"I was a good leftist who votes for Meretz and wins love from everyone. Then, suddenly, I saw the light" • The Likud's new number 10 tells her friend Irit Linorel the long way from her clothing store, to the armor she received from the prime minister •
"No one took my name as a candidate seriously, certainly not me."
Galit Distel Atbrian
Photo:
Eric Sultan
Fifteen years ago, my friend, the writer Gil Haravan, told me about a strange incident that happened to her in a clothing store: the seller asked her to read the handwriting of her daughter, Galit, who also sells clothes.
She writes wonderfully, Gil said.
I would not have cared if the relationship between Gil and Galit had not tightened, and I began to feel that I was missing something.
Galit here and Galit there and Galit and Galit and Galit and Galit.
There was no escape: I felt a strong need to be Galit's girlfriend.
As the months went by, a party was held in honor of Gil's trip abroad, and I jumped at the chance. I inquired who this Galit, whom I hear about all the time, approached and introduced myself: "Gil and I talked to each other, and we decided that on her trip, she would take you to me.
From now on we are companies.
Here's my phone. "We have been friends ever since.
When I met Galit, she finished writing her first novel "And If They Were Telling You".
The book was very successful, won a Mifal HaPais award, and I would come to visit her at her clothing store, "My Sister," in the Modi'in-Shilat industrial zone, and at her home in Kfar Ha'oranim, northeast of Modi'in.
I knew her children, Inbar (23) and Eran (20).
Galit started writing on Facebook about politics, her love of bleach, her coveted dog, women who have no metabolism, her very left-wing partner, Bibi, the left, and TV shows that annoy her (there are many) and those she loves (mostly shows) Reality, but also "Grey's Anatomy").
Occasionally she would advertise her clothing store, because after all, a girl has to make a living.
When her second book, "A Peacock in a Staircase," which won NIS 40,000 as part of the Sapir Prize, was published, it was already a Facebook phenomenon.
Today, when she is 50, she has 67,000 followers, she worked in the digital department here, presented a two-hour daily radio program on Gali Israel, wrote columns for "Israel Today", did writing workshops, and waited for the closure to be lifted and she could sell more clothes.
Everything went straight, until someone sent me a screenshot of Amit Segal on WhatsApp: "Netanyahu is reserving writer and broadcaster Galit Distel Atbrian on the Likud list."
I called to shout at her why she did not tell me such things, but she was already on her way to Jerusalem, excited to the roots of her hair.
Then we sat in my kitchen and talked.
* * *
Tell me, how is it that Amit Segal knew before you that you were armored for the Likud? You have no idea how surprised I was. After all, the day before I knew that the two things you thought about in terms of your future planning were when you could do another writing workshop, and another clothing sale.
"Bibi informed me that he had reserved me. I did not even know where. My name did go up on the betting exchange, but no one gambled on me. There were names that ran very hard, for a very long time. No one took my name seriously, certainly not me." .
But did you hope?
Did you wish?
"At the level of what section it could be. On the day I was informed that I was armored I was on my way to Tzur Hadassah, to shoot a video for the corporation. Everything was ready, the filming was ready, no one had a thought in their head, certainly not me.
" .
I did not know where I was armored, I did not know anything.
Everyone knew before me.
On the way to Jerusalem my daughter calls me and says: Mom, you are in tenth place, I read on the internet.
And yet I did not believe.
I really did not believe.
But when a great woman calls you a flag, you settle down. "And
pretty soon there were those who wrote that your flattery paid off.
" When I sat in my pajamas ten years ago and started writing on Facebook about Netanyahu, I thought I would be in tenth place in the Likud?
While flattering Netanyahu for ten years, I sold designer clothes and wanted to make hems and hauled goods from south Tel Aviv and set up stands and worked like ten construction workers and did sales at home and in the middle of the sale I ran to teach in a writing workshop, then I came home, then I worked for corporation, and then I wrote columns. ', Then I wrote a book review for Haaretz, and then I ran to my radio show, to close the month.
"And I wrote two books, and mostly I raised two children, and as a divorcee I had to make more money, and write books at night, and flatter Bibi by day, and that flattery only costs you, goes up and up and up. You know, it totally hurt me. Before that I was very loved in my class. "The left, I was the young and promising writer, excellent reviews, the Haaretz newspaper praises. What reason in the world did I have to go out and say I'm crazy about Netanyahu?"
