So what if politicians talk nonsense?
Op-ed: A true leader is tested by his decisions and actions, not by the comments he makes to the public.
Let's start with quite a recent story: One of Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor (Yvett) Lieberman's
plans was to reduce the Arab sector's representation in the Knesset. At the time, his party came up with an idea to raise the election threshold, arguing that there was a need for better governability.
At the moment, the result is that raising the election threshold united all the Arab factions into one list. They shut their eyes and overcame the rivalries and feelings of nausea between them.
Zigzag Policy
Shimon Shiffer
Op-ed: Every time the prime minister convinces Israel's citizens of the rightness of his moves, he backtracks on them. The same could happen with his Congress speech.
Today, and I'm stressing the word "today," the joint Arab list could draw many Arab voters to the polls. According to surveys, they are expected to have 11 to 15 Knesset members, who might serve as an obstructive bloc for a right-wing government.
The irony of fate is that according to the surveys, Lieberman's faction is on the verge of the election threshold. Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri or United Torah Judaism leader Yakov Litzman would likely be glad to quote the Aramaic saying from Pirkei Avot, which could be translated as "you got what was coming to you." In short, Yvett and his friends are the losers. For now.
What am I trying to say? That politicians' job is almost only to talk. In an election campaign they are required to talk to the public at least five or eight times a day, even more. It's what they do.
And here's the truth: Important politicians on all levels – from the prime minister downwards – cannot offer too many new things in their comments, and they tend to repeat things they have already said and promises they have made.
They are also in no way capable of accurately predicting the future, and in quite a few cases they must face new circumstances which have suddenly been created – a new reality. Sometimes they only have a few minutes to think and plan the face of the future. So they say what they think at that moment, and they often talk nonsense.
And why am I discussing this issue now? Because many of us voters, including myself, tend not to forget and to remind, mainly statesmen and military officials, of things they said in the past which were refuted in our dynamic reality. A reminder of a sin.
We have a tendency to dig into comments which were made under different circumstances, different times, and remind whoever has forgotten those comments, which of course did not pass the test of a changed reality.
By the way, there are people in the media who have even started archives of recordings and newspaper clippings in order to remember, and mainly in order to remind.
It should be made clear that I am not talking of course about leaders who deceive big time and about first-class national ideas. These naturally disappear from the political map or attain high positions until it becomes clear that their national ideas are unfeasible in our reality. Israel's history is padded with their corpses.
The Jewish and Israeli history is filled, by the way, with quite a few statements made by leaders – from Theodor Herzl to David Ben-Gurion – who can no longer even regret the things they said. And yet, we see them as the nation's leaders. Why? A leader is also tested according to the number of mistakes he made during his political career. The fewer mistakes, the more he is a leader. He wins sympathy and succeeds in the polls, if he properly predicted the future. He gains a great privilege if he understood the new reality and led his people, his followers, on the right track.
But a true leader is tested by his decisions, and mainly by his actions, for good or – God forbid – bad, not by the comments he keeps making. As my late mother used to say in Yiddish, "So what if he said so?"
