Bennett-Lapid could bring us our Magyar moment

Three years ago I interviewed a Hungarian constitutional law professor, Gabor Halmai. He had been in Israel to observe and to admire our pro-democracy protests against the judicial “reform”. He told me then:

Israel is a model for Hungary. What is happening on the streets, the protests. The role of constitutional scholars, spreading the idea of constitutional democracy, the importance of protecting this democracy. Nothing similar has happened in Hungary in the past 13 years.

He told me he’d been brought to tears seeing ordinary Israelis demonstrating to protect what he feared Hungary had already lost.

The morning after Hungary’s election two weeks ago, I wrote to congratulate him. Viktor Orban’s “illiberal democracy” was over – despite Orban’s control of 90 percent of the media, and his effective political capture of both the constitutional court (in many respects the model for Netanyahu’s and Yariv Levin’s “reforms”) and the Election Commission (which Prof. Halmai had sat on until experts like him were replaced by political appointees.)

But perhaps it is now time for us Israelis to learn from the Hungarians?

When I saw the news today that Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid would be running together for this election, my first thought was one of concern – that this could affect the electoral math, losing Bennett the votes of some former Likudniks who (incorrectly, as it happens) view Lapid as a leftist. This may yet happen; but if Peter Magyar’s stunning victory can be a model for Israel’s opposition parties, then the Bennett-Lapid merger makes a lot of sense.

Bennett is an excellent analogue for Magyar. In a country where, like Israel, truly left-wing parties are marginal, the most likely person to defeat Orban was a fellow right-winger, who agreed with Orban on the most widely supported issue – immigration – but who could make his campaign about the incumbent’s corruption and assault on the rule of law and basic liberal freedoms. Magyar was not afraid to stand up to international opinion and declare that he believed in strong borders and national identity, just like Orban. He just didn’t also believe in stifling the free press, politicizing the courts, or being Vladimir Putin’s lapdog.

By the same token, Bennett agrees with Netanyahu on Israel’s closest-to-consensus issue: security – in fact, his record is more consistently hawkish that Netanyahu’s – and he is more than prepared to stand up to international criticism of Israel’s broadly supported military operations. But he can go to the electorate and say: You can have that unapologetic willingness to take the fight to our enemies, without also granting the ultra-Orthodox exemption from army service and financing their economically ruinous lifestyle; without also appointing unqualified security officials because of their personal loyalty to the prime minister; without also having Prime Minister’s Office officials moonlighting for the Qatari government; without having every government decision assessed through the prism of whether it personally benefits the Prime Minister and his family; and with an independent commission of inquiry into October 7 at long, long last.

The merger with Lapid – even if my fears are right and it does cost Bennett some right-wing votes – will create a Magyar-like super-opposition: Bennett’s poll-topping party combined with Lapid’s Yesh Atid; the largest opposition party in the current Knesset, and the one with by far the most sophisticated grassroots operation. In Lapid’s words:

We are uniting today to win the elections and to establish a Zionist government, strong and stable. A partnership between the center and right, between religious and secular, between north and south – without draft dodging and without extremism.

With Hungary, as with Israel, the problem with so much of the international analysis was that people were still talking about left and right. That was not the relevant divide in Hungary. And it isn’t in Israel.

It’s corruption vs. accountable govt.

It’s majority power with no checks-and-balances vs. the rule-of law.

It’s illiberalism vs. liberalism (not Conservatism vs. Liberalism).

That was the choice for Hungarians, and it will be the choice too for Israelis later this year.

In one respect Israelis asking “what can we learn from Hungary” are asking the wrong question. The question assumes Israel is in the same condition as Hungary. It isn’t. Orban succeeded in transforming his country from a liberal democracy to a quasi-autocracy. Netanyahu has not succeeded in doing the same here, despite his best efforts. As written above, Hungarians marvelled at our pro-democracy protest movement which effectively prevented the judicial overhaul from being implemented.

So the more pertinent question is this:

Do we want Israel to end up like Hungary? With a corrupt government ruining the economy, with the media almost entirely subservient to that government, with the courts also in the pocket of the prime minister and his allies, and with elections massively tilted in the favour of the incumbent?

Israel’s elections this year will be a referendum on this question. And I hope that today’s massive political development will help bring more voters to the side that says: Never!