You really love him, and that's weird, because love, at least in my world, is not an emotion related to politics in general or politicians in particular.
"Do you think? Do you think that if there is a leader who is great, who is all great, you have to be a cynic to ask why you love him? To me it is much stranger to people who say of the Abrahamic agreements 'Big deal, we have never had a war with Dubai'."
I understand what you mean, but I also know that it is not acceptable to talk like that.
"Look, I can tell you that when my father, a dear 78-year-old Jew, is among the first to be vaccinated in the world, and I know it's thanks to this man, this leader - how can one not love?
" I love his dealings with the Corona.
According to the Bloomberg website, the corona will remain in the world for at least another seven years, but in Israel it is expected to disappear within a few months, due to the vaccine plant that Netanyahu brought.
We still do not know how many people Netanyahu saved from Corona, but he is probably dozens of times greater than the number of Israeli victims who paid with their lives.
Think how many lives were saved, how many businesses were saved, and how many children and parents benefited from the fact that Netanyahu shortened a seven-year illness to a few months.
Is not that a reason?
Is it too emotional? "
New Zealand got rid of the corona without vaccines.
" New Zealand did not get rid of the corona because New Zealand is not vaccinated.
She was given a moment's rest from the virus, but he will return as soon as the gates there are opened, because that's how an epidemic works.
The only way to win is vaccines, and the vaccines are the personal achievement of Netanyahu, not of a diplomatic staff, not of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, not of the Ministry of Health, and certainly not of the Ganziada, which settled within the coalition and put sticks in the wheels.
Only of Netanyahu.
In the taboo.
The man rolled up his sleeves and pounced on the phone like some Jewish mama, until he got from Pfizer CEO what he wanted. And he did it while all the other politicians who wanted to replace him mocked him from the podium and claimed it was impossible.
"Another seven years of illness. Global except Israel, do you understand what that means?
And leave the health matter, let's talk for a moment about the economic matter.
I built a business that has supported me really well for the last decade.
The trouble is, it's a business built on a crowd, and it's completely shut down with the outbreak of the corona.
Since then, every two months, the government puts tens of thousands of shekels into my personal account, while accurately calculating, in shekels, the income in the corona year compared to the income in the year before it.
This is exactly the money that saved me from minuses or loans.
Do you know how many like me there are?
Hundreds of thousands.
But you do not hear them, because they are satisfied and happy in part, and that may, God forbid, help Netanyahu.
"Leave love, it is not honorable to talk about love. But perhaps gratitude? Is this also forbidden?
" If the media in the world, who write endless articles about 'Israel as the country that first defeated the Corona', knew that the media in Israel covers the issue as failure and failure, they would Torn with laughter, and rightly so.
So I do not care if they laugh at me. "
* * *
I know that Netanyahu is truly arousing love, you are not the only person who loves him, but he is an educated and rich aristocrat from Merhavia. He's not exactly a type familiar to us from the social environment. Netanyahu is not popular or from the guys. In my opinion, part of love is a response to hatred towards him, which in our eyes is unjustified, and in any case excessive.
"Hear something someone from the Rosh HaAyin municipality told me. A Yemeni. He said, 'They stole a lot of babies from us, but what a child we stole from them! We stole their best child.' I think he's right, and I think that's a source of hatred, too. Towards Netanyahu. I mean, I have not thought for a long time that the left is a left. They are a social left, they are a sociological left, they are a lordly left. They are a left of control. They are a left of a football team.
"Then take this football player the best player, no goalkeeper In a world that can stand in front of the ball he scores for the goal.
nothing.
And is their own.
And he plays in the hated, poor, inferior team.
And he does not just play in this team, he plays against them, and scores them goal after goal after goal.
The player who was supposed to be ours, was taken to the team we hate the most.
It's a betrayal. "
I still want to try to decipher your love.
" It was gradual.
At first I was far from being among his supporters.
I fed myself through the Channel 22 diet. I was not right-wing. "
What were you?
" Left-wing. "
Left-wing who votes Labor or Meretz?
" Meretz. "
How many years?
" At the age of 18, first vote, I ran away from my Likud Persian home heritage.
