1.
Just before we landed in Florida, I took a picture of the beautiful wing of the plane, glowing in the morning light over the Atlantic Ocean. The fleecy clouds below served as wonderful scenery. How uplifting. Is this how Icarus felt as he soared closer and closer to the sun, not heeding his father's warnings? In that myth, people tend to forget about Daedalus, who knew how to take the middle road (the glowing golden path…) and managed to cross the sea and make it safely to land. We do, too. I thought about the immense effort being made to build up Benny Gantz, or more accurately – his public image. But if it weren't for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Gantz wouldn't get too far off the ground. The media is sending him up like (yet another) hopeful who can bring down the one they hate. Not out of love for Gantz, but because of their hatred for Netanyahu. What will be Gantz's fate – that of Icarus or that of Daedalus?
2.
More than anything else, the feeling that has arisen in election campaigns these past few years is that we no longer focus on ideology or on defining fundamental differences, heaven forbid; it's all "incitement, factionalization, and schisms." We need to focus on what unites us, they say: "a leadership that creates a united, unified, cohesive society." But then what differentiates most of the parties? Does anyone object to lowering the cost of living, to peace and security, to a home for every worker, and to redeeming Zion and waging bitter war against our enemies?
The favorite parties of most of the media are aiming at some imaginary Center: "Neither Right nor Left," not meat or dairy, but both – "It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other," as Ecclesiastes 7:18 wisely says. And that's good – dozens of seats, most of which used to belong to the left-wing camp, have moved to the Center. Where does the goal of presenting an imaginary Center – one that does not veer off the path marked by "strategic advisers" and contains everything – come from?
On plenty of issues, there is a consensus that includes 70-80% of the general population. Another 10-15% exist on the fringes of each side. Nevertheless, most of the left-wing parties, other than Meretz, are aiming for the Center even though not all of their opinions lie at the center of the social spectrum. In the end, when it comes to any controversial issue, the "centrists" will have to make a decision. But then, they might not be in the center. It's a problem. For example, most of the public supports the nation-state law. Opposing that law places the person who opposes it on the other side. What do they do? Obfuscate the messages and hope the public will swallow it.
Most of the people who vote for the "centrist" parties aren't really in the center – they used to vote for the Left but want a new government – which is legitimate – so they need to move a few seats from the right-wing camp to the rival one. They'll do that by dressing up as "centrists." Can't Israelis see the bluff? We have opinions about almost everything – then someone shows up and puts his name to an imaginary center with generalized messages and whose catchphrase is "different politics," and everyone is supposed to just say, "Amen"? What does that say about the insulting way this bunch sees the public?
Incidentally, what did Gantz mean by his remark that security is achieved through actions, not words? This is the war of the different images and masks the "strategic advisers" have draped around their candidate. They are meant to say: I know how to make you feel safe. I am doing everything behind the scenes, quietly and with determination, to hold our enemies in check. I'm not a braggart. How does that square with Gantz's direct, public threats against Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Hamas, and the evil wizard Voldemort? It's all talk.
3.
Between the lines of his speech, you could spot the ideas on which Gantz was raised. He accused the current government of behaving like French aristocrats. Then he hinted about which family he meant: "The state is I." At the same time, he declared, "There will be no incitement against the institutions of justice."
Who is claiming that the courts are currently under attack? Fans of judicial activism. They barricade themselves behind it because that is how they can maintain the power of the old elite and its (controversial) values without having to run for election. The power that the Supreme Court of Israel has given itself to reject laws, expand the right to petition the High Court of Justice (anyone can petition the court about any issue, even if he or she hasn't been directly harmed), and intervene in political issues that fall outside of its purview is unprecedented in the West. It is the result of basic condescension toward the people, who are deemed insufficiently democratic and don't know what values they should espouse. So we need judges who will decide the feature of our democracy for us.
The court's attitude isn't necessarily about the law. It is an attack on simple democracy (rule of the people) in the name of "liberal democracy." And when anyone wants to reduce the current oligarchy's power and restore the checks and balances between the branches of government, it rears up and cries "attack on the rule of law" or "incitement against judicial institutions." When Professor Daniel Friedman, a former justice minister, openly talks about cooking up cases against elected officials, or President Reuven Rivlin – who coined the phrase "the rule of law gang" and talked about a case having been stitched up against him to prevent him from being appointed justice minister – is that "incitement against judicial institutions," or a reproof intended to fix this intolerable situation of judicial intervention?
Gantz mentioned the absolute rule of Louis XIV. We should remember that this was a king who represented the European Enlightenment while in effect implementing Plato's idea of a lone philosopher king. At best, it was an enlightened dictatorship. Today, it isn't the Israeli people who are determining the country's values through public debate and a vote, but rather a small group of judges. That is the legacy of former Chief Justice Aharon Barak: A judicial elite comprised almost entirely of one kind of skin and one legal vision. What is that, if not an expression of "The state is I"?
4.
Ever since Gantz started to take off in the polls, the color has returned to the cheeks of the "original Israel" (also known as the "white tribe") in the media, on social media, and in left-wing organizations (known as "civil society"), and they are all pushing to unite all the military commanders, all the left-wing parties and organizations, and all the heavenly hosts into one front that will fight Benjamin Netanyahu.
Even those who don't want Netanyahu might wind up admitting that since he fell on the old establishment in his first term, replacing the rival messiahs – the late Yitzhak Rabin and then the late Shimon Peres – Netanyahu has deviated from a certain kind of persona and come to symbolize a different Israel, butting heads with those who assumed to know what was good for these people who were too "stupid" (that is what a columnist for the Haaretz newspaper called them, demonstrating that insults like ones from artist Yair Garbuz are a common phenomenon and not a stray incident) to see the light and reason in vote for all the other pale messiahs.
In 1928, the poet Uri Zvi Greenberg published a literary work titled "One against Ninety-Nine" in which he portrayed himself as a lone warrior fighting against the entire literary establishment. Something similar is taking place between Netanyahu and the rest of the political establishment, the media, and academia. For the next 70 days, we will be watching an epic play on a grand – almost biblical – scale, not about the fate of Israel but about an attempt by the tribe that used to rule to regain what it has lost: the reins of power.
