The battle for hope

Kalman Liebskind drew a problematic reality in his column last week.

But in what he calls danger, I see hope.

The inclusion of RAAM in the coalition does not harm state security, but may strengthen the annexation of the Arabs to Israeli coexistence

Ben Mercury

05/05/2022

Thursday, 05 May 2022, 19:41 Updated: Friday, 06 May 2022, 16:10

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Documentation of the moments of the attack in Elad (Itzik Ohana, Shabbat Square)

"Suhadi in the heavens not in teasing I am writing these things to you, but out of concern. Great concern."

With these words, a column by my colleague and friend Kalman Liebskind ended last week.

He answered me from the blood of his heart, for things I had written to him the week before, from the blood of my heart.

I do not think Kalman's concern is engineered.

It does not stem from ignorance nor was it fueled by the many haters who hate his camp.

I think he's wrong.

He is too immersed in what has become the enterprise of his life, dealing with the Bedouin problem in the Negev.

I'm following this important enterprise.

Kalman sketches a problematic reality there and I fully share his concern in this area.

At the same time, I also see the full part of the pussy.

She's much more full of emptiness, our pussy.

Yes, the Bedouin story is complex and full of contrasts, some of which are worrying but others of which are very hopeful.

The optimistic part Kalman, unfortunately, sees less.

His right.

His mission is important.

I'm worried too.

No less than McLeman, though my worries are different.

Kalman, as he put it well last week, is concerned that the current Israeli government relies on the votes of "supporters of terrorism" or those who see Zionism as a racist project.

He thinks I was "flexible, according to needs."

Unlike many others, he does not read a message page.

He truly believes that the fact that MK Walid Taha serves as chairman of the Interior Committee (which does not include homeland security) is a tangible danger to the future of the Third Temple.

He felt that the fact that an Arab-Israeli (and another Islamic) party had for the first time ever joined the decision-making system on the political field could undermine the foundations of Zionism.

I think the opposite.

This is not a danger, Kalman.

This is hope.

Fulfillment of the true Zionist vision.

So what worries me?

We'll get to that later.

More on Walla!

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

To the full article

More on Walla!

• Bennett in a special column for Walla!

  For Independence Day: "I wish we remembered that the common denominator is the divider"

• Bereaved families prevented Bennett from speaking at the Memorial Day ceremony on Mount Herzl: "We can, be ashamed"

• Efforts to overthrow the government continue: The Likud's proposal to the MK to retire from the coalition

• Saving from the first moment: How to start saving in four simple steps

Arab party joins, no danger to hope (Photo: Reuven Castro)

In any case, contrary to the impression created last week, the establishment of a Palestinian state is out of the question.

I'm not a leftist.

There is currently no one to talk to.

The issue is not on the table.

The last to negotiate a Palestinian state was Benjamin Netanyahu in 2014.

Reached a draft with John Kerry that included a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.

It's real, it's published, it's happiness, so get into proportions.

Naftali Bennett, Gideon Saar, Zeev Elkin and Avigdor Lieberman are also far away.

This danger does not exist.

You can relax.

Let's start discussing Kalman Liebskind's concerns with a few quotes: "The Israeli right can and should build the bridge to the majority of the Arab public, the one that is mainly interested in issues such as the economy, education and homeland security. "They identify with these goals. They feel that the Israeli left has exploited them for decades and used them as political cannon fodder, and admit that what gives them right-wing rule, in budgets and respect, they have not received in the past."

No, no I wrote these things.

And there is more - "The majority of the Arab public is interested in three things: education, economy and homeland security. Around this common denominator we must build a common life, and set aside issues that have no solution in the foreseeable future. There is no reason why Arabs should not share They do not have to be Zionists and stand still in the days of remembrance, they do have to be one hundred percent loyal to the State of Israel.

Let us cooperate with that great anonymous population that desires peace and a good life, for themselves and their families, and nurture it.

The time has come to change the situation that puts the Jews on the one hand, and the Arabs of Israel and the Palestinians on the other.

The Israeli right must lift this glove.

In all the meetings I attended with Israeli Arabs, I could hear them say that they had developed hatred and distrust of the left.

The vote in the Knesset on the appointment of the State Comptroller does prove that these were not ignorant things.

Israeli Arabs are no longer in the pockets of the Israeli left.

The security of Israeli Arabs lies, among other things, in the knowledge that the respect and budgets they received from right-wing governments have not received and will never receive from their so-called eternal patronage of the left.

The time has come for the right to formally and willingly concede to this challenge of reconciliation and sharing.

"Israeli Arabs are the solution, not the problem."