I voted for Meretz, me and all my friends.
It suited Nick Cave and Dr. Martens shoes and the desire to be beautiful and true.
I wore the right black clothes, I had the right burgundy ruby, so I matched the collection with the right note.
I was absolutely sure that I was not going by the herd of the house, but was producing an independent opinion. "And
how right was the house?
" Pictures of Begin everywhere.
My mother worked for a medal company, near the Prime Minister's House, and she was careful to take a bus just as Begin was leaving.
Every morning she would wave to him, and he would wave to her from the car.
She would return home happy: 'Begin made me peace!'
A traditional Mizrahi house, almost a cliché of a traditional Mizrahi house.
"Did
they like Shamir and Sharon too?
" No.
Dill no.
And Sharon - my mother forbade pronouncing his name out loud.
Because of Lebanon.
She told him dead soldiers.
Begin did not agree to count.
Begin is the one who aroused this gripping sentiment of love.
And since Begin, the only one who has managed to generate this sentiment, at levels that are difficult to describe, is Netanyahu.
"I went to the army, I was a member of the Air Force, and then I decided I wanted to study philosophy, to prove to myself that there is no God. Then I married, a leftist like me.
" I was politically involved, at the generic Israeli level.
There is something powerful about Belgur in Tel Aviv and being a part of the central city scene.
You feel like everyone else is eccentric.
I will reward a sense of us and them, a complete lack of doubt.
This is what bothered me the most, because it was my philosophy studies that taught me to practice doubt. "
And what did your parents say about your leftism?
" Do you think I told them?
They would throw flip-flops at me.
They just wanted me to get married. "
Right.
" I got married, so I was fine.
I moved to Jerusalem to do my master's degree at the Hebrew University, and in the second year of my degree I started teaching philosophy and literature in high school near the university.
And that's where it started.
I was not politically cohesive, but that is where the first seed was buried.
"I remember that before the Tishrei holidays, two religious teachers suggested making stalls that would explain all sorts of interesting, philosophical, Judaism-related elements. Anyway, the Tishrei holidays. And all the teachers objected. Then one of them said, 'Imagine these are Buddhism stalls, maybe then it will slip. I did not understand why she spoke like that, what is this Buddhism? But her sting remained. And it was a slap in the face. The truth is that I have never been able to not believe in God, with all the studies of philosophy.
"After two years, in 1998, I traveled with Oded, my husband, on a mission to Greece on behalf of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, and there it was like in Tel Aviv, all ours.
Bibi was already hated in editions.
The character they managed to produce for me was so negative that only an idiot did not see it that way.
And Arthur Finkelstein here, and studied mimicry in the US there, taught me to loathe him pretty well.
"I remember there was some couple, the couple I liked the most, intelligent, funny, charming, educated, and in one of the conversations they suddenly tossed: 'We vote Bibi.'
I did not understand.
I came to the woman and said to her, 'But you are intelligent!
But you're intelligent!
how could it be?'
"And she reacted in a way I had not learned to date: utter indifference. She did not care what I thought of her vote.
" Then came the second intifada.
We were still at the embassy, all the time in front of Channel 2, connected to the madness that is happening in the country, going out to the sunny and calm and safe Athens, seeing people sitting outside - you know, Athens, it has areas that are just cafes for cafes, terribly beautiful.
"Greece was very antagonistic to Israel. Today, by the way, it is no longer like that, thanks to Netanyahu, but then Greece was really with the 'occupation' and the 'Palestinians' and all that. And you know that your mother in Israel can not go and buy milk without fear of attack, and sit "These people in their sunny cafes and despise the occupying Israel, while Israel explodes. Suddenly I started saying to myself, sister, what is your left? What is it made of? What truth is there there?"
Have you become right-wing?
"It was not defined. But something in the dogmatism, in the absence of doubt, in the confidence that I am on the side of the good - something there is cracked. And when something is cracked, the light begins to seep in. And I will be rewarded, as if until now I saw the shadows of real things. "Begins, boom, great light. Great light."
What was this great light?
What did you start to see?
"First of all, the leftist pose of myself. Come on - I never doubted our right to the land, and that Israel is the state of the Jewish people, and that I am a Zionist, and we are neither occupation nor oppression, and that I always believed in God, and that we are good, and that we have the right to defend ourselves, even if some Greeks drink coffee and hate us while my mother is afraid to ride the bus.
