In California, there is a section of Los Angeles County that has almost thrown off COVID. No one has died there in the past two days. What joy! What praise! Correspondents are happily reporting it, even in the Israeli media. But here, even though people have forgotten there ever was a pandemic, one of the people aspiring to become prime minister, Yair Lapid, is blaming the prime minister for unnecessary COVID deaths. He is also looking for people to blame for the deaths of 45 participants in the Lag B'Omer celebrations last Thursday. It's best not to try and parse the twisted motives behind the accusations.
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Statements like these reminds us again of a deep-seated problem in Israeli politics, one that resurfaces at full strength now that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's last day to form a government has arrived. It's a lack of responsibility. Even childness, to a certain extent, in the way that the leaders of the religious Zionist parties and more than a few MKs are behaving.
The noisy public conduct of declarations and press conferences is testimony of the problem. Both Bezalel Smotrich and Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked make us miss solid, responsible leaders such as Zvulun Orlev, or Ori Orbach, not to mention the late Dr. Yosef Burg. It is possible to form a government โ all that is needed is for two MKs to make a decision.
The Bibiphobic bloc of hate doesn't really have a chance of forming a serious alternative government. But MKs on Gideon Sa'ar's list or from Yisrael Beytenu, as well as a few from Benny Gantz's team, are simply afraid. Afraid of the black-shirt rabble and Twitter, the mainstream media pundits, not to mention the State Attorney's Office. They don't dare make the redemptive move that would allow Benjamin Netanyahu to form a right-wing government that would be some version or another of the will of the voters.
Smotrich doesn't understand that Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas is a less bad option than the left-wing parties and their leaders โ what will the leftist parties do to win the trust of Yamina or New Hope? Over the past few years, the Left has proven that it has no boundaries when it comes to subverting, through radical groups, the state of Israel's existence. Its organizations sow chaos among the Israeli public and are partners in the international battle against the state. This, apparently, is what frightened Ayelet Shaked, and maybe even Bennett, who have realized who their partners are in the bloc that includes Lapid, Merav Michaeli, and Ayman Odeh.
Of all the strange proposals that have been made, the best one would be to allocate a budget of 2 billion shekels to two MKs who will join the effort and help secure a majority for a right-wing government. The two MKs would spend the money on issues dear to their hearts, including pensions for Russian-speaking immigrants. The cost of the standard coalition agreements is usually much higher. We can calculate how many billions and how many human lives Yair Lapid would have cost us, if he'd been prime minister for the past year and a half.
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