Secret meeting with Mansour Abbas before the election, Natan Eshel (Photo: Omar Miron)

Identify?

tamarisk.

Nathan Eshel.

The one who brings and brings to Netanyahu's house.

The only one that has been there all these years, in a row.

The man for special missions.

He wrote these things.

In two different articles he originally published in Haaretz and in Haaretz.

It did not happen a long time ago.

This was the preparation for the 2019 elections, which turned into a round of four endless campaigns that threatened to destroy the Israeli economy, society and statehood (in order to escape Netanyahu from the terror of the law).

Eshel wrote the things with authority and authority.

At the same time, a campaign of secret meetings began in which Eshel, the then head of Netanyahu's staff, Yoav Horowitz, and Mansour Abbas and his associates participated.

Includes an intimate dinner in Kafr Qassem, the seat of the Shura Council.

After each such meeting, Netanyahu received a detailed secret report.

Then the leader himself came out.

He realized that he might not have enough votes on the right.

He may need the voices of the Arabs.

So he changed his name to Abu-Yair, bought (i.e. received as a gift from one of the billionaires) a mandolin and went out to sing serenades under Mansour Abbas' window.

Remember the campaign in the Negev?

The black coffee with the Bedouin leaders?

His statement that he would hand over all the problems and deprivation and their demands to his own, in the Prime Minister's Office?

His statement that only a government headed by him can also keep its promises to the Arabs?

So it all happened.

really.

in real.

Exactly one year ago, Rabbi Tao ordered the Noam party to support the formation of a government that would be assisted by the voices of the Prime Minister. He did so following heavy pressure from Netanyahu. Abbas (from the inside, from the outside, it doesn't really matter.) Exactly a year ago, Mickey Zohar begged, in posts and interviews, for religious Zionism to agree to form a government (with the help of RAAM, yes?).

Exactly a year ago, Amichai Shikli tweeted that the publications, according to which he opposes the government with RAAM, are nonsense and he is behind Naftali "full-fledged." Netanyahu suggested that Bennett be the first in the rotation.

Kalman my friend.

The fact that ISIS in the coalition does not endanger us. Not a hair of Zionism will be harmed because Mansour Abbas condemns terrorism every two days in a language he has never used an Arab leader. For a rotation between the heads of the security arms (I do this on a weekly basis). Ask them. Has anything changed following the entry of RAAM?

They will answer you no.

Israel is attacking Syria more than before.

Israel is investing tens of billions in accelerated intensification, to complete the pit left by Netanyahu.

Israel has managed to delay, and perhaps even torpedo, the signing of the new nuclear agreement with Iran, without burning up relations with the White House.

The Israeli government has added 1,100 police officers and billions of shekels to the police to restore governance in the north and south.

It seems to me that the police also did not really give up on the Temple Mount, as recent events have shown.

It seems to me that never before have so many Jews ascended the Temple Mount as they did this year.

You got the best proof from those you like to listen to their threats and wave them later, in front of us: Well, Yahya Sinwar.

Hamas leader in Gaza.

He threatened Abbas with his voice and demanded that he leave the coalition immediately.

If Hamas's interest is that the USSR leaves the coalition and the government falls, then Israel's interest is, respectively, that the opposite will happen.

Sinwar misses the cash suitcases. They have stopped. It is harder for him now, with the financing of terrorism. For years now, the policy of the Bennett-Lapid government (led by Bnei Gantz) has been security forces and economic permissiveness. In the meantime, it is working. And for Hamas. In the long run, it may lose its grip on Israel. That's why Sinwar is trying to fight it. I'm not in favor of helping him. I'm in favor of helping the country.

Hamas wanted Ra'am to leave the coalition and the government to fall. Yahya Sinwar (Photo: AP)

Kalman, did you forget what was here until a year ago?

Did you forget the last fireworks show under Netanyahu, in "The Guardian of the Walls"?

Who knows more than you how Netanyahu lost governance in the Negev and the Galilee?

How he folded in shame in the affair of the magnetometers.

How, under Netanyahu, Hamas bombed Jerusalem with rockets for the first time in history.

How he bombed Tel Aviv for 51 consecutive days on a solid cliff.

How Netanyahu tried to escape home in a panic during Tzuk Eitan and answered "yes" to any ceasefire proposal, starting from the second day of the operation.

I'm sure you also remember who was the cabinet minister who forced Netanyahu (through political pressure) not to leave before the IDF dealt with the threat of the tunnels. I am sure you remember who released 1,100 terrorists, 400 of them mass murderers, in the Shalit deal. I have no doubt you remember how The three of us, you and Ben-Dror Yemini and I, led the firm line of opposition to this bloody deal. And to sum it up, you probably know who released Sinwar himself in that deal. And who released Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. Right and deeds left, did not bother you?

