In recent years, a highly developed idea of the ideological Right has emerged in Israel. Similar to the American model, the security hawkishness is joined by a few more principles: free market, constitutional freedom and legal-constitutional conservatism, which have all become the agenda of a small yet vocal group of right-wing activists and have become prominent in the internal ideological discourse in the camp.
These ideas are not foreign to the Right, and many of them are rooted in the writings of Jabotinsky and others. There are a few reasons for this, and certainly, the educational activity of organizations like the Tikvah Fund, Kohelet Policy Forum, and the Mida website (full disclosure: I was one of its founders and editors) have a part in this. But this is not what we're here to discuss.
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The thing is that despite these ideas being distinctly right-wing from an abstract ideological point of view, from a political one, most of the right-wing has nothing to do with them. Within the "right-wing bloc", the whole ultra-Orthodox wing is irrelevant to the discussion on free markets, constitutional freedom, "small government" and so on. Even judicial activism rarely interests them, only when it specifically hurts them.
The parties in the national religious sector are more aware of the judicial issues, but when it comes to the economy, for example, liberals are a minority. And in the Likud? Oy, the Likud, except for Netanyahu and a few new politicians like Minister Amir Ohana, MK Sharren Haskel and maybe Amit Halevi, and in some ways Ariel Kellner, no one knows who Milton Friedman was or what reducing government expenses is about. The ministers compete with each other who spends more money and keep adding more lines to the regulation books. On the legal front, the Likud has just woken up in recent years, when they found out that "judicification" hurts their camp politically.
The tardiness of the Likud in catching the judicial train has brought much criticism its way from "ideological" activists on the Right, who are very vocal on social media, much less so in real politics. But let's be honest: Even those who lead the legal wing on the Right never dealt with these issues until they were really affected, and I'm talking of course about the settlements. As long as there was a real threat of evacuating settlements for political and diplomatic reasons, no one even knew what the High Court of Justice was.
But when that threat was removed (and here is where Netanyahu gets credit), the fight for the Land of Israel moved to another arena: Petitions to the High Court from left-wing organizations, especially against what are called "outposts."
The death of Oslo gave birth to the legal battle, and the settlers moved from the town squares to the flowing robes. Bezalel Smotrich, the loud activist who became a lawyer and founded a judicial organization, is the most distinct example of this. So is Itamar Ben Gvir. Excuse me: Attorney Ben Gvir. It's no coincidence that all the judicial organizations on the Right were founded in the last 15 years, and most are headed by people whose formative years were spent demonstrating against Oslo.
And here's where I get to the point. Politically, most of the principles of the new Right are not traditionally in the Right. The struggle against judicial activism was led by classic Mapai-centrist figures. Rabin's critique of the High Court on security issues is well known. The opposition to Aharon Barak was led by the then head of the Israel Bar Association, Dror Hoter Yishai (who was also stitched up well and proper) and everyone remembers Tommy Lapid and others' statements on the courts and Aharon Barak. The most effective anti-activist Justice Minister so far was Prof. Daniel Friedman, a classic left-center figure, and also the comeback-kid Haim Ramon, or the new kid on the block, Attorney Kinneret Barashi. These are not right-wingers, but they are conservative jurists.
This is true also for economic liberalism and separation of religion from state. There are more partners in the center parties than in the right-wing bloc. And, many of the historic steps that influence us until this day were taken by governments with partners in the center-left. The economic reforms of Finance Minister Netanyahu between 2003-2005, for example, would not have been carried out in a narrow right-wing government relying on the ultra-Orthodox votes. And the list goes on and on.
The true tragedy of the ideological rightists in Israel, and I allow myself to be considered as one of them, is that our politics does not work like the American system. The combination of religious-libertarian-conservatives that cooperate in implementing a regime of liberty and economic freedom and holds up the base of the GOP there - is meaningless in Israel.
The religious want socialism, the conservatives want government coercion, and the libertarians vote for Meretz. The dominance of the Palestinian issue in our politics, which is expressed by the deep hatred for the two-state destroyer Netanyahu, does not allow for creating a right-center secular and liberal coalition. The result is the stagnation of recent years.
There are those who hope for change the day after Netanyahu, but that will actually come the day after Mahmoud Abbas.
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