When Rabin was Prime Minister, he engaged in policies that actively sought to divide the country against itself on political, social, religious, and territorial terms. Largely, he succeeded. His daughter, Knesset candidate Dalia Filosof, has even recently commented that she thinks it was these policies that contributed to the assassination, and not some loosely-defined "incitement". I am prepared to take this claim one step further. Not only did Rabin's divisive policies lead to his own murder, but those policies are still very much advocated by his political descendants on the Israeli left.
Ehud Barak, the Labor candidate for Prime Minister, leads the pack with his plain hypocrisy. He began this campaign with slogans meant only to divide the nation, inciting against identifiable groups who generally do not support him. His slogans called for "jobs before money to the yeshivot", "education before settlement", and "for everyone, but not for the extremists". All logic went out the window with this initial campaign. The yeshivot provide education no less than any other schools. If Barak is in favour of education, how can he be against yeshivot? Unless he wishes to divide the nation along university-yeshiva lines. His campaign then begins to incite against yeshiva students.
There is indeed a problem with education in this country. It is lacking in fundamental values that were meant to underpin Jewish society. One of the primary such values is the settlement of the Land of Israel. Yet, Barak prefers "education" over settlement. The question must be asked, what kind of education is he proposing? More computers? More classrooms? Longer hours? These things do not educate children. They are tools certainly, but of themselves they have no power to educate. Only an education steeped in fundamental Jewish values can solve the problems of Israel's future generations, and it is those values which are sorely lacking in Barak's elitism.
"For everyone, but not for extremists" is self-contradictory. Especially when seen from the point of view that Barak is the elitist candidate. It follows that everyone not supporting the elite is an extremist, and that Barak is not interested in their votes.
The incitement gets even louder as we move farther left. Meretz, long the bastion of leftist extremism (with these extremists Barak has no problem) in Israel, apparently wasn't extremist enough for some people. The Shinui faction has broken away from Meretz and is running independently on a single-issue platform. Their unabashed hatred of anything remotely religious or Jewish in Israel. Party leader Tommy Lapid has not wasted a single opportunity to attack the religious and provoke them with his venom. Today, he is set to lead a torchlight march through Meah Shearim in order to once again provoke the religious community.
And in case anyone is still wondering about the elitism of Barak and Labour, and to a lesser extent Meretz and Shinui, one need only listen to some non-candidates. Actress Tiki Dayan last week spoke at a rally of artists in support of Barak. She referred to Likud voters as "asafsuf - riffraff", and "a different nation". She called on Barak to "talk to them in a language that even they can understand". And Barak, who was in the room, sat there and smiled. He allowed the comment to go unchallenged, despite its purpose to incite against the sephardi, lower-income, Russian, and Ethiopian communities who belong to no elites, and whose votes generally go to the right.
It appears to me that in the past four years, Israel's leadership has failed to learn its lesson. The divisiveness and incitement of the elite that led to Rabin's assassination is no better today than it was then. The elitist leadership, with Barak at its head and the media in close pursuit, continues to advocate division of the people against itself, incitement against opponents, and a general lack of regard for humanity other than their own. In their continued deification of Rabin, they see his death, but not the faults he had that led to it. They follow the same path that he did, failing to understand that this path can lead only to disaster if it is not halted immediately.
In response to Dayan's comments, Prime Minister Netanyahu paid a visit to the Hatikva market in south Tel Aviv yesterday, proclaiming that he is "proud to be riffraff" and that "the leftist elites have the media, but we have the people". To this last comment, Barak was livid. In his most hypocritical statement yet, he accused Netanyahu of incitement for claiming that the left only cared about the elite and not the people.
The truth is, however, that one can only pray that Netanyahu is right. It's about time a leader in Israel recognized that Labour represents only the elite, and that the positions of power in this country are held almost totally by that same elite. Netanyahu has the people, that is true. The people will give him all the support they have to oust the elites from the halls of power. The remaining question is, will he succeed?
Copyright 1999. Reproduction in print or electronic format by permission only.