"Then I started to really hear what Netanyahu was saying, and I started to see him differently.
He thought like me.
And I began to realize how much they were working on me.
And it annoyed me terribly.
Because I am a girl of freedom in the deepest sense of the word, and the fact that there is someone who engineered my consciousness and succeeded, made me think.
And since then my life's mission has been to make sure they don't do it to others. "
* * *
What do you mean when you talk about Hindus consciousness?
"Do you know that women our age suddenly find out they're become their mother? So I became my father. A Persian man grumbles inside me, sitting on the couch with a flip-flop pulled out and yelling at the TV in the living room. I're Archie Banker in the Aspahan version, a vibrating lump of nerves in front of the studios The air-conditioned and in front of the gap between them and the public sentiment, or the facts, or the reality, or the truth.
"These nerves, I must admit, were also delightful.
But in the past Corona year it has become unbearable, because the hand that shakes the cradle of public consciousness lays its power for non-Bibi purposes even at the expense of public health - consistent damage to closures through encouraging public pressure, creating hysteria and melancholy, a caressing platform for Corona deniers. Encouraging gatherings of protesters from the right political side.
"Yifat Shasha-Biton demanded 'open, open, open', when morbidity was declining, and then disappeared when morbidity and mortality rose at a meteoric rate. In a balanced media world she was supposed to snatch sharp criticism, but instead, make her a star. Why? Because she's the bold daredevil. To go against Netanyahu. And the bottom line is that this is all that matters to them.
"And this is Rina Matzliach and Glickman and Peleg and Drucker and Abramovitch, 50 stunning shades of just not Bibi. And also Ofira Asaig. Not personally, but the phenomenon she represents. She was not particularly considered by the elite, and then understood the trick - curse Bibi 50 times every minute Broadcast, and the elite will turn you into Christian Amanpour. In fact, it's not annoying, it's sad. This cynical exchange deal teaches a lot about the centers of strength and weakness in Israeli society.
"But it's also amusing.
Whenever Ofira asks in cosmic wonder 'Who are these people who still vote for Bibi?', I shout from the couch: 'Your mother, your brother-in-law, the neighbors who grew up with you in Dimona, it's who'.
"There are a lot of people like her. I can not judge them, because you need mental strength to face an artillery incitement plant, which has been bombarding your consciousness 24/7 for 25 years. You need mental strength to face it, really.
" I have a friend, a leftist of course. , Who has a regular sentence: 'Be careful, they will make you bibi'.
Instead of saying about someone who was cunningly taken something that is his and turned it into - this Kafkaesque, he calls it 'They made you Bibi'.
He's leftist, and he sees the mechanism.
He is fully aware that this person has brought elephant-sized achievements, so they will hide the elephant, say the elephant is sick.
They are all aware.
It makes me think. "
Why actually? You have a lot of left-wing friends, your spouse is left-wing today. You do not live on a right-wing island.
" That's right.
Wislawa Szymborska has a song, in which she writes that she loves people with blue eyes, because hers are brown.
I have no problem with leftists at all.
Only with hatred.
It is as if the id of Israeli society is marching in Balfour.
A storm of chaotic emotions, unaware of itself, given the kosher to hate someone in an age where no one should be hated like that.
"And here you have legitimacy, and people who just take to the streets scatter Rorschach stains of hatred on the sidewalks. It's almost pagan. Actually not nearly. It's pagan. And zero awareness of what they look like. Zero awareness. These are good people, some I know, some my friends. "And all I want to tell them is, guys, get dressed, you see. Get dressed."
* * *
Do you think this is a real rift? Because now the existence of political camps like right-wing, left-wing, ultra-Orthodox, religious is now officially being humiliated. Even in television polls, political commentators already refer to the "pro-Netanyahu" and "anti-Netanyahu" camps. Are we really divided on this axis? Or divided at all?
"I see two parallel lines here: there is the blessed line, of Tel Aviv hipsters in restaurants in Bnei Brak on Thursday evening, ultra-Orthodox young women who speak secular and stunning Israeli slang, Ashkenazis and Mizrahis happily marry and raise beautiful children who do not really understand what ethnicity is or why it matters. The Arab society that demands from its leadership to stop the policy of segregation, Israelis who blend into each other in everyday life, and this is the most beautiful human mosaic in the world.
