Many believe that the Israeli Right is on a quest to find new meaning to make up for the ideological dissonance plaguing its ranks since Yamina leader Naftali Bennett and New Hope leader Gideon Sa'ar's departure.
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The existing alternatives seem too ethnocentric to as veering too much toward the Left, and support of former PM Benjamin Netanyahu is perceived as "personal." So what can be done? Make a list of statements about the settlement enterprise, free economy and checks and balances regarding the separation of powers, season with random quotes from Theodor Herzl and Ze'ev Jabotinsky – and presto! You have "meaning." Or do you?
Let's start with the real story. An opportunistic minority group took its voters' ballots and defected from the right-wing camp. Trying to counter its ideological betrayal, this group peddles a false narrative about the majority of the political camp it left, painting it in the same colors used against it by the Left for years: loyal to the leader and not the ideology, incendiary, mob-mentality, disloyal, etc. when in truth these are moral, ethical, rational and ideological people who, despite being the subject on an ongoing smear campaign have remained loyal to their principles and right-wing elected officials.
While others crossed the lines and gained support, sympathetic headlines, and the grace of everyone ignoring their past sins, the right-wing camp saw none of this. When the Right was let by an elected official who was targeted twice as fiercely, it still looked out for the settlement and a free economy and turned Israel into a diplomatic and economic power.
Rather than present all this and strengthening the right-wing public while exposing the double standards on the Left, it seems that a pretentious pattern is beginning to develop on the Right: the need to (again) establish a "new Right." And not just a "Right" – a Right with meaning.
It is not for nothing that this "new meaning" looks more like "the longing for the Right of yesteryear." Those pushing for this seem sick of the central, great, national, traditional, Likud-based, democratic Right as a political camp that has positive content and conscious choice.
This Right knows very well how to define its path and its vision for the State of Israel – with or without highbrow elocution and quotes here and there. A Right that deeply defines the contours of Israeli society and claims these are national ones; which understands that the ideological struggle no longer focuses on the Green or Purple Line, but that the fateful and historical issue that lies ahead of us in the coming years is the struggle over Israel's Jewish character.
While other sectors in Israeli society have formed undemocratic centers of power, at times away from any criticism by the public, the media, or the judiciary, the national Right always presented a democratic alternative.
So democratic, in fact, that even now, after the establishment of a government predicated on the exact opposite of the ideological path that it presented to the public prior to the election, this Right hasn't given up and is again trying to rehabilitate its political might through broad primary elections and opening its ranks to those seeking to make a political difference.
The right-wing camp doesn't need "meaning." Especially when this translates into pseudo-intellectualism wrapped in aesthetic packaging. The Right needs people who will stand at the forefront of the war against the political Left that breaks all the rules of the democratic game. The Right needs people who are ready to roll up their sleeves in the fight for the Jewish state, even at the heavy public and personal cost they could pay simply for belonging to a camp that isn't willing to surrender Herzl's vision to the world. The Right needs to keep fighting for its beliefs, not re-conceptualize itself.
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