The big elephant in the crowded committee room was, of course, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
The whole debate dealt with the moral legitimacy of his leadership.
Shikli was naturally the man of the hour, the protagonist of the plot.
The character of the opponent, Nemesis, preferred not to appear at noon.
Gave up the opportunity to blink a second.
Because sometimes class is the message: the staged members' trial, the tribal expulsion ceremony, spoke in his name more than anything.
This is how it will be done for a man and a guy.
Bennett's tactical mistake is often analyzed: with his own hands he understood the leadership of the "rebellious."
Yesterday's rally in the Knesset reinforced the impression that MK Amichai Shikli did not invite or design the media event around him.
And this moment certainly built him, if not as a leader, then at first as a symbol - that is, as a negative of right-wing members who still remained loyal to Bennett, and especially of Minister Kahana.
Behind Shikli stood, some in body and some in spirit, other right-wingers, from Idit Silman to Prof. Asher Cohen, a number of media people and opinion leaders on the intellectual right, and a large fan base on social media.
Absent from committee hearing.
Bennett,
In the language of supporters of the change government on Twitter - Shikli modeled a maximum class with zero effort.
It seems authentic, because it was refreshing to hear in our politics a clear value statement.
This is clearly the beginning of leadership.
But it is also true that in the spirit of change government, Bennett empowers rivals to be built from their power.
It worked with Netanyahu, whose centrifugal gravity still drives the political solar system.
Lapid and Bennett harnessed this energy, and especially its hot reaction air, to rise.
They feed on it to this day.
Shikli is another "too strong" figure, designed to signal to the Lapidist camp that still needs Bennett and Shaked as a door stop against the bad guys.
Bennett needs Bibi and Shikli and Ben Gvir and Smutrich when they are strong and popular - to signal that the danger has not yet passed and that he is essential to the war effort to save the project.
But the central question, as mentioned, is what kind of leadership image of Bennett grew yesterday?
When a prime minister needed, in less than a year in office, such drastic force sanctions to impose discipline and loyalty on his own coalition and party, it meant he gave up trying to produce his own leadership charisma.
There are leaders who are able to grow into the role, and in a certain period of time sew for themselves a leadership ethos suit and a personal seal;
This is not Bennett's story.
What now holds his government, the one that was once an "amazing experiment" and a "miracle" and "redemption," is not the sparse charisma of the leadership, but the constant threat to its members: each of you can be next in line.
At least it's out there now, you can get rid of the pretense.
That's something too.
Were we wrong?
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