Ben Caspit, what is the value of a press that closes its eyes to lies called "just not Bibi"?

I'm not excited about a prime minister wearing a kippah, I'm not enthusiastic about fake unity between left and right.

I am convinced that the partnership with RAAM indicates a deterioration in values, morals and security. I am sure that every decent journalist should have come out loud against the act of deception that led to the formation of the government.

Kalman Liebskind

29/04/2022

Friday, 29 April 2022, 20:01 Updated: Saturday, 30 April 2022, 20:29

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Ben Caspit has been a friend and fellow writer at Maariv for over 20 years.

I will not go into the description of the incarnations that the newspaper went through during these years, I will just tell you that about a decade ago, after one of the splits at the end of which we found ourselves writing in two different newspapers, he called me, invited me for coffee, and asked me to move to his wing.

"It's important to me to have someone write that I'm talking nonsense," he explained and laughed.

To this day I am full of appreciation for him for that offer.

I know very few journalists, probably those with Ben's mileage, who are looking for someone to argue with.

Last week, when Ben sent me in his column a bundle of questions relating to my fierce opposition to the current government and my expectation of its downfall, I thought these questions of his deserved an answer.

"Do they really think so," Ben asked a question to a fellow faculty member and to me,

Well, I have never heard Benjamin Netanyahu refer to tefillin as "these ropes," and in any case we will return to Netanyahu.

More troubling to me - or more accurately to say, insulting me - is the thought that Ben Caspit is not the only one holding her, that I should be enthusiastic about Naftali Bennett as prime minister, because we both have a dome on our heads.

Let's start with the fact that I have so far not identified anything that connects the dome on Bennett's head to his function as prime minister.

Some people have the dome on their head as part of their operating mechanism.

There are those for whom it is part of the biography.

In Bennett I found no evidence linking him to the first group.

I do not know how much his religious world of values ​​influences his conduct as an individual, and it may well be that in this realm he leaves me dusty in his adherence to the easy as the serious.

I do know to say that the more I follow his actions as a politician, the dome on his head does not raise or lower anything.

Therefore, the fact that what is on my head is similar to what is on his head does not excite me.

But there is something much deeper than that.

The expectation from the national religious public to be enthusiastic about the prime minister's dome, is an expectation that lies in a premise that makes us a public that has no values, no worldview, and no set of good and bad considerations, and like a football team fan who applauds his team, do what you do, because Mom and football team do not exchange.

Well, we're a little more complex than that.

There are kippah wearers sitting in jail for murder, and I have nothing to do with them.

There are seculars who are engaged in doing good and repairing a world, and I adore the land they tread on.

In general, my friend, if I am supposed to be happy that Bennett is prime minister just because he is religious and I am religious, why did you not rejoice when Benjamin Netanyahu was prime minister, since he is secular and you are secular?

More on Walla!

Messiah's donkey: The Kahanist monster harnesses Netanyahu to its needs

To the full article

A bunch of liars

further.

Ben does not understand how I am not enthusiastic about the exciting coalition cooperation between right and left, and wonders, about Amit Segal and me, "Are they in a camp that understands that one should learn to live together in this country and leftists have quite a few rights here, Sami Peretz also went

in

the same direction this week in an article published in Haaretz, and did not understand how Amichai Shikli could oppose the "connection between right and left, Arabs and Jews, religious and secular.

Is not this the ethos that the preparatory students grow up on? ", He asked." Is not this the dream team of those who want to overcome disagreements, create dialogue with others and fight rivals after several years of polarization, hatred, racism and especially political blasting of frequent elections and extreme instability? ".

Well, Ben and Sami my friends, I will renew something for you.

A coalition is not a bonfire of Lag B'Omer nor an initiative of a "reconciliation order." A coalition reflects the choice of the majority of the public, which seeks to promote a worldview. Them and the fact that they think differently from me.

I agreed with him before undergoing conversion therapy.

Bennett (Photo: Flash 90, Olivier Fitoussi)

I do not forget for a moment that my political opinion - which naturally seems to me to be the right opinion - does not make me a better citizen than them, or a better person than them, or a better Israeli than them.

