The most fitting line I heard after we saw the images of MK Zvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionism party trying to smash a memorial to terrorists in the Palestinian village of Madama in the West Bank came from his party colleague, MK Ohad Tal.
“Have we decided to commit suicide once and for all?” he asked.
Settlers and MK Zvi Sukkot vandalize a memorial in the Palestinian village of Madama, south of Nablus
For me, that immediately raised another question, one that goes well beyond Sukkot himself.
Assuming a different government is elected next time, will it even be possible to repair all the fractures this government is leaving behind?
Whoever enters the prime minister’s office will inherit not only difficult policy questions, but a political culture of constant provocation, agitation and division. Netanyahu and his allies will not disappear simply because they lose an election. They will not give their successors a moment of peace.
Which raises the more basic question: Why would anyone want to inherit this mess, and is there still a realistic way to put it back together?
Itamar Ben-Gvir, followed by Benjamin Netanyahu, jumped on the discovery of what are believed to be pieces of the Altalena on the seabed off Tel Aviv.
What can one say? They seized on the discovery and once again turned history into another opportunity to inflame hatred and division.
Had they asked my grandchildren, Itai and Ari, they could have joined one of our conversations about what actually happened in June 1948, when David Ben-Gurion ordered troops to fire on the Altalena, the Irgun arms ship that defied the authority of Israel’s newly established government.
The principle was clear. From that point on, Israel would have one army, not several militias.
Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu might also be reminded that along Tel Aviv’s beachfront stands another, far smaller memorial, marking the Voice of Peace radio station founded by peace activist Abie Nathan, which broadcast from a ship offshore.
All they need to do is stand there for a moment, press the button in the center of the memorial plaque and listen to the slogan that accompanied its broadcasts: “Peace is the word, and the Voice of Peace is the station, 24 hours a day.”
Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir share a political path that does not recognize what should be the highest imperative of any nation: finding a way to live in peace.
There are other kinds of leadership.
“Arizona, all of us.”
Those were the code words that told those gathered in the Israeli military’s underground command center in Tel Aviv in September 2007 that Israeli Air Force jets had completed their mission and destroyed the nuclear reactor Syrian President Bashar Assad had been secretly building with North Korean assistance.
Ehud Olmert, the prime minister who stood behind the operation, has published a fascinating book about the affair.
President George W. Bush opposed Israel’s intention to attack the reactor and preferred to deal with the threat through senior members of his administration.
Elliott Abrams, in his memoir, recounts the conversation between Bush and Olmert shortly before the operation.
Olmert told the president that this was his responsibility and that he intended to carry it out despite Bush’s opposition.
Ehud Olmert and George Bush
(Photo: Moshe Milner, GPO)
After the secure line went silent, Bush turned to his aides and said of Olmert: “This guy has huge balls.”
There is something worth remembering in that story. Leadership sometimes means taking responsibility for a decision and accepting the consequences, rather than constantly turning every event into another front in a political war.
And then there are the smaller things that say just as much about us.
An advertisement starring actress Lia Koenig airs endlessly, urging the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors still with us to seek assistance from a government agency.
I was offended on behalf of my late mother by the way people like her are portrayed in that advertisement.
Do the work. Help those who need it. Spare us the gimmicks.
As children return to school, the familiar annual reports return with them, cataloging everything the education system lacks.
Here are several lines from a poem by Zohar Eitan:
“In childhood they lie to us. If our parents are good enough, they lie to us a lot. If they are truly good, they lie to us even more, more than enough to last us for the rest of our lives. And one can imagine it as a spring stretched inside us, slowly unwinding with every passing year, loosening with every decade, until at the end we lie with our legs apart and our arms outstretched.”
And to our children, we should say this:
Pay attention to every movement, every word, and fill your storehouses for the life that awaits you.