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Opinion | The illusion of the "common good" Israel today

2022-07-12T19:50:03.616Z


The "common good" demanded by Yair Lapid expresses a chain of compromises that a community accepts, in order to put aside disagreements.


Yair Lapid often talks about the "common good."

Already when he took office, he called for a "common good" and said that "we must not waste our power in quarrels. In order to create a common good here, we need each other."

This week, at a ceremony in memory of the victims of a solid cliff, he once again said that we must "fight together for a common good."

And I wondered, "the common good" is a beautiful phrase, sounds good to the ear, even noble, but what is it really?

What does the Prime Minister mean when he defines a goal that the entire nation should strive for?

"The common good" expresses ideological pragmatism.

A chain of compromises that a community undertakes, in order to put aside disagreements and come together under issues where the interests of the various groups do not conflict.

Sorry, I do not see it as appropriate to the challenges of our lives here, but rather as a deception and even self-deception.

In order to apply a common good we must first define the common community that wants it, based on the foundations of its self-identity.

In order to create public legitimacy for his stated intention to rely on the joint list in the coalition he hopes to establish, Lapid defines the entire Israeli society as a common community.

This is good and true in many aspects of daily life, but in the national context we must be honest with ourselves and admit that realistic conditions do not allow it.

A general "common good" of this kind, the purpose of which is to blur the differences between the various groups in society, inevitably entails a violation of the Jewish-Zionist uniqueness and erosion of the national consciousness that builds the nation.

The conflicts of interest between the Zionist majority and the post-Zionist and anti-Zionist currents represented in parts of Meretz, Ra'am and in common have been proven to be too thorough and deadly.

The "common good" experiment was decided and failed because of national tensions that nationally conscious elected officials, on both sides, refused - and not in vain - to sweep under the rug.

A recent survey conducted by the "Security" movement shows that three out of four Israeli Arabs (they prefer to call themselves the Arabs of 1948, I wonder why) claim that Jews have no right to the land.

That is, regarding the most fundamental question of existence here, there is a burning disagreement between us.

Does the power of a declaration of "common good" alleviate this?

We can and should have many "common goods", everyday, social and civic, with Israeli Arabs.

But at the level of policy leading the country, the common torchbearer good, which makes it possible to circumvent any principled difficulty, is false and dangerous.

Because in the end, the final definition of "good", written in the Declaration of Independence, is what is good for the Jewish people in their country.

Our challenge lies in the gap between the magnitude of the challenges facing Zionism and the fatigue from Zionism of sections of the public.

We must look to this dangerous gap with feelings of concern and responsibility.

We must therefore stop striving for a nebulous common good that sounds good and innocent, but allows the enemies of Zionism, both at home and abroad, to deepen their pursuit under its foundations, and start talking about the common Zionist good.

Efrat Shoham Hildesheimer is the CEO of the Israel Zionist Leadership Foundation.

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Source: israelhayom

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