But between that and the demand to invite their elected representatives to the coalition, there is nothing.

I have been living, breathing and reading politics since I was a child, and I admit I have never encountered this strange position that if we are all Israelis, and we are all equal citizens, and we should all live in love with each other, we should all also sit in a coalition.

I am a right-wing man and from this place I very much want the worldview of the national camp to be promoted.

And for that to happen, I pray every time I go to the polls that the right will form the government and the left will form the opposition.

Know what?

I am sure that if the left had won 70 seats here, neither you are a son, nor are you Sami, you would have demanded the addition of Bezalel Smutrich and Itamar Ben Gvir to the government, in the name of the need that is suddenly so important to you, Pleasant,

And if after the next election there are 70 seats here that will require the establishment of a Palestinian state, I do not believe any of you will demand to join the coalition the right-wing parties that will get stuck in this initiative.

In general, I do not remember you beating Avigdor Lieberman for his desire for a government without the ultra-Orthodox, who according to my latest examination are also part of the people of Israel.

In other words, do not expect from us what you do not expect from yourself.

And something else needs to be said, in this context.

You are not alone in this strange perception.

The "All Israel Friends" claim is a claim that the people of the "right" warmly embraced, a moment after they formed this government, and it is a claim that deserves all the contempt.

Why?

Because these texts, of instructors in a joint seminar for Bnei Akiva and Shomer Hatzair, came only with the political need to connect with the left, in order to win the prime minister's job.

You and Netanyahu are secular.

Why did you not support him?

Mercury (Photo: Or Geffen)

A few weeks earlier, the "right" had held the opposite position 180 degrees.

And this was not a weightless political position.

This was an ideological position.

Clear.

Solid.

Reasoned.

Just before the election, Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked and Matan Kahana swore, above every stage, and in front of every open microphone, that they would not lend a hand in making Yair Lapid prime minister "in any constellation."

He, Levant, had convincing explanations for this.

Lapid, he explained, is "against settlement and against the hallmarks of religion."

"I am right and he is left and I will never act against my values."

That's exactly what he said.

So tell me you, son, did Bennett a minute before the election not know that leftists also have rights?

Who are also human beings with desires and aspirations and dreams?

Bennett also knew.

But he knew something else.

That as a right-winger he has an interest in taking the country in the right direction, and not in producing an accident when the left holds half the wheel, and everyone pulls in a different direction.

It's so simple, it's not clear what's here to explain.

This was the case when he and Shaked and Kahana swore not to cooperate with Meretz members, claiming that they support the prosecution of IDF soldiers in The Hague, and that they do not believe in the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Bad and messy. "

Telling you the truth, son, a moment after the election, when Bennett stood up - by the way trampling on all these commitments - and declared" I intend to form a unity government with my friend Yair Lapid, "I was convinced that every decent and honest journalist, pursues justice and hates lies, He would get up and shout loudly: "A scoundrel was made in Israel."

After all, in your own ears you heard Bennett and Shaked and Kahana swear - two minutes before they signed a coalition agreement with him and started telling how much of a "good Arab" this is - that they will not sit down with Mansour Abbas.

After all, in your own eyes, you saw them running for the Election Commission and demanding that he be disqualified and that his party run for the Knesset on the grounds that they both support terrorism and also deny the State of Israel as a Jewish state.

I'm really asking you, my friend, what value does the press we produce have if we inform politicians, our subjects of coverage, that in the name of "just not Bibi" we would be happy to turn a blind eye to all their lies?

What is all our war on the rule of law and good administration worth?

What is the weight of all our talk about chastity, when an entire party ran for office with an orderly proposal it submits to a voter, and the next morning it decides that in order to form a government under its leadership it is worth dressing up for something completely different?

How can a decent person like you advocate for this thing?

How can a decent person like you stick the nickname "crook" to Orly Levy-Abaxis, who turned upside down after the election, and at the same time applaud Naftali who did the exact same thing, only with the whole party?

"She deceived Labor-Bridge-Meretz voters with a determined forehead," she wrote of her after announcing she would not sit in a left-wing government based on the joint list.

"Before the election she announced that she would have no problem taking part in the government, even if the members of the joint list supported her from the outside," you reminded her.

