Arie Ruttenberg, a Technion graduate, is a political strategist who advised Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin. He is co-author (with me) of Cracking the Creativity Code, a book about how to discover and implement creative ideas.
From the preface of Ruttenberg’s new book The Defeat of Evil: Could It Happen in America? Poems and More 2023-2024:
“On January 1, 2024, the [Israeli] Supreme Court ruled it has the power to invalidate laws that threaten the essence of Israeli democracy…The first force of evil, the internal one, was defeated. Now, only the second force of evil remains to be dealt with – the one attacking us from the outside. And we will defeat it as well.”
The judicial reform launched in January 2023 sought to limit the Supreme Court’s power to exercise judicial review and grant the government control over judicial appointments. This attack on democracy caused you, me, and many Israelis deep anguish. What was the process that led you to start writing poetry in response?
Despite the tiny 30,000 vote margin, [Benjamin] Netanyahu formed an entirely right-wing government [in 2022], without any balance of Center or Left. Then, they issued statements through Netanyahu and Justice Minister Yariv Levin that they were going to change the face of the State of Israel.
The feeling was that everything built in the State of Israel in its 74 years of existence was going to collapse and crumble in the face of the opposition of a majority of the public, in parliament and in the government. There was a feeling of shock.
That shock shook me and made me want to express the unbearable situation that had arisen through poetry. And the first poem I wrote in early November 2022, ‘Hatikva 2.0: An Essential Update,’ referred to the necessary change in the national anthem of the State of Israel and the need to write a new anthem that guarantees the freedom of the people living in the State of Israel and the freedom of its citizens.
I published this poem. Many other people around me were asking themselves what was going to happen now under a leader who behaved like a dictator and announced that he was going to change everything, all the values.
You have extensive experience as a strategic political consultant. How can the Center-Left build a campaign for the upcoming elections, on or before October 27, 2026, to restore and safeguard democracy in Israel?
Netanyahu and Yariv Levin presented a complete and detailed plan for how they would dismantle everything and build everything according to their will. And the immediate reaction after the shock was a reaction of fear and anxiety.
What do you do in a state of anxiety? My poems of the first months of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety pointed to a trend. Maybe the right thing for people who want to continue living according to the values with which they lived for decades, and established the State of Israel, is to simply leave this country.
If this country is going to change its face, maybe the right thing is to abandon it and find better places. I wrote a poem about how good it is for birds that they have no migration restrictions:
‘Birds Take No Account (Of Borders)’: ‘My mother told me /That in the death camps/ She envied only the birds/ They were for her a source of inspiration/ For freedom, liberty, hope.’
I wrote songs about how it is not good for a person to have only one share of common stock – to spread the risk. Some then began a process that continues to this day – to move to other countries. Many since November 2022 have moved to other countries. This was a result of the fear effect.
The feeling of fear was replaced by a feeling of anger and rage and a desire to protest against the government that is behaving inappropriately toward us. Demonstrations began all over Israel.
And suddenly I found myself in these demonstrations, mainly on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv, surrounded by wonderful people, who like me, understood that what the new dictatorship is trying to create is a national disaster and that we must protest against it – not with violence or by breaking the law but only with determination and a constant presence, day after day, week after week.
Demonstrations showed to the government and showed to the entire world that we citizens of the State of Israel will not accept and will not agree to what the government is preparing to do. And public opinion polls began to indicate that the majority of the people were on our side.
Then the struggle began to move to both parliamentary and legal channels. We turned to the Supreme Court for help in our very long campaign. The Supreme Court stood by us. And so, after more than a year of struggle in the streets, a nonviolent but very determined struggle with a great deal of public power, the Supreme Court made two rulings, by a majority of 12 to three. They determined that the Supreme Court of the State of Israel can annul any law passed by the Israeli parliament or the Israeli government if it contradicts the fundamental values of the State of Israel.
This law today is the foundation on which the State of Israel stands. It is what allows the citizens of the state today to be sure that the government cannot do anything that contradicts everything that we have built in all the years of the state’s existence. And this law did indeed prove that we can annul any such legislation through the Supreme Court.
In fact, this was the moment of our great victory. And from that moment on, from the beginning of 2024, the government has tried in indirect ways to achieve its illegal goals but failed to do so.
In my book, I describe this entire process through poems and photographs. You ask, what do we need to do to change the evil government that governs us today? Exactly what we did in the past to win. We need to take all the good people to the streets without violence, only through messages, only positive messages that are in the country’s best interest, but with a lot of power – power you can see in the photographs, that will ensure our victory in the next elections.
The process the US is undergoing at present appears not unlike the process we in Israel went through, when the executive branch claims unrestrained power. What in your view will happen in the United States and what are the implications for Israel?
The book I wrote only refers to Israel, but it is impossible not to see the amazing similarity between the process we are going through in Israel and what is happening today in the United States.
As someone who knows politics well, I can say that in both cases the problem starts with evil – with the fact that the excess of power corrupts, causing the rulers to forget that they are servants of the public, that the public is sovereign, that power is in the hands of the people and not in their hands. That they are required to serve the people in a way that is beneficial for the public and not themselves or their own egos.
It seems surprising that in the United States, a process is suddenly developing that seems similar to what happened in Israel. In my opinion, it starts for the same reasons. The problems, the frustrations, the fears, the anxieties, the uncertainty are all very similar. The question is how the American public will react.
I can’t predict that. I can only say that anyone who wants to answer this question should read my book and understand the emotional depth of the process that led to what happened in Israel.
“It’s not just politics. It’s not just economics. What is happening is in the souls of the citizens. The anxieties, the anger, the frustration. The desire to influence. The desire to change. The desire to reach a safe haven. All of these things are deeply emotional factors that can ultimately affect the political process.
Anyone who wants to answer the question ‘Can it happen in America?’ should follow the emotional process that is described in my book and think about whether this can indeed happen in the United States.”
For now, the evil within us has been defeated – and the evil outside our borders has been decimated, at a terrible cost. Terrorists have been killed, but their murderous credo – destroy the Jews – lives on.
The Defeat of Evil ends with this somber warning: “Even in victory, we must remember: No triumph is ever complete or permanent. Safeguarding our values demands constant vigilance.”■
A New Year’s wish
Written on Rosh Hashanah, September 16, 2023, the Jewish New Year, 21 days before October 7: Titled: “Happy New Year – Why Not Live Twice?”
“A good year, and why not live twice? At 75, even a nation ages. The mind grows foggy, muscles grow weak, diseases creep in, day in and day out. We grow frail and become easy prey for swindlers. This happened to us here in the year that has passed when a gang of lawbreakers seized control of our lives. Under the guise of reform, they staged a coup to dismantle democracy in our aging state. But then it became clear, to great astonishment, that a nation can live twice as the younger generation rose with bravery to fight the war of a second independence. The coming year will already look different. We will shift from defense to offense and begin to reshape everything anew. A democratic state, anchored to a constitution. Nations can be born twice, and people too can reinvent themselves. My blessing goes out to all of us for a good year on our journey toward a better future, the future of the year 5784.”
A footnote adds:
“…The Hamas attack led to Israel’s longest war on multiple fronts, while throughout, the government did not cease its attempts to crush democracy.”
The writer heads the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center at S. Neaman Institute, Technion. He blogs at www.timnovate.wordpress.com.
- The Defeat of Evil: Could It Happen in America?
- Arie Ruttenberg
- Amazon, 2025
- 72 pages; $15