The seam between truth and falsehood

Politics is not a utopia.

In my dream, my prime minister is a hybrid between David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin.

With touches from Ariel Sharon and even Ehud Olmert (the bombing of the Syrian reactor and a few other things).

But dreams apart and reality apart.

Politics is the art of the possible.

The choice between options.

If you are waiting for a government composed of Bar-Kochba, Meir Har-Zion, Yehuda HaMaccabi and Bezalel Smutrich, you will have a long wait.

About ten months ago, Naftali Bennett had only two options: to form a unity government with the RAAM, or to drag Israel into fifth, next, sixth, seventh elections, etc.

He chose the right option.

His government is leaning right, not left.

Most of the positions are held by right-wing or center-right people.

It has a veto on all sides.

There is no danger to the settlements.

There is no political process.

For the first time in ages, the Israeli prime minister did not mention the Palestinians at all in his speech at the UN. What are you complaining about? What are you afraid of? Look at babysitters. There is a Sabbath-keeping and observant prime minister here. Then they scream something about Iran (Netanyahu himself brought Iran to the status of a nuclear threshold state.) Then they move to the Temple Mount, as if we forgot what was here a year ago.

Kalman, the truth is, the right has nothing to complain about.

This government is not doing anything that its predecessor did not do.

Netanyahu cleared Chumash 250 times.

Freeze the settlements.

Did not evacuate Khan al-Ahmar.

Did not touch on the justice system.

Defend the High Court with his body. The only one who has begun to bring about change is Ayelet Shaked. What are you talking about, for God's sake? What are you protesting against? Of the Netanyahu family's eviction from power. They can not internalize that the sun continues to shine. That the country continues to flourish. Look at the economy. The numbers are crazy. Yes, it was with Netanyahu, too, but it did not stop. All time. March was the best in domestic tourism history. On Independence Day we were informed that Israel had overtaken Germany in the gross national product per capita. Indeed, desecration.

You call him a "crook."

Your right.

About what and why?

For violating his promises.

You are referring mainly to his pre-election political idle statements, in which he announced with whom he would sit in government and with whom he would not.

First, I will bring you here quotes from one of the people closest to Benjamin Netanyahu lately.

His name is Eli Vered Hazan.

Until recently, he was the spokesman for the Likud (and Netanyahu).

He has been involved in senior positions in almost all Likud campaigns since 2003. Also in writing the Likud platform (when this party still had a platform).

He occasionally holds zoom meetings with senior Likud activists to brief them.

Here is what he says about election promises (there is even a video): "If I talk about the seam between truth and falsehood in campaigns and the whole point of election promises, as I said - for election promises, and I say this with great sorrow, and I do not support it, but election promises It does not matter, the bedding of parties in the State of Israel does not matter, usually those who talk about morality are the ones who have improved it the most,

For what and why do you call him a "crook"?

Naftali Bennett (Photo: Flash 90, Olbia Fitoussi)

For a change, he's right.

Kalman, let's elegantly ignore the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu has been caught very few times in fulfilling any promises.

From the fact that everything he promised, violated.

Who time and time again formed governments with the center and the left and left the right out.

Who promised that it was, the rotation was over, and immediately moved on to a desperate effort to rotate (with anyone who wants to).

For promising to overthrow the Hamas regime.

Who promised not to talk to terrorism.

Turn Khan to Ahmar.

Annex Judea and Samaria.

Appoint Gideon Saar as Minister, Nir Barkat as Minister of Finance, Moshe Feiglin and Rafi Eitan as Minister.

You can continue this list forever.

But let's ignore her for a moment.

Suppose Netanyahu has changed.

Say, do you remember Ganz?

Bnei Gantz.

A very kind Jew, perhaps too kind.

The man who founded a party that had only one core promise: to replace Netanyahu.

Nothing else interested Gantz's million and a quarter voters.

He swore he would not sit with Netanyahu and so he got those votes.

What did he do after the third campaign, do you remember?

He broke that promise.

Why did he do that?

Because he was convinced it was in the interest of the state.

He realized that another campaign could push us into the abyss.

He realized there was no choice.

I had a hard time with it.

Abdominal pain and a slight feeling of nausea.

But I realized there was no choice.

That the state is above the promise of one election or another.

Ganz's move led to the dissolution of Blue and White and the archiving of Netanyahu's dream of an alternative (at least that is how it seemed then).

But he was important to the country.

So I supported him.

What is the difference between what Gantz did and what Bennett did?

Mansour Abbas?

