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<\/a>\u201cPack your bags, it\u2019s time to go,\u201d wrote one heartbroken friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you can, leave,\u201d opined another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I, along with some half the country, was devastated with the results of our fifth election in four years. But there are, in fact, several reasons to be optimistic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. Everything is temporary<\/strong>. Other than a terror attack leading to a loss of life, just about anything in politics can be undone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Money for full-time yeshiva learning reduced? Wait, it\u2019s back. Nope, gone again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kashrut reform \u2013 we got it. Um, well probably not anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Supreme Court is neutered by a Knesset \u201coverride clause?\u201d For now, perhaps. But just wait another four years (or less) and, with a new coalition, the law will be reversed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. We are in the midst of a Trumpian backlash in Israel. <\/strong>The rise of Donald Trump was a clear backlash to the Barack Obama years, just as Joe Biden\u2019s election was a response to four years of Trump. The ascendency of the far right in Israel today is, similarly, a backlash to the now defunct \u201cgovernment of change.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Did voters lurch further to the Right because they agreed with everything Benjamin Netanyahu and his presumed political partners had to say? No. But with the demise of Yamina, moderate religious voters had nowhere else to turn and so, as Carrie Keller-Lynn wrote<\/a> in\u00a0The Times of Israel,\u00a0<\/em>opted \u201cto hold their noses\u201d and vote for the Religious Zionist Party.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Has Israel transformed overnight into a racist, homophobic nation? While there are certainly some rotten apples, most Israelis are still kind, helpful and moderate. As Martin Luther King Jr. once quipped<\/a>, \u201cThe arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Israel is not alone in its swing to the <\/strong>Right<\/strong>. France, Sweden, the U.K., Hungary, Italy \u2013 all over the world, voters have moved steadily to the Right. When Trump was elected president, pundits predicted Americans would emigrate in droves. That didn\u2019t happen, whether out of complacency or a desire to fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Frankly, where would you even go at this point? If the backlash hypothesis is true, the United States could be facing its own post-Biden Republican reaction in 2024 (although the results from last week’s midterm elections showed Democrats have more staying power than pollsters forecast).<\/p>\n\n\n\n France\u2019s Emmanuel Macron beat rightist firebrand Marine Le Pen this time, but she still received<\/a> 41% of the vote (far more than the 11% the Religious Zionist Party got in Israel). Budapest may be one of the world\u2019s most beautiful cities, but Prime Minister Victor Orban\u2019s branding<\/a> Hungary as \u201can illiberal democracy\u201d hardly makes it a place to move to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4.\u00a0A bogeyman can be a useful foil<\/strong>. Bibi hedges his language in ways only an accomplished politician learns to sublimate. Religious Zionist Party leaders Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, on the other hand, say exactly what they\u00a0mean. \u201cIf they are throwing stones, shoot them,\u201d Ben-Gvir told police officers<\/a> in Sheikh Jarrah while brandishing his own handgun. But, as Vladimir Lenin once said<\/a>,\u00a0\u201cthe worse, the better\u201d \u2013 that is, it\u2019s only\u00a0when things seem exceptionally dire\u00a0that a meaningful uprising can take place.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the anti-Bibi block ever wants to win, a polarizing figure might be just what\u2019s needed to scare it into motion. If enough policies are implemented that citizens can\u2019t stomach, a fighting opposition will return to protests outside the Prime Minister\u2019s Residence in Jerusalem, stronger than ever. We can\u2019t have the left constantly crying \u201cgevalt\u201d every single election. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking of which\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. Losing Meretz may not be such a bad thing<\/strong>. I have nothing against Meretz. Many of my friends and family voted for them. But it seems the party has long since lost relevance, and the annual game of begging the nation to save them, such that they squeak by the electoral threshold, isn\u2019t healthy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When a new left-wing party comes to replace the old Meretz, it will need to do more than represent an increasingly small slice of the Israeli population. As Haviv Rettig Gur wrote<\/a> in\u00a0The Times of Israel,\u00a0<\/em>\u201cthe left that just collapsed, in terms of raw political strategy, doesn\u2019t deserve to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6.\u00a0A Jewish state comes before a democratic one<\/strong>. Daniel Gordis, senior vice president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, noted on Substack<\/a> that the Left in general tends to eschew terms such as \u201cJewish\u201d and \u201cZionist.\u201d Indeed, in one of Yair Lapid\u2019s final campaign videos<\/a> as prime minister, he used neither term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe problem, for me, is that if you translated this video into French and substituted \u2018France\u2019 for Israel, Emmanuel Macron could use it in his next campaign,\u201d Gordis wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s a lovely video that would work for any modern liberal democracy. But here\u2019s the rub. I never intended to move to any old modern liberal democracy\u2026I came here to live in a Jewish state, a state that, while not imposing religiously on anyone, would be Jewish in manifold ways \u2013 culturally, educationally, in values and much more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many moderate Israelis, who are \u201cwithout question appalled by some things that Ben-Gvir says\u2026\u00a0just want to know that there is someone in the room reminding everyone that they are in the business of leading a\u00a0Jewish<\/em> state,\u201d\u00a0Gordis added. These voters may or may not want public transportation on Shabbat, but they want \u201ca Jewish voice in government meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I do, too, although I disagree with Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, Netanyahu and the haredi parties about the best way to get there. But that day is coming, which is why I insist on remaining optimistic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s our job now to hasten its arrival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n