What Winning the Elections Has to Do with Passover

Regardless of the winner, the upcoming term of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) will be short lived. You don’t have to be a prophet to know that; you qualify if you’re a homo sapient who hasn’t been disconnected from the news for the past four decades. It makes you ponder the point of it all, but just as in show business, the show must go on no matter what, and on it goes, at our expense.

Despite the regional mayhem, frequent elections, and “flexibility of MPs,” for lack of a more dignified word to describe their extensive motility, the Israeli democracy is sound, and well grounded in the political culture. This is important because the democracy and culture of pluralism allow us to examine our society with sincerity, and confess to our division.

We talk about “the nation of Israel,” “love of Israel,” and how we must “stand united in the face of danger.” At the same time, we slander one another day in and day out, especially during elections, and intensify people’s polarization. It is often mind boggling to see the length to which some politicians go to delegitimize their opponents, just to win a few more votes.

The problem is that in the process of celebrating our right to elect our candidate of choice, we are displaying confounding amounts of hatred for one another, while bellowing our desire to see the nation united. It is as though we’re trying to win not for the sake of an idea, but for the sake of preventing “the others” from realizing their dream, which seems to us like a nightmare.

With each elections, our nation grows weaker, not in the military sense, but in the spiritual one. Our spirit is our unity; it is what’s kept us through all of our wars, and it is what’s keeping us still. But it has already been said that if the Arabs really want to annihilate the Jewish state they should simply put down their guns and let us argue ourselves to the point where we can’t stand each other and disperse.

Pluralism is a blessing, but it can only prosper when founded on the basis of agreeing that diversity serves the collective, not disintegrates it. So in my view, our first and foremost task following this election is to restore our solidarity, solidify it, and make it the basis of our nation. This will enable us to solve all other problems—economic, security, education, and foreign relations—once and for all, and in a timely manner.

Why is unity so important?

Like it or not, Israel is the focal point of the world. There is not a day when we are not mentioned in the news, and almost invariably in a negative tone. The end of the last summer’s Gaza campaign has not quelled anti-Semitism even in the least. On the contrary, it has made it more subversive and noxious.

Next month in Southampton, UK, there will be a