A Short Political History of Israel (Vic Rosenthal)

 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

In the pre-state period, the socialist Left dominated the yishuv. They created the institutions that would form the basis of the state, and ran them according to their ideology. The Histadrut labor federation dominated the economy; its closely allied kibbutz movement was the primary producer of agricultural products, the Solel Boneh construction company built roads and buildings, and the Kupat Holim Clalit health fund was everyone’s healthcare provider. The Zim shipping line and the ports, the Tnuva dairy cooperative – most of the essential pieces of the economy were fully or partly controlled by the Histadrut, which was the heart of the Labor Party.

When Labor Party leader David Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel and became its first Prime Minister, naturally his people ended up in key places in government and business. The government supported arts and culture, and naturally the artists who received grants were the right kind (I should say, the left kind) of people. Music on the state radio stations was primarily written and performed by ideologically correct artists. The Mizrachi Jews that came here after the War of Independence and through the 1960s were treated as second-class citizens by the Labor establishment, which tried to keep them out of the political and cultural life of the country (this was the case for many years – when I tried to buy music by Mizrachi artists in the early 1980s, it was still mostly found on cassettes produced by back-porch entrepreneurs).

The right-wing political opposition was kept as far away from power as possible. Efforts were made to delegitimize the Herut party, led by Menachem Begin, and even to “remove [it] from any recollection or participation in [remembrance of war dead].” The contributions of the right-wing military organizations, Etzel and Lehi, to the achievement of independence were minimized or erased from official histories. Ben Gurion would not even mention Menachem Begin’s name in the Knesset, or speak directly to him. Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Etzel and the inspiration for much of the Israeli Right, died in 1940; Ben Gurion did not allow him to be buried in Israel and it was not until he left power that Jabotinsky’s remains were finally brought to Mount Herzl.

But in 1977, the world (well, at least Medinat Yisrael) turned upside down. In 1973, the Labor government had blown it big time. Regardless of the debate about precisely who was responsible for the debacle that almost ended the State of Israel, it was clear that it was time for new leadership. At the same time, Mizrachim had had enough of the paternalistic condescension and discrimination that characterized the establishment that was running the government. The people of Israel gave Begin’s Likud 43 seats, despite the fact that Begin himself had recently suffered a heart attack and did not participate in the campaign.

Since then, Israel has had right-wing leadership – or at least purportedly right-wing leadership – with the exception of a period between 1984-86 when Shimon Peres was PM in a rotation agreement as part of a unity government, 1992-96 when Yitzhak Rabin was PM, followed by Peres after his assassination; and then in 1999-2001, the term of the execrable Ehud Barak.

The Labor Party and the various small parties to its left have shrunk radically, as the Israeli public lost confidence in them following Oslo and then the Second Intifada. But to a great extent the leftish establishment in the media, the arts, academia, and the legal profession has remained dominant in those areas. And it has become more and more frantic in its desire to regain its former control of the country. In particular, it sees Binyamin Netanyahu, who has surpassed Ben Gurion as the longest-serving Prime Minister, as the personification of the enemy, a fascist enemy of democracy. But that is unfair. Netanyahu has problems, but he is not an enemy of democracy. He has become PM by winning democratic elections, or at least by putting together coalitions, something the opposition cannot do.

The Blue and White party was created by this establishment for one reason only: to remove Netanyahu. Benny Gantz was chosen as a neutral figure, somebody that would be respected as a former Chief of Staff, a person who has little baggage. His campaign was notable for its concentration on Netanyahu’s indictments and its almost total lack of other content. The party leadership does not share an ideology, and I suspect that 99% of those who voted for it understood that they were voting to depose Netanyahu – and the rest would have to take care of itself.

What has happened now, as I write, is that Blue and White did not come close to being able to obtain the needed 61 mandates to form a government, so they violated their pre-election promise to not try to form a minority government supported from the outside by votes from the anti-Zionist Arab parties. But then it turned out that they did not have the votes to do even that. So while they negotiated with the Likud to form a unity government in which Netanyahu and Gantz would take turns being PM, they planned to get the Knesset to pass several bills that would prevent Bibi from serving due to his indictments.

