Another week, another series of blows to the body politic. Those believing in the Israeli and American experiments in liberal democracy should worry. I’m getting whiplash from all the hits Left and Right keep landing – against us, the silenced majority.
They keep battering the core consensus of shared values all societies need to function, while ripping the two-ply tissue of mutual trust and hope that legitimizes democracies. Nevertheless, without engaging in whataboutism, condemning demagogues from both sides, I’m particularly struck by how self-sabotaging the Left is, in Israel and in America.
Partisans from both extremes prevaricate, demonizing the other to excuse their own excesses. But leftists in Israel and America keep tripping on themselves by thinking they’re better, even as their behavior suggests otherwise, and by oozing elitist contempt for others in an age of populism.
Israeli leftists are gold medalists in such harikiri politics. Yair Golan continues strutting around on TV, promising to save Israel, after libeling it and our holy soldiers by saying: “A sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby....” True, he backpedaled, saying he attacked the government, not our soldiers – but note how much he delighted Israel’s enemies worldwide. To them and most Israelis, he’s making a distinction without a difference.
This Golan “gift” will keep on giving: My Jewish People Policy Institute colleague Shuki Friedman warns that his slurs on the IDF will soon appear in international prosecutors’ briefs – against our kids!
If, however, my suggestion last week had been followed and liberals had repudiated Golan, Israel’s defenders could treat him as an outlier.
With those libels and many liberals rallying around him, Golan boosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection campaign and the ultra-Orthodox parties’ extortionate power.
Imagine coalition negotiations after this awful government collapses or ends. Thoughtful center-rightists like Naftali Bennett will face a horrifying dilemma: afflict Israel with more divisive Netanyahu years or govern with Golan, the soldier-libeler. If anti-Bibistas want a Zionist coalition without the haredim – please God – or the Arab parties, why is Golan’s party, ironically named “The Democrats,” currently attracting eight seats, making itself radioactive to most Israeli patriots?
This is classic BDS – Bibi Derangement Syndrome. Just because an attack comes from the Left, that doesn’t make it okay – even against this government that is as demagogic as it is incompetent.
BDS also keeps liberals talking only to one another in coded language. They don’t realize how their sneers alienate most Israelis. Two-thirds of Israelis are fed up with Bibi – but many are also fed up with Israel’s cranky, condescending WASPs: once, they were white Ashkenazi Sabras with protekzia. Now, they’re WASPPPs: white Ashkenazi Sabras with perpetual protest posters.
Bigoted opposition
These are the sophisticates who oppose bigotry – except when they’re indulging in it; who demand civility – unless they’re assailing it; who love following rules – until they’re the ones breaking them; and love the courts – as long they’re dominating them.
The latest appointment Netanyahu mismanaged into a massive controversy is Maj.-Gen. David Zini’s candidacy to lead the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency). Questions about Zini’s qualifications and Bibi’s process are valid. But the WASPPP campaign to assassinate Zini’s character is unconscionable.
As Kalman Liebskind detailed in Maariv on May 30, the left-wing poison machine demoted Zini from his status as a strategic analyst who warned about a Hamas invasion in March 2022, then drove down from the Golan to fight heroically on October 7.
Suddenly, Zini became – wait for it – an evil, fundamentalist settler, not one “of ours,” who fathered, horror of horrors, 11 children.
Israel’s leading columnists claimed he wants the hostages killed, because he candidly acknowledged the tension between the war aims of freeing 20-plus hostages versus protecting thousands on the Gaza border.
One leading columnist sneered: “Can you name all 11 of your children in the order of their birth?” Another – in Haaretz, predictably – questioned the loyalty of this hero who first joined the IDF in 1992 and volunteered for the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, implying that Zini would serve Netanyahu’s family or the Torah rather than the state he has served his entire life.
The Likud should formally thank Golan, his dupes, and these condescending columnists for keeping politics so tribal that many forget how bad this government is. I watch my friends, fed up with Bibi, gravitate back to him when they feel insulted by these condescending know-nothings who think they’re know-it-alls.
Meanwhile, in the US
Meanwhile, in America, as Democrats catalogue President Donald Trump’s many lies, they’re only accused of two really big ones. First, it’s shocking to watch CNN’s Jake Tapper become lionized for exposing the conspiracy to cover up Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, when he perpetuated it as part of the mainstream media. (Tapper’s coauthor, Alex Thomson, was more skeptical.)
The other big lie, as their blockbuster book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again reveals, is just how unqualified Kamala Harris was to be vice president, let alone president. They report that in 2022, before Harris attended “a salon-style dinner with journalists and... socialites,” her aides “held a mock soiree with staff acting the part of guests.” Staffers so doubted her in unscripted interactions, they considered serving wine “so Harris could practice with a glass or two.”
It’s bad enough to lie. But in politics, it’s worse to lie badly and lie so badly you keep boosting your opponents. Those living in echo chambers are most prone to such misdeeds and mistakes.
The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest books, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath, were just published.