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Opinion | The crisis is personal: attempts to split the right have been exhausted Israel today

2022-06-24T04:12:49.596Z


Nothing will absolve Bennett, Saar, Lieberman, Shaked and Elkin from responsibility for creating the internal rift in the national camp, on which Lapid can now dance merrily all the way to Balfour • But the disintegration of the right is also linked to social and class processes • That the struggle is over


Return the guitar to the bag.

The Kumbaiya songs for the unification of right-wing mandates and speeches "If only we give up the ego" will not save the national camp.

It is impossible to start an election campaign with such a naive view.

When the initial and stubborn response of Rosh Tikva and Yisrael Beiteinu to the announcement of the dissolution of the government is "the goal in the next election is to prevent Netanyahu's return," we must conclude that nothing has been learned from the past year.

You can stamp your feet and filter between your teeth "Bibi!", But it is not he who is sticking the business.

So yes, on the visible level the crisis in the national camp is personal, and it would be a shame to try to disguise it with a thick make-up layer of hollow promises about Khan al-Ahmar or splitting the role of spokesman. Others, were once considered the leadership reserve of the national camp, but each of them had a problem managing his political career: Netanyahu. He manages to get 35 seats for the Likud, but they do not even come close to those numbers together.

A year after they hitchhiked on an adolescent trip to the West Coast, away from Bibi's apron, they are not getting into a charisma suit.

The MKs on their lists - Handel, Shir, Hauser, Avidar - are also beautiful and correct on paper, but do not impress the voters, and apparently this time too they will wander with crates between parties, hoping that they will be able to push to the plenum with some decent Norwegian push.

Blame the sect, if it is difficult for you to internalize this truth, or the pretensions.

But if after a year of "proving to you" the representatives of the high-quality right in his own eyes are lost in the remote book areas of the blocking percentage, and still mumble with cracked lips "no bibi" - then yes, it's personal.

And vengeful.

The struggle is not over

But the truth requires acknowledging that it is not only personal, it is also cultural.

The disintegration of the right is also linked to social and class processes.

This does not absolve Bennett, Saar, Lieberman, Shaked and Elkin from responsibility for the collapse of cohesion in the national camp and the creation of an internal rift, on which Lapid can now dance merrily all the way to Balfour.

Because it is clear that it is not just Netanyahu.

It is enough to look at one of MK Michal Shir's furious speeches to understand. "Glad I left you, a bunch of scum!"

After Netanyahu, they will have a problem with Amsalem, Regev, Distel Atbrian, Ohana.

Suffice it to read a public letter issued by the right-wing Judea and Samaria to Nir Orbach:

Conference organizers on the subject of "settler violence" are preferable to the Likud.

These are sentiments that are becoming dominant, and they are related to the intensification of small enclaves who believe that for them the journey to the national consensus is over.

I am talking about certain strata in the settler elite, in some circles in religious Zionism and in what is commonly called the liberal-secular right: groups that have exhausted the processes of secession or have been given a comfortable seat in one of the mainstream Israeli society.

But the traditional-nationalist mass, even among religious Zionists and the settlers, and certainly the social groups represented in Likud branches, Shas and perhaps also in Torah Judaism - have not yet reached there. In social fields like the legal system, academia and the field of culture and art. 

This thing is ours

These groups are still committed to the struggle that has underpinned the connection between the right wing in recent decades, and even more so since Oslo: settlers, traditionalists, ultra-Orthodox, periphery: all led by a commitment to profound social and cultural change that will promote status change and path to class leadership.

Thanks to this solidarity, the ultra-Orthodox have indeed experienced processes of Israeliization, perhaps too slow, but adapted to their existence.

The settlers are no longer subject to an existential threat to their life enterprise and their very right to live, and you will not see their cartoons with a teddy bear and a rifle in "Wonderland."

Religious Zionism has refuted the dystopian nightmares of the secular left, and its representatives are spread in endearing harmony in the media, the defense establishment, the State Attorney's Office and academia.

The eastern middle class is flourishing in Rishon Lezion, Yavne and Netanya - and the horizons of social mobility of the far periphery are more open than ever.

This is the result of a common struggle that established the cause of the deep existence of the national camp - in my opinion, much more than a commitment to settlement at the back of the mountain.

With all due respect to the admissions committees in the community localities, or to the absorption quotas of asylum seekers - the true story of the right is its synchronous activity as a socio-cultural movement that had a united political and partisan expression.

And the real tragedy is the loss of solidarity, or the renunciation of it following an imaginary feeling that the struggle is over and that one can move on.

Then came Bennett, Lieberman and Saar, along with Shaked and Elkin - and their first leadership act, when they were freed from Netanyahu's rescue, was to peel off the glue in the national camp and replace solidarity with class hostility.

They will speak endlessly about Begin and Jabu and Betar, but the expression of alienation, and sometimes even disgust, on the part of their former partners - reflects their alienation from the social story of the national camp. They are no longer part of ours, and probably never were, the good news is that in the real world they are a weightless minority without the left, and that their experiment has crashed.

Were we wrong?

Fixed!

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Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2022-06-24

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