Recently, "conservatism festivals" have flourished: events that host right-wing people, American and Israeli Republican intellectuals who were devout leftists in the past, mostly from the world of media or culture, who have become Netanyahu supporters (I have a hard time thinking of one of them who isn't).
These are events that claim to be "tone-setters" for the right-wing camp: to design an agenda and host its representatives and those interested in becoming its elected officials.
They are right to claim that there is quite a bit of Americanization in them.
The one who comes out of them may feel that he just walked out of a church in the American Bible Belt, where it was made clear to him that the reason Israel does not deter Hamas is because the IDF is friendly to LGBT people, and how could God allow an "impure army" to defeat its enemies.
It's just that the "culture war" that these events promote is part of a paradox.
Some of the agents of the conservatism discourse they host are now running in the Likud primaries, and quite a few of them, as my colleagues and I carefully monitor, are actually competing with each other.
Some emphasize messages such as: "The return of sovereignty";
"Beginning to rule";
"Enough for Israel's lack of hand";
"Government Now";
And all this while wrestling (with officials, lawyers or in the case of Danny Danon - in the Arabs).
The messages fit well into the discourse that is only mistakenly called "conservatism" by them (tremendous anxiety about postmodernism alongside a somewhat tied legitimacy - it also exists there, it must be admitted - to express dark opinions in an "academic" way).
Who does this serve?
that movement and its leader, who has all the motivation that the conservatism issue will be discussed on the agenda but not the policy issue.
Indeed, all those cases for which it is appropriate to feel a desire to change the government (and to promote governance) were held by the Likud government (and even under a conservative American administration, the likes of which Israel has not yet experienced, including an American ambassador to Israel - who is hard to imagine a more right-winger among the settlers).
Under this government, sovereignty was not demonstrated in the south, and the Negev became a land of gangs;
Under this government no security deterrence was implemented, and the guard of the walls was managed only through ineffective aerial bombardment;
The catastrophes described by the State Comptroller about the functioning of the police during the guarding of the walls - which alone deserve another commission of inquiry (citizens begging for someone to answer them at the police stations) - are also believed by the Likud government;
And also - the accusations about the new chilling revelations about the Shavas also took place during the period of that "policy-loving" government.
But how wonderful: thanks to the discourse of conservatism - we can only talk about identity.
Not one word about policy.
And who will return the reins?
And when will control and sovereignty be returned?
When the person under whose management all this loss occurred - will return to the wheel of power.
The new discourse of conservatism - indeed deserves to be analyzed in a variety of philosophical-political contexts.
But as far as the elections are concerned - this is propaganda whose function is to disguise the way in which academics marketed political concepts invented by the left.
The "statism" was intended to stabilize Mapai at the helm of government, even when Mapai's behaviors were, to say the least, clearly unstated.
It seems that "conservatism" is intended to do this to the Likud movement, even when there is an unusual gap between it and conservatism.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
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