It was hard not to notice that since the outbreak of the crisis in Ukraine, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid are speaking in two voices.
While Bennett is very careful about the dignity of the Russian leader, Lapid is more relaxed, more aggressive, openly condemns the Russians, leads an Israeli vote at the UN against them and stands by Ukraine. To an arena that is large in size by several numbers.
The thought that the two most senior representatives of the Israeli government can play the good policeman and the bad policeman on the international field is a childish thought that causes severe damage to Israel.
Israel has always spoken with one voice.
There were discussions, there were arguments, but in the end outwardly a uniform message came out.
At the UN, for example, Israel has one finger. The countries of the world do not care if it is the finger of Lapid or Bennett. It is the finger of the State of Israel. Any other thought is the result of political amateurism, or a strange attempt to evade a difficult decision.
Bennett at the cyber conference: "If world leaders do not act - the situation in Ukraine may worsen" // Photo: Omar Miron, GPO
True, the decision is difficult and complex.
The tendency of the heart to support Ukraine, the occupied country.
Memories of the Holocaust are also floating and rising, and regardless of the history of the Ukrainian people and their role in the extermination of Jews in those days, no one wants to see people killed in streets and cities that become heaps of ruins.
In recent years, there have been many meetings between Israeli prime ministers and the Russian president.
It began in the Netanyahu era and continued, with exactly the same line, in the Bennett era.
Israel's military freedom of action in the Golan Heights, where thousands of Russian soldiers are stationed, is made possible due to these frequent encounters.
Putin allows the IDF to fly in the skies of Russia and bomb Iranian targets, but does not respond to all of Israel's security requests. If he did, he would take out, for example, all the Iranians himself.
If this interest is so important from a security point of view, then the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister must not endanger it and express themselves in a way that will endanger it. One less condemnation than Iranians is better than the fence on our border.
The original sin of the current government in international conduct began long before the invasion of Ukraine.
It began with Lapid and Bennett's strategic decision, led by the Secretary of State, to completely bow to the Biden administration.
As if on the understanding that the fragile government will not be able to withstand the pressure that the Americans will put on it anyway, so it is better to surrender in advance.
The governments of Israel for generations have failed to withstand pressure - from Ben-Gurion, through Menachem Begin, to Yitzhak Shamir, Rabin and Netanyahu - so what are the chances that they, in their volatile leaf government, will be able to stand firm.
What's more, many government partners think like the Americans about settling in Judea and Samaria and on liberalism and globalization. In recent months, Lapid and Bennett have focused efforts on convincing the White House and the State Department Lapid and Bennett promised Baidan industrial silence, obedience, and most importantly - avoiding a bad alternative for him in case the government fell, in exchange for him leaving them quietly and not pressuring in public, which could jeopardize the government's existence.
Even one of Bennett's great achievements, by refraining from establishing an Arab consulate on Agron Street in Jerusalem, was not achieved after campaigns to convince him that Jerusalem belonged to the Jewish people forever, or that its breaking would not be divided as the Americans would not divide Washington and the English London.
Definately not.
You made Blink laugh.
The only message from Jerusalem in this context is that the establishment of the consulate will jeopardize the stability of the government.
Biden thought and weighed, and decided that he would prefer the current government in hand, provided he left the Netanyahu government and the right on the tree.
Therefore, with the Americans now expecting Bennett and Lapid to condemn Russia and vote against it at the UN, they have virtually no choice. Their fate involves Biden's inseparable ties. And what about the Golan Heights? On the Americans in security contexts, here too the prime ministers prefer political stability over security.
Little politics at the UN
Political amateurism reached its peak this week, when Lapid ordered Gilad Ardan not to speak from the UN podium in a discussion that condemned Russia. Lapid has nothing against Arden at the diplomatic level. Lapid's was political. It was unbearable for him to think that a senior figure from the second camp would take the stage for a moment and divert attention from him. That there is indeed such a practice in international relations, no one in the Foreign Ministry and in the political system thinks it was the motive.
Gilad Ardan, sitting with the bench // Archive photo: Gideon Markovich,
If it was up to Bennett, by the way, Arden would have spoken without any problem.
A relationship of trust between the Prime Minister and Arden. The same relationship caused Arden not to leave his position at the UN.
Washington needs not only trust but also faith in the rightness of the way, so he resigned, but at the UN, when it comes to a different arena where there is more weight to represent the State of Israel compared to the Israeli government, there was no impediment for him to stay. Exclude Arden from the speech. Even if he was updated, he really had no way to resist. Lapid is now running the event.
This is not the first time that foreign ministers and prime ministers have had to deal with ambassadors from the second camp.
In the past there were many cases where it took years for ambassadors to leave office and the new government had to work with them, in case both sides decided so.
