Member of Knesset Benny Gantz (Blue & White) proposed a plan Saturday night to form a temporary emergency government that would focus on returning the hostages from Hamas captivity and drafting Ḥaredi Jews into Israel’s military.
He called on fellow opposition figures Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) and Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) to form a government with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud) for six months in order to achieve these two objectives.
In addition to addressing the issues that currently appear to enjoy the most popular support in Israeli society, Gantz said this “hostage recovery government” would also marginalize Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich (Religious Zionism) and Internal Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit) in the coalition and would serve for half a year before taking Israel to national elections.
Kan News reported that Prime Minister Netanyahu sent a message to his current coalition partners Saturday night, assuring them that he has no intention of entertaining Gantz’s idea.
“The prime minister will not dismantle the bloc for Gantz.”
Despite disproportionate support from several media outlets, both Lapid and Lieberman rejected Gantz’s proposal on Sunday night.
In an interview with KAN, Lieberman called it “a pathetic show” and a “waste of time.” He further hinted at Gantz’s poor showing in recent election polls by stating that the proposal “isn’t a move meant to save the hostages, but to save Gantz.”
It should be obvious (certainly to readers of Vision Magazine) that this was never a serious proposal to begin with but rather a publicity stunt in anticipation of upcoming elections.
Benny Gantz has been suffering from a steep drop in popularity, especially following the departure of Gadi Eisenkot from his party, and it would make sense for his team to advise him to play to his strengths.
Whether warranted or not, Gantz is frequently presented by the Israeli press as prioritizing national unity and the collective good over personal political interests. And as a handsome Ashkenazi former IDF chief of staff, he epitomizes the often romanticized bygone era of a “good” and “sane” Israel.
The former strength was emphasized explicitly in Gantz’s call for a unity government to tackle the objectives that the public seems most concerned with.
The latter strength, however, subtly addresses the issue most pressing to the westernized sectors of Israeli society – changing the nature of the current coalition so as to return Israel to what it should be.
While Israeli politics and society have been dominated by “first Israel” (the country’s westernized ruling class) since even before the state’s establishment, this sector of the population has been shrinking in recent years in favor of a “second Israel” (Ḥaredi, Mizraḥi, national-religious Jews, etc. that all experienced marginalization at the hands of “first Israel”) that is seen by the nation’s elites and presented by the Israeli media as illegitimate partners in running the country.
Both Gantz and Lapid appeal to Israel’s highest earning voters, who seek to maintain the Jewish state’s liberal Western character in the face of growing sectors that threaten that character. But the distinction between these two political leaders can be understood by examining their political strategies.
Gantz, the pragmatist, sees joining Netanyahu-led coalitions as a way to unify the public, gain influence over policy, and dilute the power of extremist coalition partners.
Lapid, the liberal ideologue, refuses to legitimize Jewish extremists by sitting in a coalition with them.
According to the bourgeois voter base they compete for, the Jewish state should be represented by political leaders attractive to liberal Western sensibilities. Not combative Jewish fundamentalists like Smotrich or Ben-Gvir, who behave like the political representatives of a marginalized group yet are seen by many Israelis as a Jewish version of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Both Gantz and Lapid appear to be trying to actualize the prescription of liberal Israeli thinkers, like Dr. Micah Goodman, who advocate for a new center to synthesize moderate national and liberal sectors (Yosef) while marginalizing the left (Dan) and the more tribalist Jews psychologically living the Jewish people’s national story (Yehuda, Shimon, Levi).
The fact that Lapid currently enjoys more public support than Gantz could indicate that an increasing number of bourgeois liberal Israelis have undergone a radicalization process over the last couple years and are becoming less rational and more ideologically entrenched.
There’s still a significant percentage of the electorate that would support Gantz’s proposal, especially given the boost it’s been receiving from the press. This could lead Gantz to join Netanyahu’s coalition on his own.
But even if he doesn’t, the fact that he appears to have tried to create a centrist alternative to the current coalition has already sharpened the distinction between him and Lapid, leading more pragmatic “first Israel” liberals to move to the Gantz camp.
The “hostage recovery government” proposal was therefore a clever political move. Not because liberal Israelis genuinely believe a different coalition composition would have significantly more success recovering hostages from Hamas, but rather because the notion of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir being returned to the extreme fringes of Israeli politics is so alluring to so many journalists that it all but assures Gantz positive media coverage.
