Tzipi Livni Talks About the Future of Israel

Three decades after Golda Meir became Israel’s first female prime minister, many thought Tzipi Livni would become the second. When Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stepped down in 2009, she was unable to form a coalition. In the elections that year, she led the Kadima party to a 28-27 seat win over Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud.

“The Elected,” now streaming on ChaiFlicks, is a fascinating three-part docuseries that highlights Livni’s political career, as well as that of other female Knesset members, including Limor Livnat, Ayelet Shaked, Merav Michaeli, Pnina Tamano-Shata, Stav Shaffir, and others. Produced by Osnat Trabelsi, head of Trabelsi Productions, and directed by Efrat Shalom Danon, the series traces the progression of Israeli women in politics: In 1969, there were eight female members in the Knesset; in 2022, 43 of 123 Knesset members were women.

Livni told the Journal that she participated in the series because she knew there were women inspired by her career and the feedback she got when it aired in Israel was that there were women who felt empowered, and she wanted them to know “you could do it as well.”

Asked what she took away from being so close to the seat of highest office, she said she wanted to win to help her country and power was not what was attractive to her.

“Since I got the mandate to form a government and I didn’t succeed to do so, I had some sleepless nights as you can imagine, thinking what I could have done better,” Livni said.

Livni grew up around politics. Her father was a member of the Knesset from 1974-84, and she entered politics “because of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the need to solve it.” She first ran for office in 1996 on the Likud list, but was not elected. Since then she has served in governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon. A moderate member of Likud, in 2005 she left the party and formed Kadima with Sharon and Ehud  Olmert; when Olmert was named prime minister, she was appointed foreign minister, the first women to hold that position since Meir. In that position, she was one of the most prominent defenders of the two-state solution. When Olmert was forced to step down in 2008, Livni became the prime minister designate, but was unable to form a governing coalition.

“Later I understood that I could have made it,” Livni said. “So, I did my best, but I also kept my own set of values. I was not willing to give everything that they wanted because the idea is that for me, to be a prime minister was to promote things that I believe in. For me, it’s not about prestige, it’s about the positions where I can promote my beliefs. The most important ones were the foreign minister, chief negotiator and minister of justice. Therefore, since I understood they were asking more and more so even if I pay (in concessions) at the end of the day, I could not promote what I believe in. It was useless.”

Livni said that while she is “not optimistic these days,” there will always be problems and obstacles and that should not alter the overall vision of a two-state solution and hopefully there will be a partner for peace.

“I think that the most important thing is for us Israelis to decide what is our goal, what is our vision, and how to reach that,” Livni said. “So, my national GPS is to keep Israel as a Jewish Democratic state, a secure state, and therefore we need to have a Jewish majority inside Israel. Because otherwise we will see clash between being a Jewish state and a democracy and by the way, this is what we see now in Israel in a way.”

She added said that she “would not put obstacles in my way and therefore I would not expand settlements or do certain things that at the end of the day will make it harder to reach an agreement.”

In 2007, Israeli pilots destroyed Syria’s nuclear facility, in a decision made by then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. At the time, Livni was the foreign minister, and Ehud Barak was the defense minister.

“This was quite a dramatic moment,” Livni said. “It was only the three of us, in the end, it was successful, but it could have led to another war.”

The Israeli Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments about the “Reasonableness” Law passed by the Knesset in July in a 64-0 vote after seven months of discussion and unprecedented protests by Israelis who took to the streets. The law is aimed at stopping the Supreme Court from being able to review and strike down decisions by government officials it deems “unreasonable.”

Some view this and other proposed reforms as either necessary or within the power of the elected parliament, with talk of it being a threat to democracy as hyperbole. But many, including hundreds of thousands who have gathered for eight months of unprecedented protests, believe democracy is under attack and what is happening is an abuse of power.

She said she believes the proposed reforms are unjust and her advise is to cease such efforts.

“Stop these reforms because these are not reforms,” Livni said, adding that the current fight is for the soul of Israel.

She also said she believes Israel to be a nation-state based on democracy and equality while some view it simply as a religious entity.

