Following are some quotes taken from the Facebook page of Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid. The quotes provide a clear look at the hashkafa of Bayit Yehudi’s partner.
“They say we are disqualifying the chareidim. This is simply untrue. We are not disqualifying or boycotting anyone. It is strange in my eyes for I constantly tell the chareidim that I don’t hate them but they insist the contrary is true. I don’t understand why a person or a group decides that are hated and nothing is going to change that opinion. Every Jew in the world is my brother and I would buy into this hate. Not only this, I feel that world would be less significant without limud Torah. This however does not mean they cannot work of enlist into the military. However, limud Torah is a basic value of the Jewish People and without it we would not exist.
“On the other hand, for those who have forgotten, there have been elections between different hashkafos. People vote based on how they wish to see the nation run and at times, the left succeeds and at times the right and sometimes the socialists. Sometimes the capitalists win and sometimes those supporting the two-state solution.
“At times, chassidim of the Greater Eretz Yisrael following elections build the coalition. When Netanyahu was elected, it was clear to all that he was not going to invite Meretz to join his coalition. Is this unacceptable? Most certainly not! I know that Mr. Netanyahu views Zahav Gal-On’s party as a legitimate Israeli party but they subscribe to the opposite hashkafa regarding how the nation should be run and therefore, there is nothing to talk about. This is how democracy works.
“No one likes to lose, but we all accept t he reality that at times you are in the coalition and at times, in the opposition. There is a substantial chance that the coalition established in the next two weeks will not include Yesh Atid. If this is the case, my colleagues will join the opposition. We all understand this is part of the democratic game.
“With the exception of the chareidim for some reason we have all accepted the realization that following elections, some are in the coalition and others are not. It does not matter which parties have been elected, the chareidim must sit in the coalition. They are not the ‘Netanyahu’s natural partner’ but rather they are the natural partners of whichever party wins. Left, right or centrist – it makes no difference. We always see Eli Yishai smiling alongside the prime minister with Litzman at the side with a solemn expression. Can someone tell me why this is so? Did someone change the rules of the game and forgot to tell me? If it is possible to build a coalition without Likud, without Labor, without Kadima, without Meretz, and without the Arab parties, why can’t there be a coalition without chareidim? If the chareidim are not included we are accused of disqualifying them. What kind of strange democratic rule is this? I for one don’t disqualify anyone but there is a difference between individuals and parties. Regarding the chareidi individuals, we must embrace them and maintain a genuine dialogue regarding the nation’s future. However, regarding the chareidi parties, this is an entirely different matter.
“I believe both Shas and Yahadut Hatorah can enter the coalition providing that are willing to make the changes that compelled us to go to the polls. This includes [state housing] eligibility criteria for [young] couples, including core subjects in school curriculums, sharing the burden, the cut in yeshiva budget that must be made. Yesh Atid’s job is to return society’s focus to major issues such as education, assisting small business, cutting housing prices, and cutting the cost of living.
“In other words, instead of strengthening a particular sector, coming to the aid of the middle class which is on the verge of collapse. This is a new civil agenda supported by the majority of citizens however the religious parties remain opposed, which is their right. However, politicians at times must also be will to pay the price for standing true to their beliefs. The obvious conclusion here is that no harm will come to them if they remain in the opposition.”
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
I don’t know who makes up the headlines, but it is clearly NOT in sync with the actual article. Lapid clearly says that he CAN sit with the chareisim if they change or adapt some of their positions. This mya not be to the liking of some of the chareid readers but it also does not exclude the chareidim, as theheadline suggests.
By MARTIN SHERMAN
Dr. Martin Sherman served for seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli Defense establishment. He was a ministerial adviser to Yitzhak Shamir’s government and lectured for 20 years at Tel Aviv University in Political Science, International Relations and Strategic Studies.
Protesting popular plenty?
Poll after poll, both foreign and local, shows extremely high levels of satisfaction with life in Israel, well above that in most industrial countries. Important socioeconomic indicators are better in Israel than the average in the OECD countries. According to the OECD Better Life Index site: “Israel performs favorably in several measures of well-being, and ranks close to the average or higher in several topics in the Better Life Index… Money, while it cannot buy happiness, is an important means to achieving higher living standards. In Israel, the average person financial wealth is 47,750 USD per year, more than the OECD average of 36,238 USD.”
Moreover, life expectancy – usually taken as an indicator of the level of a country’s healthcare – is almost 82 years in Israel, two years above the OECD average.
