1. "What will happen now?" many people walking or jogging alongside me on Tel Aviv's seaside promenade asked me yesterday. Indeed, the election results have deepened both the divisions and the sense of vulnerability among supporters of the rival political camps who turned out in large numbers to vote. And now it is President Isaac Herzog's turn to decide which direction Israel will take. Allow me to say, with all due humility, and I mean this with the utmost seriousness: If Herzog proposes the formation of a unity government, it would constitute an outright abuse of the authority entrusted to him.
Mr. President, have you learned nothing from the previous occasions when Netanyahu lied to and deceived his political partners who signed rotation agreements with him, including Benny Gantz twice, Yair Lapid, Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz? They trusted him, only to find themselves pushed out of government under his "use and discard" approach.
Gadi Eisenkot, President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
(Photo: Haim Goldberg/Flash90, Shalev Shalom, Reyan Preuss)
How ironic that almost every politician who has served alongside Netanyahu over the years has earned that dubious distinction. Beyond that, surely you will agree that after four years of abysmal performance by an entirely right-wing government, more than 2.14 million voters cast their ballots expecting a different government, a government of change. No one has the authority to betray them. It really is that simple. Mr. Herzog, this is your last opportunity to rise to the occasion and exercise the authority the law has given you to make this decision.
2. Israel's Arab citizens exercised their democratic right and, in effect, saved themselves from those who wish them harm, with Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and Shlomo Karhi serving as prime examples. If Israel were a properly functioning democracy, Netanyahu's circle would not be allowed to continue inciting against citizens who make up more than 20% of the country's population. At this stage, we have every right to demand that the parties seeking political change show maturity and include Arab parties in the next government, not merely relying on their abstention from outside the coalition, but opening the doors of government to them as full partners.
3. Unfortunately, Avigdor "Yvette" Lieberman has repeatedly failed to break through a certain electoral ceiling, leaving him with a relatively small base of support. Against that backdrop, it is reasonable to ask this experienced and intelligent man to rise above his promises about whom he will refuse to sit alongside in government. Those pledges, incidentally, remind me of the joke about a Jewish man who arrives on an island and builds three synagogues: one where he prays and two he vows never to enter. Mr. Lieberman, perhaps this is your last opportunity as well. Get past those pledges, show courage and help remove Netanyahu from power, a man who devoted years to trying to destroy your political career.
4. I have a friend who is a dyed-in-the-wool Netanyahu loyalist. He whined to me about the hatred that people in our circles harbor toward his political camp. So let me point out that in recent months, a Netanyahu supporter tried to run me over as I was crossing the street at the intersection of Ben Yehuda and Arlozorov streets in Tel Aviv, hurling vile insults at me in the process. They call that "unconditional love."
5. As I approach the end, let me turn once again to two quotations from towering figures that might help us confront reality. In his poem "Nightmare," Israeli poet Tuvya Ruebner writes: "They started it, they started it, and so we plowed and sowed their lands until babies, babies, sprouted from them like wildflowers, with neither mother nor father ... Day after day after day, and through all the nights, in this dung there is no 'no' and no 'yes.' The dead, the dead, tree beside tree, a little girl skips toward the line where everything ends." Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook wrote in Orot HaKodesh ("Lights of Holiness"): "And if we were destroyed, and the world was destroyed along with us, through baseless hatred, we shall rebuild ourselves, and the world will be rebuilt with us, through unconditional love." And so it shall be. In the end, we will overcome hatred and division. Otherwise, the end will be final and tragic.