“I’m happy that things that were underneath the surface are now in the open because this is a fight that is worth it,” Livni said. “I prefer to know we have a problem, to have this debate instead of thinking that everything is okay, when this group is taking us to a non-democratic state. These are historical moments for Israel. Maybe its time to decide what does it mean to be a Jewish democratic state?”

What would happen if the Israeli Supreme Court rules that what the Knesset did was invalid and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares that the Supreme Court’s decision was invalid?

Livni it would be “a huge drama.

What you see now with the demonstrations would be just the teaser.”

“The Elected” shows women breaking the “glass ceiling” of politics dominated by men. Livnat, a member of Likud, became minister of culture and sport and later minister of education. She said she was intimidated at first, practiced speaking in a lower voice and took off her rings other than her wedding ring to look like a “run of the mill” person.

Shaked, who led Likud, explained the difficulties.

“It’s harder for women to become party leaders because it demands a huge sacrifice,” Shaked said. “I work 18 hours a day and I sacrifice so much. I’m paying the price when it comes to my family. To head a party, you have to make that sacrifice. You need elbows, let alone a dagger between your teeth, you have to be cruel at times, even towards the people who were close to you and women aren’t usually like that.”

Michaeli, who leads the Labor party and served as Minister of Transport, said women don’t get the same teaching early on.

“We’re not trained for the position,” Michaeli said. “We’re not taught to play soccer. In soccer, boys are taught to score, to win, to lose, to acknowledge the captain, to divvy up positions. We don’t learn all that. We’re sent to dance lessons, alone …”

Tamano-Shata, who became the first Ethiopian born member of Knesset, spoke of a racist slur being used in reference to her that made her cry and related the difficulty of running in primaries for those who are not wealthy.

Shafir explained that she developed a filter for any kind of chauvinism and realized she was in denial. We see a scene where Prime Minister Naftali Bennett dismissively calls her “young” and refers to her as “shrieking” during a public session.

There’s also Shelly Yachimovich, who was a member of Labor, and lamented receiving unwanted hugs.

“It’s unpleasant when a sweaty man wearing tons of cologne gives you a friendly hug, even if he’s a socialist,” she says in the series.

Marcia Freedman, who moved from America to Israel in 1967, was a pioneer of women’s rights and LGBTQ rights was a member of the Ratz party, was interviewed in Berkeley. In the series, when she brought up the need for legislation against domestic violence, she was heckled by male Knesset members.

“I talked about issues that no one talked about,” she says in her interview. The second episode is dedicated to Freedman,who died in 2021 as the series was being made.

Journalist Anat Saragusti explains there is what she calls a “Golda factor,” in that some believe Meir failed by listening to the generals who incorrectly predicted Egypt and Syria would not attack for what became the Yom Kippur war. Sargusti noted that since Livni is a woman, her inability to form a coalition is unfairly highlighted; Netanyahu failed in the same fashion and has not received such criticism.

Livni says with the onset of the Second Lebanon War, she asked generals a question others feared to ask: What would be their definition of victory? She says she knew it would be used against her. It was. Anegative — and possibly sexist — advertisement claimed she didn’t think Israel could win the war with the slogan that being prime minister “is too much for her” or “she’s in over her head.”

While Livni’s her two sons disliked that she was in politics, they encouraged her to go for it because they reminded her she taught them to fight for what you believe in.

“If you don’t succeed, the shame is not on you, but on those who didn’t vote for you,” she recalled them saying.

She said she was inspired by Hillary Clinton nearly winning the presidency in 2016 as well as Tamano-Shata, an Ethiopian immigrant who was proud that a woman could reach political heights in Israel and may want to do the same.

Livni, who has been in several parties, most recently Hatnua, said she learned a valuable lesson.

“If you had asked me before I became foreign minister about the difference of decision making between men and men, I would have said we are human beings, it’s the same,” she said. “But it’s not the same. I believe that most of us — as women — are making decisions in accordance with a legal compass. It’s not about politics. When we enter the room for negotiations, political or others, it’s not about power and whose going to win politically, it’s more about reaching a solution. Therefore, I believe it is important to have women in office.”