This week, I was reminded of one of the slogans adopted by Israeli elites during the 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip: "We'll get through this together." How ironic. At what may have been one of the most divisive times in recent Israeli history, when we had barely had a chance to catch our breath following the 1993 Oslo Accords and the Second Intifada, the elites pushed a manipulative slogan about fake unity.
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"We'll get through this together," they said. The only people who felt they were together at that terrible moment in history were supporters of the disengagement and the Left, who had finally achieved a moral victory over the ideological Right. It was none other than then-journalist Yair Lapid who revealed the elites' true motivation for the move: "It had nothing to do with the Palestinians, demography, the desire to make peace, the relative feebleness of the IDF, or any other explanation that was given. There was a totally different motivation behind the disengagement … The Israelis merely felt that the settlers should be taught a lesson in humility and perhaps in democracy too."
Intricate lies were told in those days. No one "got through it together," and the elite consciousness programmers had no intention of giving anyone a sense of "togetherness." The disengagement created a sociopolitical crisis that led many on the Right and in settler society to contemplate military insubordination and flirt with the idea of retiring from mainstream society. The elites hoped to push the ideological Right aside and neutralize its influence at that time. Amazingly, this is the mirror image of what is happening today.
Still today, agents of the establishment are propagating a false narrative of a kind of indisputable notion that we live in a divided society. The political tensions that are only natural in an election cycle combined with a difficulty in enforcing stately discipline during a pandemic are fertile ground for a propaganda campaign that presents Israeli society as "sick," "crumbling," "on the verge of civil war," and "more divided than ever." This is the image of Israel we see on our TV screens, but it's not what you'll find outside your door. Always ask yourself: Who has something to gain from the impression society is in a state of crisis? Always think about when the elites want us to think of ourselves as "united" and when they prefer to see us "divided."
We have been "divided" for the past decade, even though social cohesion has been on the rise. More and more sectors are lifting themselves up, further integrating into Israeli society in a way that no longer requires them to shed their culture of origin while competing for access to centers of influence, action, and creation.
Those who are threatened by this process are those same groups that were once dominant in Israel, but ever since the Likud first rose to power in 1977, have been in a state of moral panic at the opening up of Israeli society. This is the source of the "great division." They were very comfortable a few decades back when they enjoyed unrivaled advantages in every aspect of social, economic, and political life. At that time, they could close their ears to the Haredim, the Mizrachim, the Arabs, and the right-wing political periphery and unjustly claim to the rest of the world that Israeli society was unified.
What holds true for the manipulative "We'll get through it together" slogan is also true of the slogans of division. No, we didn't get through it together over a decade, and no, Israeli society is not disintegrating as we speak. Both of these slogans are propaganda tools aimed at neutralizing the Right. Faced with calls to "get through this together," the Right offered an alternative, which today is one of heartache.
I won't say too much about the New Hope party, whose members identify more sociologically with the experience of the forlorn elites in 1977 than those Lapid insinuated were "insane": right-wingers, settlers, Haredim, and Likud voters.
I am, however, surprised by Yamina head Naftali Bennett. He was on the right side of the recuperation process from the disengagement trauma and rose up the ranks in the post-disengagement eras as one of the voices urging the elimination of the retirement option, a path of entry for all decision-making circles, and the formation of new elites, including from the national-religious sector, on the Right.
The man who knew how to offer a counter-narrative to that of the leftist elites has himself become the spokesperson for elitist propaganda in recent years. He tells Israelis they are "sick" and require "healing." He takes care to market this baseless message, and that to this end, ideological considerations that include the erasure of the political self may be appropriate. Bennett also volunteers to serve in the role of the knight in shining armor. Have no fear, dear miserable elites and members of the Left, he assures them, for I will save you from the Right.
If there is any symbolical significance to Bennett's leadership moment it is that it will be defined by just how much he defies the Left. Will he realize that when it comes to the Left, "division" will only be replaced with "togetherness" once the Right has been neutralized of power? We'll learn next week whether Bennett dares to offer an alternative storyline or settles for becoming a tool for the elites, or in other words, the Left.
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