The grounds of reasonableness were eliminated. It is quite logical that this would happen in an unlikely country like ours, but all the commentary articles explaining the damage that can happen from eliminating the cause of reasonableness have been pushed aside, all dealing with the sense of destruction of the Third Temple, this is the beginning of the end.
Let me suggest another option - this legislation marks the end of the beginning. The State of Israel was established in a crazy combine, in a kind of miracle it worked and survived and developed, but under the cloak of excitement of the return to Zion after two thousand years of exile, the fact that the state was established crooked was set aside. Without a constitution and with a rapidly drafted Declaration of Independence, who would have the power to deal with the question – Jewish or democratic? First we will establish a state and then we will break our heads, so here we are now at the height of the heat, breaking our heads.
Demonstrators blocked the entrances to the Knesset, Maktazit activated: Documentation from the protest against the reform in Jerusalem // Credit: Yoni Rikner
All those who threaten an impending dictatorship under the guise of democracy have forgotten that we were already in a democracy throughout the 1950s and beyond. Some governments used the Shin Bet to listen to opponents
Politicians, who set up a newspaper under the guise of trampling on a rival newspaper of regime opponents and critics, whose unconstitutional constitutional bread was the appointment of relatives and the distribution of jobs to our well-being, governments that did terrible cultural coercion. And they tried to fuse all identities into one piece by denying and negating them.
But the original sin of the Israeli state was an escape from the question of the essence of the connection between it and the Judaism that established it. Thus, the ultra-Orthodox received an enabling exemption, immigrants from Islamic countries were scattered on the map in order to fill empty holes in the space. And the Arabs accepted a restraining military government and the Law of Return. It could have been different, but come on, we were minorities and that was a long time ago.
Protest against the legislation, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
All the small gaps since then have widened over the years into deep rifts. With a lot of effort, the center managed to maintain the guise that we all live in the same country, when in fact we lived in other countries all the time. Last night, the depth of the chasm that separated the United States from Israel was revealed. We were divided into two groups, one first democratic and then (maybe) Jewish, the other first Jewish and then (maybe) democratic, at the moment the two groups are bickering in the streets passionately. They echo the fragments of the past and do not deal with the future.
It is hard not to appreciate the protesters and the enormous passion with which they sacrificed their time, money and bodily peace for the State of Israel they deserve. But the protest's enormous success in setting the public agenda with no clear goal other than toppling the government was unfortunate. With the marches to Jerusalem, the euphoria reached its peak. It is not clear what the protest leaders sought to achieve, since governments overthrow parliamentary intrigues and plots, or replace them at the ballot box, not with marches to Jerusalem, waving flags and besieging the Knesset.
Torah Judaism, Photo: Alex Kolomoisky
The euphoria of the rising echo chambers did not allow the protest leaders to compromise on anything but Bibi on the guillotine, "Chamberlain" called on Lapid and Gantz, who sought to find an agreement with Bibi (as Hitler according to Bressler's analogy), all of which caused a fortified government from the outset, to further close itself off in its righteousness and strive for legislation without any broad consensus.
The most stabbing moment last night was not the vote, but the smug selfie that followed. Your brother's blood is spilled and you take a selfie?
But this selfie was especially symbolic. For more than this government knows where it is going, it mainly knows against whom it is acting, and that is the crux of the problem. The lack of trust in a government whose only essence is to stick a finger in the eye, to act as "against" and whose laws are painted as interests to one sector or another. And that's the problem, historical correction is not done by duplicating a negative for past injustices.
If last day was not enough to shake the country, this morning the ultra-Orthodox raised the proposed Basic Law on Torah Study, in order to stick another finger in the eye, examining the first the most painful, the second less, and with the third finger you can no longer see anything. But this smugness of glass comes at a price, and when it breaks, the shrapnel will fly in all directions. Demographically, the ultra-Orthodox and settlers are a minority that needs the mass of traditional votes to form a governing coalition.
Until now, most traditionalists have followed the kippah people, out of a historical commitment to Judaism before democracy. But traditionalism can include verse tattoos, a mini dress and Kabbalat Shabbat, synagogue and sea, democracy and Judaism together. To purists it always seemed strange, as traditionally it seemed most natural to me.
Anyone who counts on the fact that the traditionalists are in their tallit bag will discover that whoever dares to force the traditionalists to choose a Jew or a democrat will lose them in favor of choosing Israeliness. One can mourn the third home that was actually lost last night, and one can begin to look 25 years ahead and understand that we are facing the fourth and most important quarter of the State of Israel, the quarter in which the headaches fell on the most appropriate generation to understand what is democratic and what is Jewish, and especially how all this reconnects to being Israeli.
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us