As this column is being written, we still don't know who will form the next government, and the Israeli public, having learned from experience, isn't rushing to declare anyone the winner. We are all keeping our assessments to ourselves – at least we've gained that.
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At the same time, a sour sense of loss is pervading the Right. They expected a sweeping victory. Apart from the standard and unusual numbers that characterize the Netanyahu era, it seems as if someone up above was arranging the circumstances for Israel to defeat COVID exactly as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have wished. A scenario in which Netanyahu, an admired diplomat who won praise and envy from the entire world, would lose his seat to a mediocre politician who would have to be pulled, unbelieving, from the opposition bench, seemed completely deranged, or at least not worth more thought.
And here we are, scratching our foreheads. For the thousandth time, it turns out that no one is proof against his own arrogance, and without exception, that someone who bathed in smugness yesterday could find the faucet broken today. "We aren't going out to demonstrate," we told anyone who would listen, spreading prickly condescension.
We said that the groups of protesters who were shaking from the cold, standing at stoplights and holding placards reading "Go" were "crows in black flags" and "bored yentes." We said, "We show up at the polls once every four years, and vote," explaining our guaranteed victory.
Well, "every four years" has turned into every four months, and as for "we demonstrate at the polls," – it turns out that we don't. The Israeli Right was absent from the election, and now, with all due respect and without a bit of cynicism, I take my hat off to the black flag protesters – they did it.
Praying that I turn out to be wrong, I think that the day isn't far off when the judicial branch will make the one decision it must never make. Perhaps it might be a ruling that would totally dismiss the Israeli Knesset and empty it of all meaning, or perhaps it will be a ruling that will destroy the state's Jewish Orthodox character, or possibly a ruling that would allow Netanyahu to be removed from power illegally. "They wouldn't dare," I thought to myself. "It would cause an earthquake." I imagined protests nationwide, with a million and a half right-wing people getting off the couch, heading to the city squares to shout "No more," and draw the line to return to us what is ours.
If anything positive came out of the fourth election, it is the realization that no line will be drawn and no one will cry out. Two million outraged right-wing voters will be so angry they'll stay home, and the people who arrive in the city squares will be the same 300 or so, with their thermoses. Anyone who thinks that the lazy, bourgeois exterior with which the Right has covered itself hides an ideological tiger should think again. According to voting data, there's no one there.
I admit, I also published social media statuses in which I wrote, "Don't worry, love will win out," and as if that weren't embarrassing enough, I should say I truly believed that. Today, I know that what will win is stubbornness, devotion to the mission, and mainly, a lot of hard work. Love didn't win this time, and maybe it's time to say that we were wrong, and look for what will give us a win next time.
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