Well, then, when Levy-Abaxis announces before the election that she will sit with the joint and after the election, it is an act of fraud, and when Bennett announces before the election that he will not sit with RAAM and after the election returns, is that a model for proper leadership?

The biggest disappointment of all

I read your harsh critique, son, of Amichai Shikli, and can not begin to understand you.

I read the list of votes on the "right" and accused Shikli, who voted against the faction's position.

I read and did not believe.

Among other things, his vote is in favor of connecting houses in the young settlement to electricity, in favor of a law revoking the citizenship of a terrorist operative who receives compensation for the act of terrorism, in favor of deporting terrorists' family members, and in favor of a moratorium The young woman.

Leave a moment right or left.

Let go for a moment of your political position, which I respect even if I disagree with.

After all, these issues were the core of the "right" worldview on the eve of the election.

Explain to me how a clean-sighted journalist can support a party that calls itself "right-wing" and opposes the entire list of rules above, and attacks those who choose to stay true to the way and support them?

How can it be attacked?

MK Shikli (Photo: Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel)

"I look at Kalman and Amit, two of my friends," you wrote, "and ask myself what camp they are in. Are they in the camp of Matan Kahana, or of Rabbi Tao? Are they in the camp of Yoaz Handel, or of Itamar Ben Gvir?"

I tell you something, which I think is a little hard to understand when dealing constantly with the need to decide dichotomously, yes Bibi or no Bibi.

I'm not in anyone's camp.

I have a worldview, and whoever promotes it I am in his camp.

I can applaud Benjamin Netanyahu for Avraham's agreements, and write against him sharply as he releases terrorists with blood on their hands.

I can be moved by a speech by Yoaz Handel, such as the one he delivered this week in Nir Galim on Holocaust Martyrs 'and Heroes' Remembrance Day, while at the same time thinking that his declaration that Walid Taha is legitimate, and Itamar Ben Gvir's not, is a shameful declaration.

I'm trying to answer your question if I'm in Matan Kahana's camp, and I do not really know what Matan Kahana you mean.

To today's, or to that of ten months ago?

To the one who skipped from studio to studio and scattered promises and weeks and conspiracies, or to the one who two weeks later broke them to the last?

Go to his complete collection of quotes, scattered across Twitter, and you will not believe it is the same person.

I tell you something else about Kahana, that from your column I understand that you appreciate him very much.

Matan Kahana is the biggest disappointment I have in the "right", and the competition there is tough.

In other circumstances, in another world, in another reality, if the criteria of someone who has the qualities needed to lead the national religious public were put into the computer, there is a situation in which he would emit the image of Kahana.

Observant, leader, commander, warrior, donor, volunteer.

But a moment after the man entered the political system, it became clear that he was first and foremost a soldier.

It is customary in our places to mock Lapid and Lieberman, who choose a collection of obedient people alongside them.

Try to remember if you have ever seen Kahana present a different opinion than that of his boss.

In something small.

In the nuance.

Not to dismantle the government.

That he would just disagree with him on something.

To argue.

To say that in one toddler matter he has a slightly different opinion than Bennett's.

That we will recognize that he has a backbone.

is nothing.

From the moment he entered the political system, Matan Kahana got up every morning and saluted the flag.

When Bennett moves to the right, Kahana goes on the air and explains why he should turn right.

As Bennett escapes from the right lane to the fringes, Kahana is the first to publish a post explaining that this has always been the right place to go.

And because he is a man with so many abilities, and with so many receipts, his decision to go after Bennett with his eyes closed - wherever he goes, no matter what he says - makes him, in my eyes, such a big disappointment.

Someone here is crazy

You asked me, son, what I meant when I called Ayelet Shaked a few weeks ago "Ayelet, I'm back home."

To what ideological house, you asked, do you expect her to return, when you remind me that Netanyahu himself chose to attach leftists to his governments, and Netanyahu himself folded in the face of quite a few security challenges, and in general, that he was not really the right I dream of.

So as I have written here many times, I do not connect to the "only not Bibi" group, just as I do not connect to the "only Bibi" group.

