Not unless it gets rid of some very bad ideas
In the winter of 1973, having barely survived a
coordinated Arab attack, Israel set out to understand why it had it had missed
the many signs pointing toward pending Egyptian aggression. The answer it came
up with was long and complicated, but it can be summarized in a single word
that every Israeli knows well:Ha’Konseptsya, or the Concept. Israel’s intelligence
didn’t see the war coming because of the (mis)conception that Egypt would never
risk war unless it had long-range missiles that could hit targets deep inside
the Jewish State. The Friday before the war broke out, Israel Defense Forces
intelligence officers compiled a document with 39 clauses, each pointing to a
different piece of evidence for why an Egyptian invasion was only a matter of
time. Their commanding officer, faithful to the Concept, added a 40th and final
clause that argued that all evidence aside, the likelihood of war was
minuscule. Less than 24 hours later, Egyptian and Syrian planes launched more
than 750 sorties against Israeli targets in the north and in the south. Ha’Konseptsya was proven dead wrong.
What the Israeli left
experienced this week in light of Benjamin Netanyahu’s electoral triumph wasn’t
merely a political setback. It was the shattering of another Concept, another
firm worldview that ignored too many signs and relied too heavily on articles
of faith. With Labor having delivered its most impressive showing in nearly two
decades and yet still falling short, and with Meretz teetering on the brink of
extinction, it may not be too much of a stretch to argue that this is the
Israeli left’s darkest hour. If it is to survive, it needs to grapple with the
Concept that led it astray.
Ironically, at the heart of
the Concept are the very missteps liberal Israelis routinely accuse their
opponents of committing: abandoning logic and analysis for dogma, magical
thinking, and tribal hatred.
For a taste of all of the
above, look no further than Ha’aretz’s
post-election coverage. “The people of Israel do not want peace,” wrote Ravit
Hecht, an editorial writer for the paper. “They are too incited and scared.
They do not wish to live in a democratic, liberal, western nation.” Not one to
be outdone, columnist Gideon Levy went a step further and argued that the people of Israel simply had to be
replaced: In voting for Bibi, they’ve proven themselves unworthy of existence.
From there, it wasn’t much of a stretch to declare, as the novelist Alona
Kimchi did on
her Facebook page, that Israeli voters were “fucking Neanderthals” who ought to
“sip on cyanide” because “only death will save you from yourselves.”
These are not merely the
anguished cries one would expect to hear the morning after a searing defeat at
the ballot box. They reflect a profound intellectual and emotional failure, the
failure to look rightward and see rational people. Tethered to its Concept, the
left dismissed the trepidation most Israelis feel when contemplating questions
of security, writing it off as the nervous jitters of uneducated boobs. For two
decades now, the left has been telling more or less the same story: Peace,
prosperity, and security can only come if kinder, gentler people take the helm,
dismantle all settlements, make nice with Europe, and rekindle that loving
feeling with the Palestinian Authority. All that, the left argues, is within
reach, if only voters were swayed by hope rather than fear. Again and again,
however, Israeli voters remain unconvinced.
They remain unconvinced
because the left’s story says nothing about the mounting evidence of
Palestinian belligerence, from the PLO’s embrace of Hamas to the Palestinian
Authority’s repeated insistence upon shunning negotiations in favor of symbolic
but futile appeals to a host of international institutions. They remain
unconvinced because they’re not exactly clear on how committing not to build in
Itamar or Beit El or Ariel would mollify Hamas or Hezbollah. They remain
unconvinced because when they consider the left’s exhortations and look to
Washington and London and Paris for inspiration they see no sensible game plan
to halt Iran’s nuclear ambition, not to mention its giddy support for terrorism
and violence the world over. They remain unconvinced because they see those
ghoulish ISIL videos and they know that it’s only a matter of time before the
turmoil spreading everywhere from Libya to Syria knocks at their door.
How, then, might the Israeli
left proceed? First, it should return to Israel. The starring role played by an
American run and funded anti-Bibi PAC this election season isn’t coincidental; it
reflects the left’s growing financial and emotional reliance on foreign
support. Rather than try to win elections and effect change by turning to the
EU or the DNC, the left might try chatting with those actual Israelis who gave
Netanyahu his most impressive political upset yet, and learn why so many of
them opted to overcome their personal distaste for the man and give him another
term.
After replacing condescension
with conversation, the left could then present a plan that was actionable and concrete.
Instead of trying to square the circle by promising to keep the settlements and
bring peace and maintain security and foster goodwill all at the same time, it
should be blunt about what it really believes. If it truly believes that the
settlements ought to remain under Israeli sovereignty and Jerusalem sustained
as Israel’s undivided capital—as the Zionist Camp’s platform clearly states—it should abandon its tired
old trope about the settlements being the sole obstacle to world peace. And if
it believes that removing the settlements is a sine qua non, it should explain to
Israelis just how a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank would differ from
the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.
These are not easy questions
to answer, but they are not impossible. One could argue that the more things
stay the same, the more likely it’ll be that Israel’s enemies grow more
desperate and radical, and that it might therefore be worthwhile to consider
some sort of partial disengagement from the West Bank. Then, if more Gaza-style
Palestinian violence breaks out, Israel could at least defend its uncontested
borders with unequivocal ferocity and conviction. It’s still an argument many
Israelis might reject, but it is, at the very least, a far more substantive one
than merely saying that Bibi is bad and that religion is silly and that the
threat people feel is just an imaginary monster that could be banished simply
by turning on the night light of positive thinking.
Sadly, no such awakening seems
to be in the cards. The latest trend among those who didn’t vote for Bibi is the
viral Lo Latet social media campaign; Hebrew for “do not
give,” it calls on affluent leftists to brush off charities supporting those
impoverished communities that voted for Netanyahu. “The conclusion is very
clear,” wrote one enraged Israeli supporting the campaign on Facebook, “things
are probably not bad enough for you just yet.” You hardly need to import costly
American political strategists to realize that this isn’t what change you can
believe in looks like.
***
Liel Leibovitz is a senior writer
for Tablet Magazine.