Israel also scores higher on the prevalence of high-school education with 80% of adults aged 25- 64 having the equivalent of a high-school degree, above the OECD average of 74%.
A cursory stroll through urban Israel will reveal that restaurants are full, cafes crowded, pubs jam-packed; the recreation industry appears booming, with beaches teeming in summer, the ski slope crammed in winter, rural byways swarming with off-road cyclists over the weekends, decked out with the latest equipment and accessories…. Nor are overseas trips the exclusive privilege of a wafer-thin layer of the “crème-de-la- crème.” Out of a total population of 7.8 million, millions of Israelis travel abroad regularly, spending billions of dollars on overseas trips.
Against this backdrop of “popular plenty,” the eruption of “middle class” discontent, as reflected in support for Lapid’s principal electoral theme, seems oddly misplaced.
After all, surely not all these diners, latte drinkers, late-night revelers, surfers, skiers, bikers, vacationers can be parasitic ultra-Orthodox, privileged settlers or plutocratic tycoons?
The election results indicate the Israeli electorate has become dangerously detached from real challenges the nation needs to address.
If Yair Lapid, Tzipi Livni and Shelly Yacimovich join Netanyahu’s coalition without Bayit Yehudi and the ultra-Orthodox parties, Netanyahu will have no option but to follow the path of Begin, Rabin and Sharon and reach a painful agreement – Eitan Haber, Yediot Aharonot, January 23, 2013
It is still too early to fully assess the ramifications of this week’s election results, or to accurately identify what caused them.
However, on the basis of the available evidence, Tuesday’s poll is unlikely to portend anything positive – unless of course you subscribe to some theory of socioeconomic alchemy, which holds that the whole of Israel can be miraculously transformed into a Beverly Hills-like clone but one in which everybody will live happily ever after in an atmosphere of egalitarian social justice.
Bread & butter vs life & death
Clearly, the major story of the elections is the extraordinary and unexpected success of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party which managed to win 19 (just over 15 percent) of the total 120 seats in Israel’s parliament, thus for all intents and purposes becoming a crucial power broker in the formation of any coalition.
In his campaign, Lapid focused almost exclusively on alleviating the alleged plight of Israel’s middle class, studiously eschewing any reference to security and foreign policy issues, other than an occasional oblique allusion to Israel’s growing isolation in the international community and the need to address it.
Shelly Yacimovich’s Labor Party, which won 15 seats, also assiduously avoided broaching matters of external policy, and confined its campaign attention to assailing Binyamin Netanyahu’s domestic record – albeit with far more “social-democratic” welfare-oriented emphasis than Lapid.
We are compelled to the conclusion that in casting its ballots, a decisive portion of the Israeli electorate has given priority to issues of “bread and butter” over those of “life and death.”
Retreat into denial?
It was as if the Israeli voter opted for denial, ignoring the massive challenges facing the nation, such as:
– contending with the repercussions of the “Arab Spring” and the ascent of radicalism in the region;
– addressing the deteriorating situation in Sinai and a possible breach of the peace treaty with Egypt by its Islamist regime;
– coping with menacing developments in Syria and the specter of a radicalized al-Qaida-affiliated post-Assad regime;
– confronting the increasingly evident intransigence of the Palestinians and the fading prospects of a two-state- settlement;
– and preparing for possible regime change in Jordan, and the ascent of Muslim extremists to power.
And, oh yes, we almost forgot, there is the small matter of the Iranian nuclear program.
These are all issues which neither Lapid nor Yacimovich have any competence to deal with – or lay claim to any such competence. Indeed, neither gave them any centrality during their campaigns. Yet they enticed almost a third of the electorate to vote for them.
Disturbing drop in national adrenaline?
The fact that such a significant portion of mainstream Israeli voters supported lists that not only deliberately downplayed – but made little pretense of intending to address – matters that impact the very survival of the state, seems to point to a dramatic and disturbing drop in the levels of “national adrenaline.”
For given the immediacy and the intensity of the threats facing Israel, it seems almost inconceivable that the issue of who was best suited to deal with them played such a negligible role in the election.
Indeed, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Israel’s electorate has become dangerously detached from the real challenges the nation needs to address.
Don’t get me wrong. As someone who is light years away from tycoon status, I am keenly aware of the socioeconomic pressures the average Israeli citizen has to contend with. Indeed, I have my own (long) list of gripes regarding the dysfuntionalities of the Israeli establishment.