Netanyahu, as a persona, for better or worse, does not interest me at all.

I know how I want to see the country and the worldview of the government and the coalition, and it does not really matter to me who will take us there.

If you ask me what is the house that was never Ayelet Shaked's ideological house, I will also detail it easily.

This house is a coalition house inhabited by friends who are unable to formulate for themselves who we are and who our enemy is, and what we are fighting for here.

A house inhabited by MKs who tell the world that it is not the Arab enemies that are our problem, but the enemies in the settlements.

A coalition house that houses one society that supports paying terrorists for the murder of Jews, and one member who is sure that the Jews who ascend the Temple Mount are our security problem, and several other members whose Twitter account is busy spreading hatred towards anything reminiscent of the national camp and settlement.

And to put it even more accurately, I wished that Ayelet Shaked would return to the ideological house where, and only there, she promised her constituents to live.

I wished she would return to the ideological house where she had promised her constituents to live.

Minister Shaked (Photo: Walla !, Reuven Castro)

And something else you asked me, son.

You asked me if I believed "that the sitting of RAAM in the coalition harms national security?". The answer is yes, unequivocally yes. Most yes there is. Naftali Bennett from a year ago. And Ayelet Shaked from a year ago. And Matan Kahana from a year ago, before undergoing conversion therapy.

Yes, I think the one who took Walid Taha - who declared Zionism a "cruel racist project".

That in Operation Wall Guard, when we were fighting Arab terrorism in Gaza and Jerusalem, he demonstrated with the other side and accused us of "defiling al-Aqsa."

For him, the murderers of the Jews in prison are "ideological prisoners of freedom and prisoners of conscience who paid for our just Palestinian cause."

Who declared that the Palestinians, unlike the Jews, are "the owners of this land, and did not come to it from Russia and Ukraine" - and made him a senior coalition member and chairman of the Knesset Interior Committee, is insane.

I think that anyone who closes his eyes when MK Said Al-Kharomi went to identify with the rioters in Acre - those who murdered and burned and carried out lynchings on Jews - harms national security. Of the one who headed a cell that murdered Jews, degrades us all towards a moral depletion,

In the end you get used to everything

I have a great deal of criticism of this government.

I can fill an entire issue with this review.

But I'll tell you, my friend, what bothers me the most and what bothers me the most.

That after this government, formed by Naftali Bennett, it will no longer be possible to say "It is not done" about anything.

A few years ago, if I had told you that people who support terrorists are murderers, and see Zionism as a racist project that would be the backbone of the Israeli government, you would have hospitalized me, and just before that you would have called our editor, reserved a place at the top of the page.

But we got used to it.

You're used to it too.

And now it seems natural to you too.

And in the next government, when Iir Lapid asks to appoint Ahmad Tibi as minister, even you will no longer oppose.

You, who once, when Tibi and his friends only called out to Amir Peretz that he was a murderer, sharpened your keyboard like no one knows like you.

"I saw you in your shame, in your shame, in our shame," you wrote then.

"I saw, and never felt, farther away. I never believed less in that, the faint, virtual possibility of living here together."

You hit Tibi on the way he spoke.

MK Tibi (Photo: Reuven Castro)

You slammed Tibi for the way he spoke, for not condemning Nasrallah, and for "seeking" from him a "shadow of condemnation" for the "barbaric massacres" that the Palestinians are doing to us.

On Muhammad Bracha, who claimed in the Knesset after the events of Kfar Qana in Lebanon that the government carried out a deliberate massacre, you said that "in any normal country this man would have already been dressed in the House of Forbidden."

I, my friend, remained in my positions as they always have been.

It's you who allowed yourself to be flexible, according to needs.

You used to be shocked by support for terrorists.

It used to be urgent for you to vomit out of us people who think that what your parents and my parents have built here is nothing but a "cruel racist project."

And today?

Today you have no problem getting them to chair an important committee in the Knesset.

Precisely because I have known you for so many years as a Zionist Jewish patriot, it is precisely against this background that the path you have been through shows how bad the situation has been, and how great the deterioration is.

Suhadi in heaven not in teasing I write to you the things,

But out of concern.

Great concern.

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