"Let's calm down," Yamina MK Nir Orbach suggested to a group of protesters outside his house. "Let's lower the volume. This isn't the disengagement plan or the Oslo Accords," he said. He might be right. The Bennett-Lapid government apparently won't execute territorial concessions, or conscript thousands of yeshiva students into military service. It could cause boundless damage to things that until yesterday, Naftali Bennett and Orbach would have given their lives over, but that's not the story. That's how it is in politics. They calculate profit against loss, and sometimes go back on their principles. That's not where the story is.
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It needs to be said, frankly: No one who hasn't acknowledged the "trick" will understand the magnitude of the crisis with the government now being established, a government that I will loyally support the moment it is official and whose fall I will eagerly await. Anyone who hasn't followed the opposition to Netanyahu closely, going back to the start of the last decade, and identified the blatant political process that hides within it won't really understand what all the fuss is about. Anyone who keeps the debate on the narrow track of what is announced in platforms vs. what is carried out, promises made vs. promises kept, loyalty vs. pragmatism, is stuck in a different place. Maybe with Yitzhak Shamir's decision in 1984 to form a unity government.
That isn't the story. The story is the insanity that has enveloped us for years already, making life in Israel, at a time that could have been the best in our history, hell. The essence of the insanity is the determined decision by a certain social sector – whose distress, we can say, is understandable due to the changes taking place in the country – to restore power to its hands at any cost. The plan: to focus on Netanyahu as a dangerous, negative entity and enlist voters en masse to support this position while knowing that it is the only way to create a draw or even a majority in a country where the majority is right-wing and traditional. The methods: demoralization and demonization. "It's very bad here – all because of him – let's change things." How simple. How catchy. How brutal and false.
And damn it, it worked. Hundreds of thousands started out demanding a change of government, and that is their right. Hundreds of thousands more were convinced that the situation was dire and that the guilt lay with Netanyahu. Hundreds of thousands more than those weren't really persuaded, but were looking for peace and quiet and an end to the artificial mess that had been stirred up unceasingly for two years. The bottom line: a big success, but not enough! Four elections, a brilliant trick that worked in the field but still wasn't numerically sufficient to finish the job.
And then Bennett and Sa'ar arrived.
Two leaders I know would be willing to sign off on every word I've written here, knowingly (for personal and political reasons, some of which have to do with Netanyahu's conduct) joined the command and control of this nasty maneuver, and completed it. With their own hands. And that is what is so unfortunately, and what has led to the boundless frustration.
And I'm very proud of all the millennials who all this time stuck to this basic understanding, acknowledged it, were cautious, and warned against it. I'm proud of the wise, sensitive Right, which grasped from the first that the battle was for it and its soul, not over Netanyahu and Balfour. I'm proud of the Likudniks, most of the religious Zionists, and the Haredi parties. I'm proud of everyone who understood what was happening. And all the rest? It's not that they're stupid, heaven forbid. Who am I to talk that way? They're just a little less smart.
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