"But there is another line, a little less charming, because at the top end in academia, media, Supreme Court, culture, coveted positions in the sector Public and in the legal system, you see the vast majority of people who think the same.
And sometimes I feel like they are alienated from this mosaic.
"We have been living here together for seven decades, the statistical distribution was supposed to look completely different. In the last decade there has been very nice social and geographical mobility, and I feel the demonstrations in Balfour are the reaction of this thing. The hegemonic elite is not fighting corruption, it is fighting for its premiere."
About Netanyahu?
"He is the most stately prime minister we have had. It is not wise to distort some of his four statements and recycle them over and over again. The man has been on the public front for more than two decades, the divisive things Rabin said in one month are a thousand times worse than Netanyahu has said all these years. In the context of Hindu media consciousness, all it takes is to repeat a lie torn a thousand times, until it becomes true.
"Rabin, whom I loved very much, compared the settlers to cancer.
Bibi called the biased media people 'sour'.
I ask you, what's worse?
And how does it turn out that Netanyahu is the party? "
* * *
You know that after the campaign the Knesset will come, and then you will have to work as a Knesset member. What would you like to do there?
"First of all - to abolish as many unnecessary regulations as possible, which suffocate small business owners. Any law that will make the lives of the self-employed in Israel easier is welcome in my eyes. In general, the guideline is maximum freedom and minimum government intervention in almost everything - from complete legalization, through reduction The public sector, which is a burden on Israeli entrepreneurs, to complete freedom in the communications market.
"And there is also the necessary reform of the legal system.
The first thing I would like to legislate in this regard is to split the powers of attorney general - it cannot be that the person suing the prime minister is also the person who will decide how the prime minister will fund his defense.
In
politics in general, and in the last year in particular, we met a lot of politicians for a moment, who served for a very short time, and then they got tired. If you end up in the opposition, what do you think you will do? Do you think you will stay, or return to the previous life? ?
"My professional life is very diverse, and I love them, I did not run away from them.
I was called to stand up and stood up.
You ask if I will be disappointed to return to my radio program on Gali Israel?
Absolutely not, I loved every moment.
And also teach writing I love, and also write opinion columns.
I have no idea what I will do if the Likud, God forbid, sits in the opposition, but I am not even willing to think about it.
Not because of me, but because of the state, which today needs Netanyahu at the wheel more than ever. "And will you go
back to selling clothes? It seems like a family affair.
" Why are you so stereotypical?
We also have a lot of carpet dealers.
"My family is like this: a third of real estate dealers, a third of clothing dealers, a third of carpet dealers. And that's even though the first sentence my mother told me was: 'Never be independent, and certainly not clothes.'"
And the message did not go through.
"No. My brother Rafi is a genius, studied Orientalism at university, really one of the smartest guys this country has ever created - and opened a clothing store. My sister Irish is a special education teacher, very successful, did her job faithfully, left - clothes. I studied at university for a master's degree. In philosophy, I almost finished, and in the end - clothes. "
So how did you come to be self-employed and actually sell clothes, despite what your mother said?
"First of all, life circumstances. We returned from abroad on a five-year mission, my ex-husband's salary abroad was excellent, but in the country it was greatly reduced, and along with my salary as a teacher we would not be able to cover the mortgage. It was a necessity."
But this is something to know.
Say, if I were to decide to sell clothes now, I would not know how to do it.
"Why are you talking like that? I did not decide to sell clothes, I decided to design clothes. I do not know how to put a thread in a needle. I went with a notebook to my uncle, who has a clothing store in Dizengoff, I said, okay, what do I need? I wrote in a notebook and started applying.
" And the truth that it worked, with all the difficulty.
I was able to bring money home, I was able to support an image and her husband the tailor and the two seamstresses sitting in the basement, and the fabric stores and my saleswomen, and my accountant.
I supported a lot of people and set up a business, and set up a brand. "
Sounds easy.
" There's nothing harder than that.
