Yonatan Yavin
Will someone stand up?
We face leadership crisis but can’t find anyone willing to step up to challenge
This phenomenon probably has a sophisticated name in the world of business and start-ups. I am talking about that screaming opportunity, that breached market that calls for and attracts sharp-eyed entrepreneurs who can identify a need that nobody else could see and provide a brilliant yet simple solution.
The difference between the business world and the reality of our life is that the latter is always grey, burdensome, and “not sexy” and such golden opportunities within this reality will always appear less appealing.
The State of Israel has known better days. A great vacuum has taken over our leadership, yet nobody is standing up yet. We have not yet seen a political entrepreneur who would stand up and say: “I will navigate” (yes, just like Rabin said at the time.)
There are certainly many interested parties, yet we were already burned by their actions during their previous term in office, and our silence tells them: No thanks.
Indeed, one of them shall become our next prime minister, yet this is the root of the despair that has overcome the Israeli public: It has to elect people it has no faith in. The alternatives we are facing are three versions of the lesser evil.
Olmert’s retirement is merely a matter of time. Should he continue to govern with the self-interested negligence that has been his guiding principle thus far, Netanyahu does not need to do anything. He just needs to get comfortable, put up his feet on his desk, and gaze at his rival Barak chattering away back to the political desert.
Let’s consider this threatening black hole, which already swallowed up honest people who sought the common good (such as Amram Mitzna and Amnon Lipkin-Shahak for example.) The desire to rule probably provokes fear even among those who just considered it for a moment and sends them back to their warm and luxurious office at the faculty or car dealership.
We need a true idealist
Yet how is it possible that even at this tough time there is not even one good person who is willing to stand up, someone that would show public responsibility and say: Here I am. How is it possible that this opening has remained vacant?The common answer is that nobody wishes to become entangled in this. Israel is facing deep trouble and nobody wants to sink in the mud in an effort to extricate the carriage.
Yet this is an unsatisfactory answer, because a true idealist, the kind we are looking for, does not weigh considerations of laziness, dirt, or depression. He knows that the carriage is stuck in the mud and that it must be pulled out even at the price of humiliation and failure, even if the chances are slim, and even if he is smeared and embarrassed in the process.
What do we need? A smart person but not an arrogant one, a person who listens but does not bend in the face or pressure, an idealistic figure who is not naïve, firm but not aggressive, a decision-maker who has a sense of proportion. That’s it.
So does anyone have any ideas? Something? Someone? What, nothing? Well, we shall continue to gaze at Netanyahu delivering a speech at the Knesset and think: Well, if you were just a little less cunning. And we shall listen to Barak, who constantly changes his opinion, and mutter: Well, if you were just a little less arrogant. And we’ll gaze at Olmert and say: Well, we won’t say a thing. In that case we shall remain silent. Until someone stands up.