In order to do this, the Speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, would have to let it happen, and Likudnik Edelstein wasn’t moving. B&W demanded that the Knesset vote to replace Edelstein with a more pliant candidate, but Edelstein refused to schedule that vote. So they turned to the Supreme Court, which issued a ruling that Edelstein must schedule the vote to replace him. Edelstein responded by resigning his position as Speaker, and in a particularly moving statement, said,

The High Court of Justice’s decision is not based on the language of the law, but on a unilateral and extreme interpretation. The decision of the High Court destroys the work of the Knesset. The High Court decision constitutes a gross and arrogant intervention of the judiciary in the affairs of the elected legislature. The High Court decision infringes on the sovereignty of the Knesset. ...

As someone who has paid a heavy personal cost of years of imprisonment and hard labor for the right to live as a citizen of the State of Israel, no explanation is needed as to how much I love the State of Israel and the people of Israel. Therefore, as a democrat, as a Jewish-Zionist, as a person fighting against dark regimes, and as chair of this House, I will not allow Israel to deteriorate into anarchy. I will not lend a hand to civil war. I will act in the spirit of Menachem Begin who in June 1948, during the Altalena days, prevented civil war.

Members of Knesset, citizens of Israel, these days our people need unity, need a unity government. These days, when an epidemic threatens us from the outside and the cleavage rips us from the inside, we must all act as human beings, we must all transcend. We must all unite.

Therefore, for the State of Israel and in order to renew the state spirit in Israel, I hereby resign from my position as Speaker of the Knesset. We will pray, and even act, for better days. 

Edelstein’s resignation will take effect in 48 hours. But the Knesset’s legal advisor warned him that he will be liable to a charge of contempt of court if he does not allow a vote to be called immediately. I suspect that the man who spent three years in a Siberian gulag will not change his mind.

I see the whole process that began with the investigations into Netanyahu more than three years ago, with all of the improprieties involved – the continuous media leaks from the police and prosecution, the abuse of witnesses, the recent last-minute attempts to change the law so that Netanyahu could not be even a part-time PM, the intervention of the Court – as a continuation of the struggle to subvert the will of Israeli voters, and bring the discredited Left back to power.

But the world has changed. The Labor Party and the Histadrut can’t pick the prime minister from among their activists anymore, as they did until 1977. Ben Gurion isn’t coming back. Form a unity government with Bibi and move on.

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Living In Between the Rockets: A Grandson's Second Birthday Party Canceled Due to Gaza Rocket Fire (Judean Rose)

My grandson's second birthday party had to be canceled due to rocket fire. I had arranged to attend the festivities and had set the alarm clock to meet my ride at approximately dawn o’clock. But when I rolled out of bed in the near darkness, I had two messages. One from my ride, and one from my daughter in-law, both telling me that it just wasn’t happening today. Maybe tomorrow.

I’d known the night before that it might not happen. Because when the rockets fly thick and fast, school is canceled, and no one can work. The party was to be held in my grandson’s daycare center. But there was no daycare that day. Or the next.

When the rockets are seeking out Jewish bodies to destroy, Jewish children don’t get to have birthday parties. They stay instead in their safe rooms and shelters, frightened and shaking as they hear the sirens and the booms.  “Every red alert makes me shake in my hands and legs. Every boom terrifies me,” said one little girl in Sderot.

I can confirm that the same is true of all of the children of Southern Israel, including my grandchildren who live in the city of Netivot. I watched my granddaughter’s face crumble when she heard an ambulance go by during dinner in our Sukkah in Efrat, this past fall. S. literally dissolved into tears, though she had been in a fine mood until that moment. We understood: she'd thought it was a red alert, a rocket siren.

With well-practiced hands, my son and daughter in-law put my granddaughter to bed. The stress of the moment had wiped her out. “This is what it means to grow up in Netivot,” said my daughter in-law.

It was as if, S., my granddaughter, had lost herself, lost something essential, when that ambulance siren sounded. She was no longer in control of herself or her story. Sirens meant rockets, and they were bigger than she, and unpredictable, ruling over all. 