You know, Bibi would have done that too.

Abbas?

He would form a government with Hamas.

You know that too.

Come, at the end of this episode, we hear what Bennett said the day before the election on Radio 103: "I'm not in anyone's pocket. Not Bibi and not just Bibi. Commit to one thing - there will be no fifth election. I will not boycott anyone. Everyone is welcome."

Similar things, and even sharper, he said to Ofira and Barko on the eve of the election.

In all the polls of the same campaign, Bennett's right was placed between a "only Bibi" bloc and a "just not Bibi" bloc that would be a tongue-in-cheek.

Bennett's core promise was to prevent a fifth election.

Everything else is campaign nonsense and eggnog.

Ganz broke the promise because he realized that there was no choice (Photo: Flash 90, Avshalom Sasson)

We have a complicated country here, Kalman.

Perhaps the most complicated in the world.

20% of us are not Jews, but Arabs who identify as Palestinians.

This is an unprecedented situation.

Both sides, us and them, were happy to get rid of each other.

Both sides, we and they, know it will not happen.

They are not going anywhere and we will stay here forever.

There are two options: either they will approach us slowly, participate in the decision-making process (without touching on security, of course), begin to feel part of the state and stop mortgaging their future in the Palestinian blood bank, or an inverted process will lead to disaster.

In recent years we are seeing the positive vision begin to come true.

On the day of the Holocaust, delegations of Israeli Arabs (yes, Muslims as well) arrived in Auschwitz.

During the corona years we suddenly discovered the fact that we are treated by Arab doctors and nurses, brothers and sisters, pharmacists and pharmacists.

In all the in-depth surveys, we see that the identification of Israeli Arabs with the state is growing.

The new voices, the ones we never believed would ever be heard, are starting to take on volume.

It is a complex, historical, long and complicated process, but it is beginning.

The Zionist dream won, Kalman.

We won.

Israel is a crazy miracle that creams skin and tendons.

There is no existential threat to it.

She is far stronger than all her enemies.

Is an existing fact.

The real danger would be milling from within.

Disassembly of the frame.

The dissolution of the glue that unites us into one people.

We see the signs of all this every day, Kalman.

You know who is responsible for this.

You know who incites it.

You know who is willing to set the club on fire just to escape himself from the terror of the law.

We will not get into that now.

Since we have no option to evacuate the Arab citizens of Israel from here and they will probably not evacuate on their own, we have to choose between returning the military administration to a process of rapprochement and cooperation.

Ra'am's entry into the coalition does not harm the security of the state. It may strengthen the possibility that more and more Israeli Arabs will be swept into Israeli coexistence. It will encourage the moderate trend. Strengthen Israeli identity at the expense of the Palestinian. This is not a utopia. Morocco, even Saudi Arabia. It is internalized there as well. Look at Egypt and Jordan. True, there is no shortage of hatred of Israel, but peace agreements have been stable for decades.

Israeli Arabs are not stupid.

They have eyes, they look around.

They realize they are living in heaven.

They understand (but will not admit it out loud) that Zionism is a miracle that happened to them too.

No one intends to privatize their security powers or put them in the cabinet.

All they want is to feel belonging, to feel that they are getting from the state what the other citizens are getting from it, to feel that they have hope.

When they have hope, it will be shared.

If RAAM's participation in the coalition fails, it will be a disaster for this trend. No less. Just when it began to overcome the counter-trend of terrorism, nationalism and jihad.

Unfortunately, in recent days extremists seem to be on the rise.

Netanyahu, who only less than a year ago delivered a speech in which he boasted how he prevented Itamar Ben-Gvir from ascending the Temple Mount and burning the entire Middle East, is now trying to burn the Middle East himself.

Mansour Abbas collapses under pressure from extremists in his party.

The victory of the moderate and sane majority who know that the Temple Mount is not in danger, on both sides, is in doubt.

If the extremists win, it will be a disaster.

Not just us and not just them.

To all of us.

Trying to set fire to the Middle East itself, Netanyahu (Photo: screenshot, Knesset channel)

We have reached, at last, what bothers me.

Remembrance Day illustrated this in an optimal way.

The living spirit on Memorial Day was one named Moshe Miron.

Google it, Kalman.

You will find a lot of pictures with Netanyahu there.

Meron is the thinker, initiator and performer of the "Traitors Leftists" campaign.

There is no task, disgraceful as it may be, that is small in size, provided that the instruction leaves Caesarea.

He came to the ceremony to humiliate the prime minister.

He is not a bereaved family.

He is a bibist who does not see with his eyes.

He pleaded with the police to arrest him in handcuffs, to provide his envoys with a picture of victory.

