It is good to conduct a public controversy for heaven's sake, especially when the members of the Plugata are concerned about similar phenomena, and disagree about the severity of the problem and the intensity of the constraints that make it difficult to answer.
Avi Barali is right about three important issues he raised here yesterday ("Warning, not calming down", 17.10): Internal and external, which in their entirety Israel must not accept with a fundamentally flawed system of national decision-making.
I have written extensively about all three here.
Of the various areas of controversy, two are worth emphasizing.
I do not believe that "officers limited in their perception - that security policy has been handed over to their almost exclusive possession - are a danger to national security." Israel has been blessed with a line of professional, dedicated and straightforward generals in the General Staff, a wise, experienced and broad-minded Chief of Staff, and an openness to strategic criticism, with a unique scope and depth, to which I testify from my personal experience. They yearn for the guidance of the political echelon and are deeply committed to their subordination to the elected leadership. Their professional advice can be disputed and there are differences in abilities between them, as in any other successful group, but by any reasonable standard, there is no justification for describing them as "limited in their perception" and certainly not claiming that they are "a danger to national security".
In the field of security, it is difficult to accuse the elected leadership of dysfunction or fundamentally dysfunction.
In the days of Netanyahu, and according to the short experience probably also in the current government, there is a correct assessment of the severity of the Iranian danger, and there is an ongoing and complex campaign to deal with it, with an impressive combination of strategic daring and careful avoidance of adventure.
This combines the operational leadership of responsible officers, who are attentive to the constraints of the strategic environment, with selected personalities who are usually conducted responsibly.
On the Palestinian issue, where I disagree with some of the perceptions and emphases of the military and political echelon, it is not about irresponsibility or evasion of dealing with the complex problem and with the domestic, regional and international illusion.
This is a legitimate approach, which gives, in my opinion, overweight to one type of consideration and less weight than others deserve.
Similar and even more serious errors have sometimes characterized the policies of charismatic leaders in stable governments in previous generations.
I also do not agree that Israel's situation is worse than that of Western democracies. It is true that "nothing similar to the right-wing voter fraud has taken place in the United States," but this is not an appropriate measure of the severity of the distortion, as the system of government there does not allow for a similar parliamentary exercise; Splitting the American people for more than a decade between Democrats and Republicans, to two camps holding a "zero-sum game" between them, at the expense of U.S. national interests. With bitter ingenuity I suggested to friends in Congress to adopt the "two-state solution for two peoples." This rift is tearing society apart, weakening its ability to address the vital needs of the free world in the face of the Chinese challenge and other threats, as it has deprived the national leadership of an essential infrastructure for a decisive struggle abroad - national resilience based on broad domestic agreement.
For a less serious rift than that now plaguing our partner across the ocean, Israel paid an unbearable price between the First Lebanon War and the Second Intifada, when the right and left waged a "zero-sum game" designed to create finished facts in Judea and Samaria: settlement in the heart of the inhabited area; Oslo away.
The situation in Israeli society today is much less serious.
While the plight of many is not even half a consolation, it is also not just a "fool's consolation."
It points to structural depth factors, which require democracies to adopt evolutionary reforms that will not spill the baby with bath water.
The familiar proposals for dramatic and immediate change are not convincing in their practicality.
