Surprisingly, Itamar Ben-Gvir apologized. He claims to regret his manipulations that dragged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from his hospital bed shortly after prostate surgery and pulled MK Boaz Bismuth from his mother’s shiva. Both came to the Knesset to pass legislation the coalition deemed critical. While defying coalition discipline, Ben-Gvir refused to find legislators to “offset” these legitimate absences.
Ben-Gvir’s apology sits on Hypocrisy Highway, where “too little” meets “too late.” Clearly, the coalition blowback he received pressured him to take a rare step back – or sideways. Still, he behaved reprehensibly.
With one vote, Ben-Gvir launched two assaults on the civility our Jewish-democratic state should take for granted. Can anyone, no matter how anti-Bibi, look at the pictures of our pale, ailing prime minister while voting, and not feel badly for him? Can anyone, Right or Left, look at the pictures of our pale, ailing prime minister forced to vote by his own Frankenstein, and not feel badly for us?
Then, equally outrageously, the same parliamentary chest-pounders force another coalition colleague to disrupt the seven-day mourning for his mother.
Before the vote, Likud had “requested that MK Boaz Bismuth be offset against an Otzma Yehudit MK and was answered negatively.” That’s why Ben-Gvir’s apology feels as sincere as the wolf’s apology after eating a flock of sheep saying, “I didn’t realize you needed them for those sweaters we love!”
Is this the kind of politics we want? Are these the kind of leaders we deserve?
What kind of moral maggots represent us?
Before the right-besotted Channel 14 fanatics go ballistic, because anything anyone from the Right says or does is beyond criticism, let me be clear. The opposition behaved despicably, too. How come there weren’t two politicians of conscience from the 58 nay votes to say, “Bibi, Boaz, we got this?”
The two graceful MKs should have been Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid. Beyond being the leading opposition leaders, they launched their 2019 political alliance promising to elevate Israeli politics. Although many forces helped them fail, their callousness last week betrayed their core principles – again.
ISRAELIS ARE obsessed with many issues we cannot control, especially the hostages. Even Secretary of State Antony Blinken admits it’s beyond us. It’s mostly up to Hamas, which, Blinken claims, hasn’t received enough world pressure. “Where is the world?” Blinken asked The New York Times, telling Hamas: “End this!”
This debacle, however, was under Israeli control – and totally avoidable. Any two of 58 could have acted like “mensches” – and also score political points.
In politics as in life, doing the right thing often makes you look good, too. And acting ethically, graciously, has its own benefits, no matter the optics.
This moral misfire reflects a broader problem in Israel and the West. In our hyper-fluid age of doubt, when so many question so much, from God’s existence to their own gender identity, few people question their own political preferences. The zealotry that once characterized too many religious people is now polarizing politics destructively.
Ambiguity, Behaving decently, and Compromise are the ABCs of democratic politics. Living with ambiguity welcomes nuance, paradox, and a healthy confusion into our world and our political debates. By behaving decently, we paper over the tensions we feel, the clashes we have, the angers that might linger, with a broader commitment to the common good – and our shared liberal-nationalistic journey in any healthy democracy. And accepting compromise acknowledges that most hot button issues are complicated, with good patriots often arriving at differing conclusions.
ITAMAR BEN-GVIR has become Israel’s exemplar of the brutalization of politics worldwide. He is Netanyahu’s creation, the spoiled child who inevitably brutalizes the parents who over-indulged him. He takes Bibi’s take-no-prisoners politics to greater extremes, without being balanced by Netanyahu’s successes in weaning Israel from stifling economic bureaucracy or, most recently, waging this war with more determination than the Americans and the opposition wanted.
Alas, too angry, vindictive, and demagogic himself to rest on his recent diplomatic and military successes, Bibi also foments the ugliness. This time, it also backfired on him. Netanyahu finished 2024 with a short video defending his wife and their honor. Attacking the harassment some right-wing politicians endure, he said, “They chase them [coalition politicians] in the streets, they threaten their kids.” He then blamed the Left for creating “the real poison machine we face,” insisting, “it’s not just a machine, it’s an industry.”
His complaints are as sincere as a cheetah professing vegetarianism amid a herd of antelopes. Netanyahu clawed his way back into power powered by his poison industry as his lackeys harassed MKs and their kids. No faux indignation can negate that.
Israeli politics has often lacked civility. David Ben-Gurion called Menachem Begin “a Hitlerist type.” Golda Meir detested Shulamit Aloni. Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres squabbled constantly. And most politicians who served with Moshe Dayan hated him, for getting away with indiscretions they never could.
But today’s Knesset antics, during wartime, with both sides acting horridly, are inexcusable. They contrast with the stories of grace, generosity, civility, patriotism, and unfathomable sacrifice we hear describing our soldiers and reservists.
The gap between such selflessness and our leaders’ boorishness explains why some Israelis wish all 120 MKs would quit politics. And I certainly join the chorus hoping that our younger generation, which has done such a remarkable job saving us from our enemies, will jump into politics when the war ends – and also save us from ourselves.
The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest book, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream, has just been published.