All that day he received artillery softening in the dozens of tweets of the junior, the young Netanyahu.

There is no insult that has not been heard on this day.

Yes, there were also some bereaved families, but there was no connection between the bereavement and the effort to humiliate the Israeli prime minister at memorial ceremonies.

True, our bereaved families are holy.

We are a whole country.

But that does not mean they have an open license, to do anything.

I understand bereaved families rejoicing before a prime minister responsible for their bereavement.

One can understand the families rejoicing in the face of Olmert, who sent quite a few soldiers to their deaths (Second Lebanon, Cast Lead and more).

It is understandable that bereaved families were happy for Sharon.

One can understand the bereaved families of the Carmel or Meron disaster rejoiced before Netanyahu.

Or the bereaved families of those killed in the Shalit deal.

The problem is that Naftali Bennett has not yet managed to complicate Israel in an unnecessary war, a failed operation, some resounding disaster.

What he is experiencing on Memorial Day is a political protest that he dared to replace Netanyahu.

Bennett did not fund Hamas (on the contrary), Bennett did not defend Hamas, Bennett did not release murderers, Bennett did not go to war.

He has 16 victims of the current wave of terrorism, their families can protest against him.

The rest are political activists who have not hesitated to make this day another stop on the dismantling train of Israeliness.

All this, for nothing?

In whose name and what?

Does the sickening cult of personality we have witnessed in recent years also equip the desecration of Memorial Day for IDF martyrs?

I hope you followed, Kalman.

If not, I recommend you follow Orly Lev.

One of the closest to Netanyahu.

She is the one who was sent (according to publications on Google Maps) from Caesarea to insult the bereaved family of the late Captain Tam Farkash, with a friend of Madfia and a few megaphones. Her bizarre WhatsApp, uploaded a photo of the above subversive tweet with an instruction: "Treat the bitch".

These are the things that worry me, Kalman.

The internal rift.

Fire-fighting.

Shisui half the people in the other half.

Marking all leftists as traitors, all Ashkenazis as oppressors, all those who do not swear by Bibi's name as terrorists.

It worries me that the former prime minister does not open his mouth and beep.

Not about the threats, not about the insults, not about pouring gasoline on the coals and rummaging through the wounds of the past to advance political agendas.

It worries me that the same former prime minister has long since decided not alone.

I remind you of Natan Eshel's unforgettable recording in "Ovda", in which he told about Netanyahu's method: "In this public, I call him even this non-Ashkenazi, yes, what warms him? After all, he says - what? They? Will do To me in this? It seems to them. Why do they hate the media? Why did they shout? Oh, what happened? Noni ate her after the election? They hate everything. This hatred is what unites our camp. And we look at our camp. "I mean she's a beast in general. Because she's as exciting as the one in football who stands and does to the crowd with her hands. That's what she does, and it works."

Back to sanity and modesty

I watched the beacon ceremony on the eve of the holiday.

He was tear-jerking, properly Israeli, inspiring hope, vision and faith that there could be a real paradise here.

A ceremony in the image and likeness of the wonderful Trooper.

For the first time in years, it did not contain a North Korean personality cult.

The Prime Minister did not speak, did not take over the ceremony, did not run over the Speaker of the Knesset, did not violate the old state tradition from time immemorial. He sat in a rather dark corner and waved the Israeli flag, then walked around the crowd with his son on his shoulders. "I and I and I."

Mickey Levy, Speaker of the Knesset, spoke about "you" and "us."

This ceremony brought to the center of the stage, in the spotlight, the best of our sons and daughters who have been excluded from there to this day.

Injustices were corrected in him.

People danced in it in wheelchairs.

The beacons were highlighted by parents of special and groundbreaking children in social fields (I personally could not help but sob when Shia-ya, General Yoram Yair, lit his beacon).

It was sung by two singers who served as warriors (Raviv Fiddler and Idan Amadi).

The director was not instructed to close up on the wife once every half minute, and on the one who pours water on her hands once a minute (poor Miri Regev, who went as far as Mexico this year).

This ceremony symbolized for me a kind of return to sanity and yes, also a return to our original modesty, dating back to the time when all we did here was export oranges.

If you think, Kalman, that all this is dangerous for Israel, then we disagree.

If you think a government that proves that almost all parts of the nation can sit together and make decisions, we disagree.

On the other hand, even when we are divided, we will remain brothers forever.

We will not call each other traitors and we will not wish each other death wishes.

We will not call each other we can.

It was worth arguing with you Kalman, if only to prove that yes, even two people with gaps in perception and belief can thrive together, in coexistence, within one bundle of pages.

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