Gadi Eisenkot will receive the mandate to form a government today. Allow me to make you a promise: there will be a government headed by Eisenkot. So here is my advice to you, dear readers: stop trying to do Eisenkot’s job for him. Don’t bother trying to solve the Rubik’s Cube of coalition arithmetic. The voters have spoken.
They said one word: change. And for all the soul-searching, agonizing and political maneuvering still ahead, I believe that is where this will end: change. On Tuesday, 47 first-time lawmakers will enter the Knesset, joining Israel’s 120-member parliament with one of the most coveted membership cards in the country. Expect the building to be surrounded by hundreds of demonstrators, some of whom may try to challenge the election result. And that will present one more test for the outgoing government, which in my view presided over tragedies unlike any Israel has experienced since its founding: a test of whether it can maintain order and ensure a democratic transfer of power. I am not convinced it has much interest in proving that it can. As the familiar Hebrew saying goes, the main thing is not to be afraid at all.
(Photo: Shutterstock, Shalev Shalom, Elad Malka, Joint List Spokesperson’s Office, Ryan Frois, Alex Kolomoisky, Oliver Contreras/AFP)
Orit Strock said Arab citizens could have voted for Yoseph Haddad, who is himself Arab. So she said it. Then a prominent rabbi ruled that people should not vote for former IDF general Ofer Winter because his electoral slate included an Arab candidate. So he said that. Netanyahu went further. Seemingly already coming to terms with what I believe will be a humiliating end to his time in office, he released a short video portraying Arab voters’ choices as support for parties that back terrorism. Think about that. He still carries the title of prime minister, and this is what he has to say to Arab citizens, who make up roughly one-fifth of Israel’s population. So he said it. But the facts, and the voters themselves, tell a different story.
“In sweeping and decisive victories, the American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption, and incompetence” of President Donald Trump, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia said after winning reelection in the U.S. midterms, calling Trump a “failed lame duck president.” Add that to the calculation here at home. In my view, political change in Israel is no longer simply desirable; history is making it necessary. Another Netanyahu term risks leaving Israel not only trapped in the same domestic cycle, but increasingly without the America it has long relied upon at its side.
President Isaac Herzog, you challenged representatives of Israel’s Democrats party when they came to the President’s Residence, asking whether they had anything else with which to persuade voters or whether their entire campaign would remain stuck on the question of “Bibi or not Bibi.” Mr. President, that was the election. It was about Netanyahu, yes or no, and you would do well to recognize it. Nor have we forgotten that you repeatedly avoided taking the unequivocal position that millions of Israelis expected from you on issues they believed Netanyahu had brought to the breaking point: the attempt to remake Israel’s system of government, the assault on the judiciary and much more.
Mr. Herzog, look at Paraguay. President Santiago Peña, a strong supporter of Israel who moved his country’s embassy to Jerusalem and addressed the Knesset, was forced from office last week amid a banking crisis tied to the collapse of Ueno Bank. Nearly 3 million customers, about 60% of Paraguay’s adult population, had their accounts frozen as the crisis erupted. The circumstances are obviously different, but the principle remains: voters and democratic institutions must hold leaders to account when decisions made under their leadership leave ordinary people facing ruin.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the American poet and thinker, offered this advice in Poetry as Insurgent Art: commit yourself to something beyond yourself and care passionately about it. The ruling class declares wars; the lower classes fight them. Governments lie. The government’s voice is usually not the people’s voice. Speak out. Act. Silence is consent. Be the fly that bothers the state, and be its firefly too. Wake up. The world is burning. Have a nice day.
I am taking that advice to heart. Think about it, because there is every chance you, too, will be called upon to make your voice heard if you truly want to change the reality in which we live.
First published: 09:15, 11.08.26