Udi Label
Photo: Bertzi Goldblat
Israeli leadership test
Israel’s leaders must have the legitimacy needed to eulogize our children
How does the Israeli public scrutinize its leader, the person meant to serve as the father of the nation, the one who leads us during times of peace or war?
A Knesset speech is not exactly a national leadership test; neither is a predictable holiday media interview. Israelis, sadly so, envision their prime minister delivering a eulogy at the Mount Herzl national cemetery – the last official state site that has not been privatized yet and that has remained stable, consensual, and filled with dignity. The Israeli prime minister is the man who eulogizes our children.
Ben-Gurion was able to eulogize our children. Of course, during his era too the deaths of some of them could have been prevented. In those years we also had accidents and disasters and military adventurism and needless operations – but the man had the legitimacy and dignity needed to eulogize the casualties and speak on their behalf.
The same was true for Eshkol and Begin, Shamir and Rabin, figures who were only liked by half the nation but passed this test. We could envision them standing at the gravesite of war casualties and delivering a speech. Nobody doubted the genuine pain they felt when they were required to look at the families of the casualties, and nobody thought that they did not fear sending our sons to battle.
Will today’s leaders be able to convince us that their eulogies truly come from their heart and aren’t just another document sent to their office by a speech writer from a PR agency? Will they be able to convey genuine torment, or will they be perceived as cynics whose willingness to meet bereaved families at their office, for example, stems from media considerations, while their desire for in depth inquiry into a war they managed is no more than a deliberate attempt to lull the public and buy time?
Longing for past leaders
Ben-Gurion opened up the doors of the government to bereaved families. Some argue that he went too far, yet during his era the message to families was that the man who heads the State takes war casualties to his diary every evening. Begin too, even though he did not enjoy hearing the words uttered by bereaved families, ordered his bureau chief to bring them into his office and allowed them to express their pain under his window. Ultimately, he was even said to give up the post of prime minister because of this pain, not before he ordered the chief justice to lead a state commission of inquiry into the first Lebanon War.
The image of the leader as eulogizer is also etched with hope. The eulogizer’s legitimacy stems from the knowledge that nobody died in vain under his leadership, that the image of casualties is etched in his mind and heart, and that he truly perceives himself as a father heading the “family of the bereaved.”
Yet when a leader arrives at the holy of holies of modern Zionism accompanied by PR consultancy, media coverage, the weighing of words, and the maintenance of distance from the public, his arrival at Mount Herzl for the Memorial Day siren is not perceived as a natural thing. Those who cannot overcome this hurdle are expected to face a leadership problem.
This is a painful lesson about our situation, our acceptance of loss as an inseparable part of our lives, the presence of bereavement in our existence, and the desperate need for a national father who would make clear that all of us are his children. Yet this is also the answer to the thoughts about our leadership problem that lead to unprecedented longing, unseen in any other nation, for our past leaders.
Dr. Udi Label is a political psychology professor at Sapir College and the Ariel University Center of Samaria
