In this last month before the elections in Israel I find it very difficult to believe anything the political parties are telling us about themselves. (This includes Benny Gantz, the leader of Blue and White, who often says one thing and its opposite almost in the same breath). I find it much easier to believe the parties when they speak about their opponents.
This confession might label me as a skeptic but, I hope, not as a cynic who says, “A plague on all your houses.” For I intend to vote for Meretz as I’ve done in other elections, even though it has recently come together with Ehud Barak.
Barak has been a great soldier, a good chief of staff and a competent minister of defense. He hasn’t been a good prime minister. Though the political views he has expressed recently have been sound, the possible connection with the late Jeffrey Epstein gives cause for discomfort. Mercifully, he’s only number ten on the list and thus not likely to be elected.
However, irrationally perhaps, I would have been happy if number eleven on the same list, Rabbi Gilad Kariv, did become a Member of Knesset. He’s the executive director of the Reform movement in Israel and has tried to gain a seat in the legislature in several previous elections as a candidate of the Labor Party. But he was never high enough to be voted in. I fear that the same awaits him this time, too. On the other hand, this means that he’ll stay with the Israel Reform Movement and that’s a very good thing for the movement.
Religious leaders as politicians aren’t new in Israel. Several Orthodox rabbis have been Members of Knesset. The current minister of education is Rafi Peretz, the former chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces. However, neither he nor most other rabbi-politicians have enhanced the standing of religion in the country. On the contrary. For all I know, party politics may even corrupt a Reform rabbi.
The country needs honest and competent politicians, whether they’re religious or not. By all accounts, they seem in short supply. This means that the next government may not be better than its predecessors. In fact, there’s a considerable risk that it won’t even be very different.
But things could change. A right-wing government without Binyamin Netanyahu at the helm – even with Avigdor Liberman and his party in the cabinet – might change the atmosphere. There have been speculations that Gideon Saar, on his way out of the political wilderness, could be the next prime minister. Rumor has it that the current incumbent fears it.
An even better prospect would be a unity government consisting of Likud and Blue and White. It wouldn’t need any of the smaller parties to join them and thus be free of the horse trading and concessions that are usually made to get them on board. One of the leaders of Blue and White, Gabi Ashkenazi aptly told a journalist the other day that the only thing in the way is the current prime minister, for there’s no substantive ideological difference between the two camps
Of course, as far as I’m concerned, the best would be a Blue and White government without Likud but with the party I intend to vote for together with the Labor Party in its new incarnation. But that may be too optimistic for a skeptic like myself.
Republished from San Diego Jewish World