In Israel, a Test of Decency and Unity Over Ideology

We’re used to clashes between ideologies in Israel—left versus right, religious versus secular, Jews versus Arabs, and so on. Underlying these clashes, however, is a more human schism: Who is acting with decency and who isn’t?

We saw extreme examples of this divide in recent days, as sore losers from one side clashed with gracious winners from the other. It started with Charedi parties, who couldn’t stomach the prospect of losing power.

“The name of the evil shall rot,” UTJ party leader Moshe Gafni said last week, referring to the incoming prime minister Naftali Bennett.

“The Jewish state is in danger,” said Shas leader Arye Deri, and “the government headed by Bennett will destroy and ruin everything that we have preserved of the Jewish character and identity of the country, which enables life together over the last 73 years.”

No insult was too harsh.

Charedi minister Ya’acov Litzman called the incoming coalition “an extremist, left-wing government without values or a moral compass,” and repeated the ridiculous notion that “everything Jewish is being wiped out.”

Likud MK’s like David Amsalem called the new coalition “a government of hate,” while MK Galit Distal Atbaryan said that Bennett and New Hope leader Gideon Sa’ar are like “parasites on an organism.”

This ugliness was merely a continuation of the corrosive and divisive politics that have plagued Israeli society under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu. While Bibi should be commended for his many accomplishments on the world stage, his ruthless “divide and conquer” style will not be missed by Israelis who crave unity and decency.

Bibi demonstrated that divisiveness until the bitter end, when he littered his final speech in the Knesset with nasty attacks on those who will follow him.

As my friend Yossi Klein Halevi wrote in Times of Israel, there were “two Israels” on display at the swearing-in for the new government:

“There was the Israel of desecration, MKs shouting, faces contorted with hate, trampling on the dignity of the state as they refused to allow the prime minister-designate to speak at his own inauguration. And there was the Israel of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, speaking with passion and reason and self-control as they presented their coalition of healing.”

It’s hard to overstate how difficult it must have been to cobble together this new coalition of healing. The ideological differences between the many parties are so great that the mere existence of the coalition boggles the mind.

The conventional wisdom is that the intense desire to replace Netanyahu was what unified them. Yes, but there’s more. This coalition would never have happened without the decent human beings who persevered to make it happen.

It starts with Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett. They set the tone. No matter how many ugly insults they got from the other side, no matter how difficult it became to bring together so many disparate parties, they maintained their decency while seeking unity.

The very optics of unity is an extraordinary development. When Bennett says “I assure you it is a government that will work for the sake of all the people,” he’s playing a whole new instrument.

The very optics of unity is an extraordinary development. When Bennett says “I assure you it is a government that will work for the sake of all the people,” he’s playing a whole new instrument. When he says “we’re here in the name of good” and “not to dance on the pain of others” and “we are not enemies, we are one people,” he sounds radically new.

I can’t remember the last time I heard an Israeli leader even utter such words. Maybe they figured words of unity were for suckers, or “freiers.” But it’s precisely their innocence and lack of cynicism that has made them cut through.

When Yair Lapid says, “The Israeli public deserves a functioning and responsible government that places the good of the country at the top of its agenda … All the partners in this government are committed, first and foremost, to the people of Israel,” he captures the hopes and dreams of a people exhausted by ugliness.

It is those human bonds that help us transcend our ideological differences for the sake of a higher ideal.

You can’t get to such a place of unity without a sense of decency that nurtures loyalty and friendship. It is those human bonds that help us transcend our ideological differences for the sake of a higher ideal.

The fragile new Israeli government will be shaped and tested, in many ways, by the human bonds between its two leaders—Bennett and Lapid. They will be the human face of a new Israel.