In a small business like a street shop you do not really know how much VAT you will pay, it is impossible to calculate it before. The bank account is a roller coaster. Constant tension that does not leave, not on Saturdays, holidays or at night. And the feeling is that the state puts its hand in your pocket And just take completely arbitrarily - today such a tax, and tomorrow another tax. You pay property tax, suddenly a garbage removal tax. Fire department. Well, I made drips, here's the sprayers, here's an alarm. Then, every year they change something in the regulations. And the fire, she cares. ? Last year's fire does not care. And a small business what can do? Nothing. Pay.
"Worst of all is a signage tax.
I had a shop on a construction site that had no one in it, and I hung a little sign on some pillar that no one sees, and when I passed I forgot to take it down.
They sent me to the new store a height, a very large man, two feet by two feet.
Reward you see someone chose him to scare.
And he shows me a photo of the sign and says, 'Bring the money now.'
Can't remember exactly how many, but how many thousands are good.
"I called the municipality, I told them I wanted to appeal. They told me to come to the municipality. I said, I can not come to appeal, I am in the store, I am alone. They told me: 'If you do not pay him, he will not leave the store.'
" I close the store. And gives a sprint to the town hall, walks into the office and sees three women sitting with carrot sticks, dipping them in a cottage, in a newly renovated office, and they are all sitting and gossiping, and I with torn flip-flops, sweating, and I realize I exist to justify them.
So they can sit and snack on my sticks and gossip, I have to rip my ass 4 times, because I hung a poster four years ago.
You want to take the whole business and burn the clothes. "
And how did the appeal go?
" I paid.
Deploy it to me for a few installments.
When you own an independent business, once every two months something falls on you that you did not expect, that you did not know existed, but someone will come and take your money. "
* * *
Your life as a working person was never just Facebook, a review, a column, TV studios.
"Most of all I like to be written that I have no compassion, that I am the emperor's cocaine. They ask how much the emperor pays me. Then I go in to see who writes it to me. Someone sits and does artistic ceramics from the salary of a husband who brings her home. "That I experienced? In what world did you face the difficulties I wave a thousand times a day? What do you know about life that I do not know? Who are you to preach compassion to me?"
And what do you think needs to be done to make it really easier for an independent business to run?
"First of all, to cut regulations, to make it much easier to start a business. So far I have made a series for the self-employed. I photographed a 71-year-old guy, an ice cream maker, who before Corona advised all kinds of factories. Because Corona ran out of advice, he stayed home and had to make a living. So he started making ice cream at home. In any other country, if you decide you make ice cream, you make the ice cream according to where you work. And this man has to meet factory regulatory requirements. It's psychic.
"And as a business owner, and a woman - I have Dilemma with pregnant women.
When I was newly divorced, I support two children, one of whom needs a lot of money because he has a learning disability.
pestle.
I took the risk, I started the business, I work well, I do everything, I am very hardworking.
"Someone comes to me looking for work - and it has happened to me more than once or twice - and she does not tell me that she is pregnant. By law, I am not allowed to ask her if she is pregnant. I put her in the business, train her, build her shifts, and after a month see That she's pregnant, and can not do the work she has to do. And I have to pay her. But I can not carry her, I can barely carry myself.
"Sometimes I see women sitting in the Knesset who know how to recite feminism, but have no idea what real life looks like.
I have an idea.
Real life has passed me by with a roller coaster. "
I do not know if you have recorded yet, but you are going to be very, very busy in the near future. What will happen to another book?
" That was the first thing I thought of when I got the celebratory phone call from the Prime Minister. Can't write books?
So it turns out that as a Member of Knesset everything is forbidden, but writing is allowed.
The third book is already on the way, I just hope I will have the peace of mind to continue writing it, not building on it, by the way. "
What do you like about the State of Israel?
" The sheet is short.
I am crazy about this people and love this country in an almost childish and embarrassing way, from Mea Shearim through the Muslim Quarter, from the Judea camp to Nehama and a half in Rothschild.
In all these places I breathe the air full of lungs and feel at home.
I lived abroad for five years because of a diplomatic mission, life was very comfortable, the sun was shining, the maid was cleaning, the cook was cooking, and every last day it was in my blood. I was endlessly unhappy, and all I wanted was to go back to the mortgage and Snow Jewel with a lemon scent, and most importantly To hear from morning to evening Hebrew, Hebrew, Hebrew. "
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il