restore, for the sake of us all. The fourth round now is not the path of choice, but the path of escape.