Everyone Has to Be on the Right Now. Of Course.
Naturally, Likudniks would look at this moment and conclude that everyone must now become right-wing—or else be counted as a traitor.
Of course.
A national catastrophe vindicates every belief they already held. Every argument with the Left has been settled permanently in their favor. Every failure of the Israeli government proves the perfidy of its opponents. Every disagreement over strategy is evidence of disloyalty. Every Jew must now accept that Likud was right about everything, always, and that anyone who remains unconvinced is helping Hamas.
Of course.
October 7 should have changed people. It changed me. As I argued earlier this month, Israel must admit that its peace policies failed. Some beliefs became impossible to sustain. Some hopes revealed themselves as fantasies. Much of the Western Left disgraced itself so thoroughly that no honest Jew can simply return to the politics of October 6.
But the failure of one worldview does not prove every claim made by its opponents.
October 7 did not prove that Benjamin Netanyahu is a competent leader. It did not prove that settlements make Israel safer. It did not prove that religious nationalism is wise, that indefinite occupation is sustainable, that Palestinian suffering is irrelevant, or that the Israeli Right has a coherent plan for what comes after the next military victory. It certainly did not prove that criticism of the government during wartime is treason.
A government that presided over the worst security catastrophe in Israel’s history is in no position to demand ideological submission in the name of security.
The Israeli Right has every right to say that the Left was wrong about Oslo, deterrence, coexistence, Palestinian intentions, or the prospects for negotiated peace. Some of those charges are devastating. They must be answered honestly.
But “you were wrong” does not mean “we were right about everything.” It certainly does not mean that everyone else must surrender their political judgment to Likud.
Trauma creates a hunger for certainty. If the disaster proves that one camp always understood reality and the other betrayed the nation, then there is no need to examine anyone’s actual decisions. There is no need to ask whether the policy of containing Hamas contributed to the disaster. There is no need to examine military doctrine, coalition politics, the internal division of Israel, or Netanyahu’s own conduct. There are only patriots and traitors.
That is a comforting story for people who already know which side they are on. It is also false.
National solidarity cannot mean that the Right governs while everyone else applauds. Unity does not require uniformity, and wartime loyalty does not require loyalty to Likud or to any other part of the Israeli Right. Israelis and Jews can agree that Hamas must be defeated, the hostages returned, Iran confronted, and the country defended while disagreeing bitterly about how to accomplish those things—and about who has forfeited the public’s trust.
The Left must confront its failures without evasion. But the Right must confront its own failures too. October 7 was not produced by left-wing power. It occurred after years of right-wing government, under a leader who sold himself as uniquely capable of providing security.
If lifelong Likudniks use this moment to announce that everyone must now think exactly as they do, they will have learned nothing from catastrophe except how to use it.
Of course.