But how did Smotrich and Ben-Gvir become so unpopular?
It’s easy for us to portray the Israeli ruling class as simply vexed with their society’s sociocultural trajectory. But with help from the media, they’ve managed to turn much of the public against Netanyahu’s government. And it’s hard to claim Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are blameless in this.
The obsession that so many Israelis and Diaspora Jewish leaders have with changing the coalition make up underlines the failure of this government to even try to accomplish what Vision Magazine urged it to work towards upon its formation.
In late 2022, we envisioned the formation of this government as a moment of transition with potential to significantly advance Israel’s national development so long as the voters represented by figures like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir develop a genuine sensitivity to the groups within Israeli society that appear most at risk by their political ascension (Palestinians, LGBTQ+ peoples, African asylum seekers, etc.) and to find real solutions for addressing the needs of these communities coming from authentic Jewish sources – solutions that can challenge those offered by the liberal Western paradigm of their political opponents.
We argued that, despite the incitement and fear mongering from the country’s westernized ruling class, this coalition had the potential to demonstrate that Israel can become a more deeply Jewish society without turning into a “Jewish Iran” or marginalizing anyone.
To be fair, this government came under tremendous pressure to fail from day one – pressure we now know (and suspected then) to have been funded and organized by Washington. Mass protests against judicial reform legislation were actually planned before organizers and opposition lawmakers even knew what issue they would use to organize around. The point was to delegitimize the coalition and tear it down.
Coalition members could have responded differently – in a way that avoided walking into the traps laid for them. But we quickly saw that Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and their respective faction members weren’t up to the task. They allowed – and even helped – the opposition to present their political rise as a dangerous rupture in Israeli history rather than as a natural societal evolution.
Then there was the war.
Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and their faction members continuously made public statements, aimed at their constituencies, that were used by Israel’s detractors as evidence for genocidal intent. These political figures may be deeply committed to the Torah, the land of Israel, and the aspirations of the Jewish people stretching back thousands of years. But they’re also extremely provincial and completely ignorant of the world outside Israel’s borders.
Despite the fact that no one believes these political figures to bare sole responsibility for Israel’s current status as a pariah state in the West, even rightist journalists are decrying the fact that Netanyahu included them in his coalition.
It’s important that all the various “tribes” of Israeli society acknowledge what we’ve each contributed to the current state of affairs so we can take stock of our current situation and move forward in the healthiest way possible.
What should be clear are the following important facts:
1. After defeating Iran, Israel emerged as the de facto regional hegemon in West Asia.
2. Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has damaged Israel diplomatically and has led to a sharp increase in anti-Israel hostility in the West.
3. Israeli society is changing in such a way that weakens its still dominant liberal Western sectors (“first Israel”) and strengthens the sectors more deeply connected to Jewish identity (“second Israel”).
4. The current political leadership of the national-religious sector isn’t trusted by the general public to hold positions of responsibility in government.
5. The political leadership of Israel’s bourgeois liberal sector is committed to halting Israel’s transformation at all costs.
6. The United States was directly involved in anti-government protests during the judicial reform episode and will likely back future efforts by “first Israel” to maintain control of the nation despite the growing power of “second Israel.”
Based on these facts, it would make sense for the national-religious camp to find new political representatives ahead of the next election cycle. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir should be replaced with leaders who are deeply committed to Jewish national aspirations and free from the constraints of liberal ideology, yet knowledgeable about the broader world – especially when it comes to geopolitical matters – and able to allay the fears of “first Israel.”
Israel is transforming and, so long as the transition takes place in a gradual peaceful manner, there’s little “first Israel” can do to stop it. Their only means of combatting it has been to antagonize the contradictions in Israeli society and lead the public to see the transformation as a rupture threatening the entire Zionist project. The best defense against this would be for whoever replaces Smotrich and Ben-Gvir to take as non-confrontational a posture as possible with their opponents and work to keep the contradictions non-antagonistic for as long as possible.
In order to successfully pass through this difficult moment, Israeli society – especially “second Israel” – needs to set its sights on transcending the ostensible tensions between Jewish particularism and universal values.
