The legal reform may have swelled its soul and may yet return in a new outfit, but the knockout that the national camp took in its failed attempt to bring about comprehensive and long-awaited change, while enjoying a solid majority in the Knesset, requires lessons to be learned. And the first, central and most saddening lesson of all is that the right, even when it is "full-fledged," cannot lead reforms alone. That's a fact. The concept of "full right" is good for feeling, but it's ineffective.
I have no intention of grinding for the thousandth time the "no-no-no" sermon against Justice Minister Yariv Levin and MK Simcha Rotman, Chairman of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. I understand that there are people who, in their opinion, have gone too hard, too fast, too aggressive with their elbows. And their style, as they like to say, has set up the whole world on them, torn the people apart, divided society, divided the nation and destroyed social cohesion. In their behavior they brought upon themselves, allegedly, a reaction. If only they were flexible a bit, discussing a bit, containing a bit - maybe it would be possible to reach a dialogue, an agreement, an acceptable wording. And in general, all this speed, this haste, this radicalism – what do they have to do with the conservative ethos of leading changes slowly, moderately, with measured adaptation. Maybe.
Rothman: "At the moment they are not engaged in reform" // Archive photo: Knesset Channel
I think not. I think that the reaction to the reform, from the first demonstration to the Supreme Court ruling, has nothing to do with style, behavior, or eagerness. All of these, as they were, may have contributed to the sharpness of the reaction, but not much else. The failure to pass the judicial reform lies more than anything else in the optimistic and naïve thought that political dominance is enough. The magic phrase "full right" is the essence of the illusion. Here we are, we thought, independent of political opponents, and without the burdensome need for bargaining, compromise, give-and-take, hand-washing, it would finally be possible to demonstrate and feel governance. Vote right - and get right. Who can stop us?
Rothman and Levin, Photo: Reuters
And no, it was not intoxication of power, nor arrogance, nor piggybacking on the part of the coalition in general, and on the part of Minister Levin in particular. It was an authentic, respectful intention to exercise a democratic mandate, which is a duty fulfilled for voters. Restoring the balance between the three branches of government and restraining the activist trend of the Supreme Court have indeed been at the heart of the right-wing discourse over the past decade, and even more so in the past two or three years. On the face of it, Levin is right, Rothman is right, that a historic political opportunity has been created to bring about the desired change.
But we have seen that "full right" is not enough – and if there is justified criticism of the architects of the reform, it has to do with the unwillingness to recognize the limitations of their power and that of the coalition. And their weakness stemmed from the fact that in the power structure of Israel's public systems, "full right" governments were doomed to be isolated, and to operate within an alienated and hostile work environment.
I am referring to the fact that Israel's parallel centers of power – or simply, the elites – are clearly left-leaning. Academia, the media, the security establishment, the cultural field, the judicial system: all are dominated by a social stratum that identifies with the "old regime"; It goes back to the Labor Party, to the political upheaval, to the Oslo generation – and it reaches this day.
This is a fact, and within this system of constraints we must act. It seems impossible to be completely confrontational with the parallel power groups, and it is difficult to overcome their motivation and willingness to go all the way – including the use of pressure levers that were off-limits. Over the past year, it has been proven that the centers of power hostile to the government are capable not only of delegitimizing its moves globally, but also of granting a kosher certificate for methods that until now were considered unacceptable, such as threatening insubordination or disrupting public order.
"On full", roughly
Whether this is just or fair is irrelevant. This is simply reality – and this should have been understood in time and adapted to the progress of the reform to the existing working conditions. And with that lesson, we must move on. Not only thinking about the distant future, which requires investment in nurturing new generations, a professional reserve, of young people with a conservative and national orientation. They are the ones who will balance the large systems from within and break the ideological conformity, the groupthink, the homogeneity.
But in the short term, this requires a shift to a pattern that seeks to achieve the cooperation of the centers of power, and in fact entering into a kind of indirect bargaining with their representatives. The era of "operative consensus" – the old idea that disagreements and struggles over the allocation of resources may take place in the public sphere, but decisions made in the Knesset and the government must be made – has long since been invalid. There are probably more chances of scoring points in Ayelet Shaked's cooperative approach than in Yariv Levin's muscle leadership.
The advantage is that in the next evolutionary stage of the right, there are agents of influence whose line of thought is not far from that of Levin and Rothman, but whose social positioning allows them to play a key role in consensus-building. Apart from Shaked, this refers to figures such as Gideon Sa'ar, Zvi Hauser and even Ze'ev Elkin. In the government of change, they are ostensibly at his heart in terms of realizing their political potential, but conceptually they have wilted. They lack the charisma and political mass needed to lead right-wing policies within a government in which they are a minority, and without the backing of a right-wing government like the Likud. But in cooperation with the Likud, with the electoral depth of the national camp, they can be the Mapainiks in their glory: the masters of bargaining, negotiating, and executing and bringing in the halls of power of the Israeli elites. It turns out that there is no "full right" without them, and that, too, is a political lesson worth pondering.
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