And the Award for Israel’s Worst Minister Goes to…

The competition was fierce. But after considerable effort and multiple calculations, I have managed to select the most inept and infuriating minister in this government.

And the winner is… Yoav Kisch! Please welcome the Minister of Education!

I can see people in the audience sitting open-mouthed – they certainly did not expect this outcome. How, they will ask, did someone like Bezalel Smotrich not win? After all, he is creating a binational reality between the sea and the Jordan River, the very demand that makes Israel’s supporters jump whenever it is heard at anti-Israel demonstrations. In English, it is threatening. In Hebrew, however, it amounts to the fulfillment of prophecy, a harbinger of the Messiah. or the end of Israel as a Jewish-democratic country,, whichever comes first.

So why did Smotrich not win?

Because the double minister advances the ideology for which he was elected. In what appears to be his secondary role as finance minister, he pours money into the sector that sent him to the legislature of the country that still calls itself “the only democracy in the Middle East.” In his more consequential role as an additional minister in the Defense Ministry, he is advancing the “Decisive Plan” he published in 2017.

Under that plan, millions of Palestinians will agree to become carriers of water and hewers of wood, or join the Zionist movement, or willingly depart, or be expelled. Or something. He is determined to inflict irreversible damage, but for a purpose. A delusional and dangerous purpose, perhaps, but it is his – and it is out in the open.

What about Miri Regev, you ask? Doesn’t she deserve recognition? With record levels of traffic accidents and congestion, never mind the Fly Dubai fiasco, are women being discriminated against once again?

She is certainly a serious contender, and not the only one. But after years as the so-called Minister of Transport, we have grown accustomed to expect little of her. Besides, cheap transportation for the ultra-Orthodox brings votes in Likud primaries, as does providing services where mayors are political supporters. So, she has a method.

But Kisch. Oh, Kisch, a former Air Force pilot, who first came to public attention as a campaigner against the exemption of the ultra-Orthodox from carrying the burden of Israel’s security.

Fine, you fall into line with the coalition and promote draft evasion. OK, you invest unprecedented sums in ultra-Orthodox education which does not teach core subjects like mathematics and English, because, after all, preserving the government takes precedence over everything else.

But why, in the name of all the Jewish scholars throughout the generations, are you working to destroy academia, while ignoring Israel’s overcrowded classrooms and the plummeting test results of its students?

Why are you determined to humiliate Israel’s universities and strip them of their independence? From measures to silence them, through undermining the independence of the Council for Higher Education, to the permission to a Hungarian university to open a medical school in Eilat to please Viktor Orbán (remember him?), when Ben-Gurion University also wanted to establish one, and it ranks higher internationally?

If there were a constituency among party activists for attacking universities, and the minister responsible were earning political points for the destruction he is trying to inflict on them, one might say: fair enough.

But simply damaging the prestige and standing of Israel’s centers of excellence? Deliberately damaging the very institutions that help safeguard the country’s capabilities in virtually every vital field?

Is there a reason?

Personal? Professional?

Perhaps one of his associates was rejected by a university for admission or employment, and this is his revenge? If there were a logical explanation, I am not sure the coveted title would be his.

But in the absence of any rational justification for the systematic destruction he is sowing, Kisch has won fair and square.

And now, I am honored to invite the prime minister to present the “Legend of Destruction” Award to the Minister of Education, in tribute to what was once the Start-Up Nation and in honor of its roots as the People of the Book.

And for those asking: no, the first among the ministers was not a candidate. He is disqualified both by virtue of his office and because, in this competition, nobody stands a chance against