In This Moment: A Rabbi's Notebook
Headline on the Ha’aretz website this afternoon
“In Serbia, there was a huge victory and people celebrated in the streets with 53%; in Hungary with 53%. Here we’re talking about more, and they’re still counting the votes. In any other place in the world, this would be a victory.” - Knesset candidate on Democrats list on X this morning.
I woke up this morning and my phone glared back at me with the devastating news that Bibi’s bloc had amassed 59 seats, putting him on the brink of a parliamentary majority and Israel’s democracy on the cusp of collapse. Then I wiped the sand out of my eyes and realized that it was probably just one of the estimates put out by his friends at channel 14. That was the case.
As I write this, with some votes still to count, primarily from the military, the Netanyahu camp stands at 53 and the opposition, including Arabs, is at 67. Meaning Netanyahu’s Knesset dominance has been reduced by 15 mandates and he stands significantly below the coveted 61 seats. Barring party defections and a huge surprise in the remaining tally, he has no chance to form a government with the current distribution. And even if he cobbles a coalition together, the makeup of the Knesset will not let him complete the right-wing coup he tried last time. No more judicial “reform.” No more unchecked military adventurism. No more West Bank pogroms. At the very worst, there would still be checks and balances.
And that’s a loss for the opposition?
It feels like one, in large part due to Israel’s historic taboo of including Arabs in governing coalitions, even tacitly. It’s impossible to ignore them, as they have shattered records by winning 19 seats (as things stand now). They are part of the 67 seats in the incoming Knesset that will be filled by people who were voted in specifically to get rid of Bibi.
But the taboo is so ingrained in the consciousness of the culture that it’s hard to imagine breaking it, even though the taboo was already broken once, in 2021 and even though Netanyahu - true to form - has already reached out to make promises to the Arab parties, including getting rid of Ben Gvir, their bête noire. He’s no dummy. He realizes that suddenly the Arabs stand in the way of anyone achieving a majority and he will try to lure them.
At the same time, Netanyahu, abetted by his opponents’ acquiescence, has piled on more fuel to the fire of anti-Arab sentiment, accusing them of - wait for it - mass voter fraud. Only Netanyahu can both lure and disqualify a potential coalition partner at the same time.
What has Netanyahu done, over the course of his entire career? I’ll let journalist Anshel Pfeffer, who literally wrote the book on Bibi, explain:
As you can see, Netanyahu’s career-long campaign against Israeli Arabs (as opposed to the Hamas Gazan Arabs, whom he has gladly supported) qualifies as the under-reported Israeli version of Jim Crow. Just give him a white hood and a poll test and he would make a perfect Klansman. As Jon Ossoff said about Mike Collins in their Georgia senatorial debate, if John Lewis had been marching today from Selma to Montgomery - or if he were an Israeli Arab marching from Lod to Ramle - Bibi Netanyahu would have been grabbing a billy club.
Hey, according to the independent website Common Dreams, Bibi’s henchmen sent 2,000 “activists” to Arab towns yesterday on a mission of intimidation and surveillance. It’s par for the course for him. Sheriff Jim Clark would be proud. And Reuters reported that he once again warned his voters that Arabs were flocking to the polls. Not even Trump would say that so menacingly here, that his people should get out to vote because “the Blacks are voting in droves!”
If the opposition can overcome Netanyahu’s poison and forge a partnership with at least one Arab party, Ra’am, this could be the government that will at last begin to set Israel’s society right, to bring true equality of opportunity - and responsibility, meaning national service for all.
It’s a simple formula: If we can get his poison out of our system, then we’ll be rid of Bibi.
For Eisenkot, Bennett, Liberman and Golan - but Eisenkot especially - this is their LBJ moment. President Johnson, a white southerner, was an unlikely candidate to be the one to pass the Voting Rights Act in 1965. In perhaps his most memorable speech, which I highly recommend you listen to - because it is timely in the US as well, with the dismantling of voting rights happening before our eyes, he told Congress:
In our time we have come to live with moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues: issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved nation.
The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation.
For with a country as with a person, “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Palestinian citizens of Israel, within pre-1967 borders, have always had an equal right to vote, but typically haven’t used it and often they’ve been discouraged from voting because of intimidation. That happened on Tuesday as well, to a degree, but not enough to dissuade a massive turnout. The day was as momentous as the day when a southern Texas politician reached his life’s dramatic turning point.
“As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil,” LBJ told Congress, “I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society… The time of justice has now come. I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come. And when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American.”
His piercing words could be fulfilled now by Eisenkot and crew. They can bring Ra’am into their camp, which would (by the current count) make them the largest coalition in the Knesset, one mandate larger than Bibi’s motley crew, and then, with tacit approval from the other Arab parties, herald a new chapter for Israel and the world.
It won’t be easy to do something that has almost never been done in Israeli politics, just as it wasn’t easy for LBJ to wean himself from the Jim Crow culture of the Texas Hill Country where he grew up. Even though his father stood up to the KKK, he was not immune from the prevailing racism around him.
Essayist Adam Serwer writes:
According to Johnson biographer Robert Caro, Johnson would calibrate his pronunciations by region, using “nigra” with some southern legislators and “negra” with others. Discussing civil rights legislation with men like Mississippi Democrat James Eastland, who committed most of his life to defending white supremacy, he’d simply call it “the n… bill.”
Johnson was a man of his times and bore those flaws as surely as he sought to lead the country past them. For two decades in Congress he was a reliable member of the Southern bloc, helping to stonewall civil rights legislation. As Caro recalls, Johnson spent the late 1940s railing against the “hordes of barbaric yellow dwarves” in East Asia. Buying into the stereotype that blacks were afraid of snakes (who isn’t afraid of snakes?) he’d drive to gas stations with one in his trunk and try to trick black attendants into opening it. Once, Caro writes, the stunt nearly ended with him being beaten with a tire iron.
Eisenkot is no dove, to be sure. But while his courage and integrity can not be questioned. we don’t know yet whether he is a man of vision - a true leader.
We’re about to find out.
Below are two tweets that helped me get off the mat and screw my head on straight as I fought off the frustration today. I hope they help you too!
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