"He's not really right-wing," outgoing Yesha council head David Elhaini said of Benjamin Netanyahu. He's not the only one. This has already become a cliché from Osa, which originates in "the right from the right to the right" circles. A variety of figures appointed themselves to "guard the Likud from the right", Mainly around Jewish and settlement issues, from the evacuation of Khan al-Ahmar to construction freezes.
And really, alongside much appreciation for Elahini's endless dedication to the Bekaa, to settlement and the struggle for the Land of Israel, the time has come to ask: What is actually so "not really right-wing" about Netanyahu?
In the comprehensive interview conducted with him by Hanan Greenwood and published in "Israel Hayom" at the beginning of the week, Elahini listed the failures of the Plan of the Century, in which Israeli sovereignty was almost imposed in the Bekaa in exchange for a commitment to a demilitarized Palestinian state of autonomy, on part of the territory, if the Palestinians meet fantastic threshold conditions.
Well, then Alhaini and his struggle contributed to the thwarting of the plan, and sovereignty in the Bekaa will wait for the next Bibi.
David Alhaini, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
Elahini's right to believe that through his struggle he saved the settlement's fate from the clutches of the left-wing Netanyahu, and the right of others in the "right of the right to the right" to believe that the Likud is "not right-wing at all."
Perhaps it is the trauma of the evacuation from Sinai and the disengagement from Gush Katif that resonates in the collective memory.
It is okay to be on guard and warn against politicians who take right-wing votes to implement left-wing policies, or - to establish left-wing governments.
This too, by the way, is a trauma.
Forget what it is to be settlers
The point is that, at least in relation to the Likud governments in the last decade under Netanyahu, this is a false accusation.
Take the dust off your eyes, my God, put your hand on your heart and tell me: Is this how you wanted it?
Have you already forgotten what it means to be a settler in the decade of the second intifada and disengagement?
When the international community demands that you be kicked out of the house, when the enlightened world marks you as the source of all its attacks, when Israeli activists encourage Europe to boycott you, when the media presents you as a fundamentalist and violent, when entertainment programs abuse you, and when all the public systems conduct a mental inquisition against you?
When the wonderful work of your life is in tangible and immanent danger of existence, and when a moral stain that cannot be protested is splashed on your clothes every day?
Until the Likud and Netanyahu came, and in a calculated and persistent process they removed not only the existential threat, but also the stain.
Who today brings up the evacuation of settlements as a condition for any political exchange?
Who dares to call for the boycott of Yosh products or the cultural centers across the line? Even Aviv Gefen sings about the settlement. With all due respect to the Yesha council, Likud also has a stake in making it a fait accompli, an integral part of Israeliness.
Netanyahu, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
But the deeper story is not the political amnesia, but the pretense to determine and define "who is right-wing", and above all through the important - but limited - prism of the settlement enterprise.
From the outset, it should be unacceptable that the two withdrawing factions, which established a government for Yair Lapid and are now running Benny Gantz(!) to Balfour, will define for the nearly 60 mandates of the Netanyahu bloc what is a "real" right, and of course also a "state" right.
This needs to stop, and so does the justification.
If everyone is allowed to define who is right-wing, then so am I.
The right is first of all, before everything, first of all - a social commitment to the emancipatory project led by the Likud movement starting in the 1970s, the main of which is the liberation of entire social groups from the ostracizing regime of Mapai and the left: Mizrahim in the periphery, traditionalists, national religious, ultra-Orthodox - and in the last decade , contrary to all the slanders, also of the Arab citizens of Israel. These groups slowly entered, with the encouragement and thanks to the social and political process led by the Likud, into the core of Israeliness; they are part of it, partners in its formulation, design and constant improvement.
The Israeli left, which is the political arm of the ruling class - the establishments and the bureaucratic bureaucracy - laments that they "stolen the country".
Because this is how social strata adjacent to the hegemony's table react to social reforms that deprive them of a class advantage.
It is not for nothing that this ostracism regime still prevails only in hotbeds where the elites enjoy "professional autonomy", mainly the legal system and academia.
The Likud mob has not breached these fortresses yet, and as much as it depends on them - it will not breach in the future either.
Reducing the field of struggle
This process of the merging of the outcast groups in the event horizon of Israeliness is statehood - and not some Handelistic code of conduct, designed to please the acceptance committees and tastemakers in the elite duchies of the Kingdom of Israel.
Yes, in the waving of Amsalem's hands, and even in the chain of loyalty to Bibi, I recognize a thousand times more stateliness than joining the inquisitorial and lordly persecution against the "wild crops" and the other voters of the National Camp bloc, who remained in solidarity with the liberating historical process.
Dodi Amsalem, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
And it is not surprising, by the way, that it is precisely from those districts from which the "state right" emerged that the most blatant criticism against the critical call of the national camp also arises.
The sterilized importation of conservative terminology from the USA has injected under the skin a kind of neutering hostility towards the important identification between class, ethnic and political interests. Everything is disdainfully framed as "identity politics" and "right-wing Marxism". Nonsense. In Israel there is a connection between ethnicity, politics and class - and the struggle In these barriers it is part of the particular DNA of the right in Israel.
And that brings me back to the point where I started: as far as I'm concerned, there are no Gev Ha'er settlements without the Likud branch in Kiryat Gat - and vice versa.
The struggle for the Land of Israel involves a struggle for Israeli society.
But there are those who foolishly chose to narrow the field of struggle, perhaps because they know that at the moment of truth they will meet a sister's shoulder in any case.
Everything is derived from there.
And by the way, a complete waste.
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