The latest example is Netanyahu, who worked with Matan Vilnai as ambassador to China, even though he came from the Labor Party.
When the relationship is professional there is no problem with that.
Troubles begin when politics is involved.
Vienna is not waiting for us
Lapid and Bennett would very much like to be significant players on the international field but do not have the experience or talent for it, despite the PM's attempts to mediate between Ukraine and Russia and more, in the partial and distorted presentation of things, as if Putin initiated the move. The Kremlin which made it clear that Bennett, again, was the one who offered himself, and not the other way around).
But the most significant failure at the international level of the current government is the Iranian story.
According to all reports, while the eyes of the world are on Ukraine, Israeli attention was supposed to be directed entirely to Vienna, where the nuclear agreement between Iran and the United States is advancing vigorously - an agreement that Israel officially opposes, but does nothing to do. Even if it is at the end of an agreement, a clear call coming out of Jerusalem against it is meaningful, if only to slightly improve its terms. Preventing an agreement - but it might have improved it in some way. The silence serves first and foremost Iran, which is about to sign a deal of its life, which will flow hundreds of billions of dollars into its account, and it is known where much of it will flow.
The situation in the world now could fall into the hands of a ripe rural Israeli government.
America is facing a significant arena, and this could have been exploited to create difficulty in the second arena.
To push harder, to demand a halt to the negotiations now, to send a message that the laxity that Biden is showing in Ukraine is forcing him to be tougher in Vienna.
Netanyahu spoke about this in the Knesset this week.
This week, almost all senior Likud officials spoke about it.
The bewilderment at the government's helplessness on the issue is immense, to the point of frustration.
However, apart from being interviewed on the subject or speaking about it in the Knesset, they naturally do not have much to do.
A mine not worth touching
Next weekend, the Knesset's winter session will end, and the coalition will have Ora and Simcha and Sasson Vikar.
The Knesset arena for her became unbearable.
There is no week without problems, and almost no parliamentary day passes without incident.
If no order is made during the spring recess, the current government will not be able to survive for long.
Bennett can try to dwarf the importance of the Knesset in interviews and speeches but it is impossible to dwarf reality.
A government cannot function without the Knesset and survive without it.
The disintegration of the frameworks in the Knesset leads to a feeling of general disintegration.
End-of-course atmosphere.
This coalition has been there for a long time.
Only the break that has just arrived can save her.
According to opposition estimates, which have also seeped into the coalition, the decisive seat will be next winter.
Just before the rotation as prime minister.
Right now the government needs no less than a miracle to succeed in the coming year.
For half an hour, Bennett met this week with the heads of the non-Orthodox movements in his office.
This is an unusual event.
Netanyahu would also talk to the leaders of the reform community in the United States, but not in official settings but during visits overseas or in meetings wrapped in other packaging, such as a meeting with "community leaders," and so on.
What was even more unusual was the optimism expressed by those present at the meeting after they left it.
The outline of the Western Wall was approved by the Netanyahu government, in the silence of the ultra-Orthodox.
Only after the fact, and after the ultra-Orthodox media began to sharply attack the representatives of the sector on the issue, did the heads of the ultra-Orthodox factions realize the magnitude of the mistake and demanded that the wheel be turned back.
Despite government approval, the outline did not materialize.
The story of the Western Wall today is not just a story of the ultra-Orthodox factions or of the sectoral media.
After the conversion and training, and the civil marriage that Yisrael Beiteinu demands to promote, the Western Wall appears as a case without the traditional sector in all its parts - from the ultra-Orthodox, through national religious, to the traditional and the transparent domes.
A sector of millions.
Bennett, himself, may have been willing to promote the layout of the Western Wall.
But he too knows it's an explosive.
If in conversion or kosher it could still be argued that this is not a war against Judaism and tradition, but reforms in messy systems that do not harm Halacha - when it comes to the Western Wall it is irrelevant.
The traditional restrained are less interested in whether the rabbi who signed the kosher certificate in the restaurant is the local rabbi on behalf of the rabbinate, or Rabbi Satyu from the Zohar organization.
But at the Western Wall he will not let touch.
So is the religious from Kiryat Moshe in Jerusalem, or the ultra-Orthodox from Kiryat Sefer.
The demand for the reform movement is very limited in Israel and not in vain.
This is a movement that has failed in all its goals, especially with the overarching goal of fighting assimilation.
This is when most of the mainstream media express support for the movement, its values, the liberalism it represents, the halakhah in which it advocates and what many see as ignoring tradition.
In all the surveys and studies that have taken place on the subject to date, it is clear that most Israeli Jews prefer to call themselves "secular" but continue to associate themselves with Orthodox Judaism.
The fact that the representatives of these movements came out of Bennett smiling, should worry everyone else.
Were we wrong?
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