Clearly, there is much to address on the domestic, socioeconomic front. Eminently plausible claims can be made for the need to restructure the tax system, make markets more competitive, streamline bureaucracy, raise salaries for specific professions and so on. But Netanyahu’s government was in many respects responsibly addressing these matters.
Arguably more than any of its predecessors, it has been willing to challenge the monopolists/cartels and confront the “tycoons.” It oversaw the dramatic reduction in the cost of mobile-phones service and even went so far as to adopt the ethically suspect measure of retroactively raising royalties on the profits from the newly discovered marine gas fields – incurring (somewhat understandably) the wrath of the plutocrats.
Success as reason for failure
Paradoxically, it was precisely the Netanyahu government’s success that sowed the seeds of failure at the polls.
On the security front – excluding the week-long Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza – Israel is enjoying the longest period of calm for decades. This has relegated security concerns to the back of the public’s mind and allowed more mundane issues to dominate its agenda – unlike the situation under Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon when Palestinian terror wrought carnage on the streets of the nation’s cities and towns.
Nor have the Netanyahu government’s achievements been confined to security. Indeed, it has stewarded the economy remarkably well through the dire global crisis that affected much of the industrial world far more seriously.
Thus, hitherto largely untouched by the world economic crisis and accustomed to increasing consumption levels, Israelis are refusing to tailor their expectations to their means. But as talent (and luck) are not evenly distributed, it is unreasonable to expect an egalitarian reality in which the fortunes of all are similar. Greater prosperity has – inevitably – yielded greater inequality. Accordingly, keeping up with the Joneses is becoming increasingly onerous, with social pressures pushing many to live beyond their means.
It is this growing resentment, coming not so much from the “have nots” but from the “want mores,” that generated much of the anti- Netanyahu sentiment. A cursory glance at the election results seems to indicate that Lapid fared better than the Likud mainly in well-to-do areas, but not in those that allegedly suffered from Netanyahu’s economic policies, where the Likud outperformed Lapid.
To a large degree, FrontPage Magazine blogger David Hornik got it right when he wrote: “The Israeli public has not done justice to Binyamin Netanyahu, whose overall record these past four years on the security, diplomatic and economic fronts is solid and commendable; while falling for the somewhat facile appeal of the untested Yair Lapid.”
Cause for concern
Admittedly, Lapid has conducted himself commendably since the election results were announced. He has come out with some surprisingly – including to myself – assertive Zionistic pronouncements.
However, I would urge caution. I have attacked Lapid on numerous occasions, underscoring how he exploited his widely read Friday Yediot Aharonot column to propagate positions he himself later conceded to be merely mendacious manipulations.
Thus, on the eve of the disengagment (June 24, 2005), he published a caustic castigation of the opponents of unilateral withdrawal.
He warned darkly of the dire consequences and the unbridgeable rift that would result if they succeeded in persuading the public that the expulsion of Jews from Gaza should be aborted.
Menacingly, Lapid declared that Israelis were tired of sacrificing their lives for the sake of the religious settlers, and that for the majority in the country, disengagement “appeared the last chance for us to live a normal life.”
However, barely a year later (October 13, 2006), when the catastrophic failure of the disengagement was undeniably apparent for all to see, Lapid published a breathtakingly brazen follow-up, titled “Things we couldn’t say during disengagement.” In it he admitted it had all been a giant ploy: “It was never about the Palestinians, demography, and endeavor for peace, the burden on the IDF.”
No, confessed Lapid, the real reason for imposing the deportation of Jewish citizens and destruction of Jewish towns and villages was…
to put the settlers in their place, to teach them “the limits of their power” and show them who really calls the shots in the country.
I don’t not know if Eitan Haber (see introductory except) is a Lapid supporter. But the sentiments that he expresses are certainly characteristic of the prevailing sentiment in much of Lapid’s core constituency.
It would be more than naïve to expect that the current political super-star will not face growing pressure from his base, to whom he owes political allegiance, “to follow in the path” of those who brought the extremist warlords to the fringes of Eilat, the reign of terror to the streets, cafes and buses of Israel, and the rain of rockets to the towns and rural communities of the South (and beyond).
So be afraid, very afraid – perhaps the best we can hope for is early elections.
#1:
Yes, Lapid says he would allow the Chareidim into the government if they give up on every last one of their positions and completely buy into his worldview.
Basically, Lapid doesn’t mind the Chareidim, as long as they stop being Chareidim.
#2:
Kindly stop copying and pasting every last Martin Sherman article into the comments section.