Another View: Eisenkot and National Unity

The author is an Israeli right-winger. I believe in expanding Jewish communities and agricultural projects in Judaea and Samaria. I think that Israel’s Supreme Court is the greatest threat to Israel’s democracy, though a national constitutional compromise is necessary that secures individual (and community) rights. In this essay, the “other view” I present is other than that of a lot of my fellows on Israel’s right.

I’m not offering here a reckoning with Binyamin Netanyahu and his coalition. I’ve already made that reckoning. Six months ago I was a member of the Likud Central Committee. I was offered a safe place in the new central committee – no need even to campaign or be elected. I refused and left the party, mainly though not exclusively because of the Haredi draft issue. I’m in the same boat as Yuli Edelstein and Dan Illouz, and perfectly satisfied with my company.

I know that a mature, intelligent citizen in a democracy needs to be able to compromise. When you enter the polling booth, none of the options on offer will represent 100% of what you believe is right, and in addition strategic considerations also affect your vote. But I have never voted against my conscience. In all conscience, I could not vote for any of the components of Netanyahu’s present coalition. I could not countenance supporting the continuation of the Haredi exemption from military service, education and work. Nor could I support voting for any component of Eisenkot’s camp, with their threat to dismantle the progress that the outgoing government made in judicial reform, leaving Yitzhak Amit as de facto ruler of the country. I went into the polling place with eyes open and no illusions and voted for Ofer Winter. Considering the alternatives, I don’t for a moment regret my choice.

Now as to Eisenkot. While entertaining no illusions about Netanyahu (I would buy a used car from Eisenkot, but not from Netanyahu) I believe he is by far the better choice to lead the country. Eisenkot was a mediocre chief of staff. He wrote the doctrine for the IDF’s ground forces, which failed to reach (or even try for) a military decision in Lebanon or Gaza. He’ll be less than mediocre as a neophyte prime minister.

But Eisenkot said this week that he is supported by a majority of Israel’s citizens, and also by a majority of “the citizens that serve.” He’s right. According to my lights, he has the moral right to form a government if he can. I can blog my criticism of him here, but in the polling place my vote counts exactly the same as everyone else’s. The question is, what kind of government, and on how broad a basis?

Eisenkot has enunciated four principles that he claims will form the basis of a government he heads. Two are unexceptional in my view: Compulsory national service for all, and accepting that Hamas needs to be destroyed as a political and military entity.

The two other principles he enunciated are, to my mind, problematic. They sound nice but are ambiguous, and the ambiguities are a serious problem. One is to recognize Israel as “a Jewish, democratic, liberal and egalitarian state.” The other is to “commit to the values laid out in the country’s Declaration of Independence.”

How can one object to such positions?

Let’s first consider Eisenkot’s laundry list of values. Conflict over values – not all values, but some of them – lie at the heart of Israel’s political divide. “Jewish” and “democratic” pose no problem in my view. Depending on how they are interpreted, “liberal” and “egalitarian” can undermine the first two values.

I believe that everybody in Israel should be able to live their private lives according to their own values, with all the civil rights proper to them guaranteed, and these principles should be backed up by ironclad constitutional decrees. But that doesn’t necessarily apply to the values the state applies in the public sphere appropriate to it. In particular, Israel’s Supreme Court has insisted that Israel act as a secular state, pressing Jewish values out of the public square. Moreover, where once the court upheld the Jewish nature of the state, in recent decades it has refused to consider Jewishness and Zionism as values it should uphold. Its actions are molded by the notion that a democracy should be strictly neutral from the point of view of national identity and strictly secular and progressive in the policies it pursues. I and many of my compatriots on the right disagree. Of course, Eisenkot’s victory means that such views now, and for the time being, are not only the view of the court but also can be supported by a Parliamentary majority. Nonetheless, I object. If what the country needs is a national unity government of right and left, this “principle” of Eisenkot cannot underpin it.

Eisenkot’s remaining principle of accepting the “values” of the Declaration of Independence conceals a partisan position regarding the declaration and its role in determining the kind of country Israel is to be. The Declaration doesn’t mention democracy anywhere but it does refer to equality. And what equality should mean in Israel is the subject of a deep and longstanding debate. What’s uncontroversial is that every citizen in Israel should enjoy equal individual rights: To life, liberty, property, the vote, et cetera. None of that is in dispute.

But the law in Israel as it now stands reserves to the Jewish people the sole right of sovereignty in the State of Israel. Israel is not to become a multinational state. That was the import of the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People. Israel’s left and judicial establishment really don’t like that law and would be happy to see it repealed. They would like to see Israel’s declaration of independence legislated into law – as it now is not – so as to apply their own interpretation of “equality” and erase Israel’s legal character as the state of the Jewish people. This is the position Eisenkot is signaling that he has adopted.

Again, if Eisenkot wants to form a national unity government, he cannot do so on the basis of the position he has enunciated regarding the Declaration of Independence.

Eisenkot may have the moral right to form a government, but he has a choice. He can form a minority government relying on the Arab parties. That government will give the values of Israel as a Jewish state and the elimination of Hamas short shrift. I think that government is the wrong government for a country involved in a multifront war with Islamic fundamentalists. I doubt it can pass a budget for fiscal 2028 and will end in tears. If Eisenkot wants to establish a consensual Zionist government, he will have to climb down from some of the positions he has enunciated. Of course, he’s not the only one.