Including my grandson’s birthday party, which, by the time this piece is published, will still not have occurred. The rockets have stopped, but it's hard living in between the rockets, rearranging and reshuffling life. It’s hard to make space for what already should have been.

Every time there is rocket fire, I feel distress for my grandchildren, for the fear I know they experience. The spotty sleep, the running to shelter, and of course, the anticipated celebrations canceled. Trying not to go stir-crazy in a single, small room, the entire family just works to conserve energy, to catch some rest as the rockets fly, the sirens blare, and the booms sound, telling you just how close it was this time. (Sometimes much too close for comfort.)

In the South, it’s not just the rockets, of course. There are the balloons, which aren’t toys to play with, but something sent by people who want to kill you, because you are a Jewish child. How do you come to grips with something like that?

How does a child come to grips with people who shoot things at you, bringing on a whole set of scary events: sirens, booms, running into safe rooms or shelters or stairwells in the middle of the candlelit peace of a Sabbath meal, or the happiness of a birthday party, or in the case of my grandson, a canceled party, the canceling of happiness and what should have been a happy time, which is now instead, a scary time that makes you shake.

My two-year-old grandson just wants to be a two-year-old. He shouldn’t have to deal with these awful terrorists who think that Jewish children--people like my little grandson G.--aren’t really human, but some kind of pestilence or vermin. That this being the case, little Jews can be targeted at will and no one will care how they feel, or whether they feel at all.

And maybe no one does.

Because the list of people who don’t care about my grandson is long. It includes not only Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) (which claims responsibility for the most recent attacks), but also Jeremy Ben Ami, Linda Sarsour, Peter Beinart, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Bernie Sanders and anyone who votes Democrat in the next election come November.

Not that Trump can solve this problem any better than Israel’s own leaders. But better Trump than any Dem, because Trump sees Israel as an ally to work with and assist, whereas, the Dems see Israel as an abuser and occupier. They see Israel as needing to be brought into line, and punished through the withholding of their money and approbation.

Dems prefer to support the Arabs, whom they see as oppressed, because they are brown and poor and have no state of their own, never mind the attacks, the rockets and the balloons targeting Jews and Jewish children. Because if the Arabs are poor, brown, and oppressed, and have no state of their own, how can they possibly be expected to behave?

This is the immature paternalistic vision of the Arab people which crowds out every other perspective, so that we don’t see the canceled birthday parties, the Jewish children shaking with fear, the exploding miscarriage rate in Southern Israel, or the rampant PTSD destroying families and careers. The media doesn’t care to write about this even one little bit, and if they do, they are sure that it’s Israel that started it all, that it is Israel’s own fault.

I am powerless to do anything about this, as powerless as the children of Southern Israel to stop the sirens and the booms that send them into safe rooms and destroy what should have been a day of song and cake and presents. A day when turning two should have been the main event. I don’t know a right way to explain this to children.

I only know that it is wrong.

Sometimes I wonder why my son and his small family, of all the places in the world, chose to live in Southern Israel, knowing what it would be like, the sirens, the booms, the running for shelter. But I already know the answer: If Jews will not live in Southern Israel, the enemy will take it over, and the rockets will come closer to the center of the country.

Which means that the Jews of Southern Israel are heroes and patriots. On the other hand, there is seemingly no solution to their problem.

Neither Gantz nor Bibi can stop the rockets or the balloons.

That ship sailed with Disengagement.

There is no way to roll it back. Nor can Israel carpet bomb the innocent or even not-so-innocent civilians of Gaza. Because the world won’t stand for it, or because Israel isn’t brave enough or stupid enough to do so. We don’t want to do it. But truly, there is no other way to stop the rockets, to stop the balloons, to stop the shaking limbs of the children who live under this reign of terror, while just trying to have a normal life.

My grandchildren are lucky. Their parents have a car. They got in the car and drove to Jerusalem to get a break from it all, the sirens, the booms, the crowded safe room. They visited the aquarium, had pizza, and played Grandma’s piano in Efrat. Then they went home, not knowing how long they will have until the next time the rockets fall, sending them into a limbo where life is put on hold and children shake, not knowing who among them will live and who will die.

G. leaving Grandma's house to go home to Netivot.

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