To a certain extent, this provides some element of logic to the Israeli political universe. It has long been the case that the Likud party has been right wing in name only, but that its policies have been more a hodge-podge of band-aid solutions and ego contests rather than being based on some broad national vision. Ariel Sharon, long regarded as the most staunch defender of the political right within the Likud, became instead the harbinger of its destruction. But in his very audacity, Sharon provided proof that ideology never had any part in the Likud’s identity.
Now, Sharon has left the field of right wing politics for everyone else to pick up the pieces. Binyamin Netanyahu has been chosen as the once-and-future king of the Likud, the leader to bring glory back to the party and strength back to its electorate. But Netanyahu is very much afraid of the center – the grouping that, conventional wisdom posits, holds the balance of power in Israeli politics.
Netanyahu is afraid of those to his left claiming that he is an extremist leading an extremist party. The strong showing of Moshe Feiglin in the recent leadership primary has Netanyahu nervous about the associations kept by his party.
Netanyahu should be worried about unwanted elements in his party. The Likud has long been viewed as a party rife with third world corruption, and this was proven more strongly than ever before during the outgoing term of the Knesset. But the major suspects in the various corruption scandals that have plagued the Likud the last few years have, for the most part, left for Sharon’s greener pastures. Netanyahu has a great opportunity to rehabilitate the image of the Likud by waging a stiff and concerted campaign against corruption in government, and by pointing out that many of the most corrupt Likudniks now belong to Kadima, chief among them Sharon himself.
But by joining in the chorus of those who label Moshe Feiglin an extremist and trying to force him out of the party ranks, Netanyahu loses whatever gains he could make in the anti-corruption wars.
Moshe Feiglin represents every current Israeli politician’s worst nightmare – a candidate who bases his positions on a strong ideology, and a campaigner whose single motive is to inject the values of the Jewish nation into the life of the Jewish state. Why either of these traits should be branded “extremist” is inexplicable. The fact that many are prepared to do so, and that many take every opportunity to reject Feiglin out of hand with this term, shows the major problem underlying all of Israeli politics.
Israel is very much a state built upon ideology and values. It is a state that was meant to answer the yawning need for a Jewish state in the Jewish home. This is not just some empty slogan to garner some PR points. These are powerful words, with some powerful ideas behind them.
Jewish values provide the underlying fabric upon which most of western society was originally built. Jewish ideology proposes the application of Jewish values in the direction of Jewish society in Israel.
Instead, we have today a significant majority of the population that speaks publicly of Israel being a Jewish and democratic state, but many of those spouting such terms have no understanding of what it means to be a Jewish state, and very little understanding of what it means to be democratic.
As such, in the Jewish state of Israel, we have Ariel Sharon, perhaps as close to a consensus leader as this country has ever had, expelling Jews from their homes in the interests of something of which no one is quite sure. We have huge parts of society rejecting outright Jewish presence in places like Hevron, Shchem, Shilo, and even part of Jerusalem – the cradle of Jewish history – without ever so much as having set foot in any of these places. And we have no leader – right, left, or center – prepared to offer any real opposition to the terrorists who challenge our right to be here or our presence in our own homes.
And so that challenge becomes more fierce as time goes on. Shootings on Samarian or Judean highways have now been joined by missiles aimed at Israeli cities. Army bases are the latest targets of such missiles, and the IDF’s only response is to erect a wall around the bases.
Throughout all this, Israel’s political right has followed abysmal failure with cowardly wound-licking and fierce in-fighting as its leaders all try to blame each other. We have the election campaign we have been calling for – albeit a few months too late – and all our right-wing leaders can do is blame each other for their failure to unite in the face of the greatest attack ever launched on Israeli nationalism.
Binyamin Netanyahu can really capitalize on this situation. If he courts Moshe Feiglin and begins using his formidable talents to explain to the world that there is nothing extremist about Jews asserting Jewish ideology and Jewish rights to the Jewish State in the Jewish Homeland, Netanyahu can capture the support of all Israeli right-wingers.
The right-wing voter in Israel currently has no home – no reason to vote at all. Netanyahu can change all that. But distancing himself from Feiglin and courting an already overcrowded political center will ensure only that Netanyahu finishes third.
Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
