Herzog is right: Israel needs Bibi-Gadi coalition
Every kind of coalition is being discussed. They all violate red lines and promises the candidates made in their campaigns.
Fortunately, for compensation for this problem, one of them could work well if tried. One and only one of them.
President Herzog explained the situation clearly. The two main parties, by demonizing each other and promising never to join with the other – and other parties joining in on the pledge –excluded the very coalition they now need to rely upon.
Gadi and Bibi need to lead the government together. They represent the overall viewpoint of most Israelis. They alone can, by joining forces, unite the large majority at the core of the Israeli polity. They alone can put together a solid, stable government.
And the Arab parties?
It would be a mistake to form either a rightist or a leftist coalition in which Arab parties would be the kingmaker. But what about a centrist, Right-Left coalition?
For Arab parties to be constructively included in an Israeli government, Israel has to have a government with its own majority prior to adding in the Arab parties. That is how they can get assimilated to working within the system. And only a Gadi-Bibi coalition can provide that.
If Netanyahu and Eisenkot were to include the Arab parties in their joint coalition, it would finally be benign to do so. It would be a form of integrating them into the political order rather than enabling them to disrupt it.
Excluding self-harming extremes
A national coalition, starting with Netanyahu and Eisenkot, could also include some other factional minority parties, but not all of them. It would eliminate the extremes.
It would particularly eliminate the parties in the Rightist coalition that have made matters so much worse in recent years. The parties that talk about annexing the West Bank. The ones who espouse a greater Israel and seem to sympathize with settler violence. The ones who scared the Arab population of Israel into electing a full 19 members of the Knesset this time.
These extremists are counterproductive for Israel. Netanyahu needs to free himself of them. He probably knows that. But he can’t do it as long as he is tied to a fragile factional majority in coalition with them.
The same is true of Eisenkot. He is tied down by his rhetoric demonizing Netanyahu.
Will Israel be Ruled by Petty Attachments to Demonizing Rhetoric?
He is not alone in using overwrought anti-Netanyahu rhetoric. The entire global media and global left have been using it for years. So have figures such as Obama.
Demonizing whoever is the leader of the Right is an entrenched habit of the mainstream Western media and intelligentsia. They have done it to Reagan, Nixon, Bush II, and Trump alike – not just Netanyahu. Each time, they say that they’re fighting a unique evil, one so extreme that it’s the first of its kind. Each next time around, they once again tell us that this is the first time ever.
President Reagan was demonized recklessly as a fool who was planning to start World War III. That is forgotten today; it turned out the opposite, and besides, Reagan is too popular. But there were many at the time who applauded the nearly successful assassination of Reagan, and who had created the atmosphere that encouraged it.
Nixon was demonized just as recklessly, and driven out of office in deference to the hatred built up against him. He was a good president – and I say that as one who, when I was young, succumbed to the fashion in my generation of demonizing him, and only learned better later. Now that I’m old, I don’t want others to repeat my mistake.
The second President Bush was also demonized at the start. He was rescued by a few months of national unity after the 9/11 terrorist attack, but the demonization resumed. He was rehabilitated only long after his retirement: when he decided to denounce and boycott Trump, he was seen as useful again.
And of course, Trump has been demonized. And has been hamstrung by the way the media and Democrats have convinced many experienced Republican to pledge never to work with him. And has been shot at several times, even more than Reagan.
The demonization of Netanyahu has fit in with this pattern. It too has been reckless. It too has imputed unparalleled evil to Netanyahu. It too has drawn a red line against working with him.
Unfortunately it has not been unusual for much of the mainstream Israeli media to repeat the worst group behaviors of the Western media. It is doing so with this behavior.
Seeing Reality after the Rhetoric
Has the Netanyahu government been corrupt? Yes. Will any government in power for more than ten years accumulate a fair amount of corruption? Yes. Have other Israeli governments been pristine pure? No; but one might think so, reading the media.
Netanyahu is not the devil. He has been overall one of the wiser rulers of Israel, both in his economic policies and his foreign policies.
Has he made mistakes? Of course. Bad ones.
Has he learned better than most people from the mistakes exposed by October 7th? Yes.
What he and we must learn
What he learned from it are three critical things:
* Hamas must be destroyed as a political power in Gaza and the West Bank, not just “mowed” again.
* Hezbollah must be defanged.
* The head of the snake – the Iranian regime – must be cut off.
Bibi has also acted wisely within the constraints imposed by President Biden, who did not want him to seriously try to destroy Hamas and instead tried at every step delayed him from proceeding. He has also been restrained by President Trump, who has continued the stop-start military pattern of Biden and has always wanted to make a deal with America’s enemies.
Bibi has operated as well as could be hoped for in these conditions – nearly impossible conditions. Can Eisenkot really claim that he would have done better?
They should get past the demonizations and unite their virtues.
Eisenkot has many virtues which he can bring to a coalition. So does Netanyahu. Together, they can chart a steadier course for Israel. It will hold greater promise for Israel and the neighborhood, and will garner greater support in the West.
Only together can they do this.
Israel needs to make the right choice of coalitions: Bibi and Gadi together.
And the coalition can provide a sound policy program.
A sound coalition program
Compromises are needed to get to four basic joint policies:
* An honest October 7 investigation, one aimed not at partisan revenge but at learning the lessons of the mistakes. All the mistakes, including the original sin imposed by Obama back in 2012-14: a policy of stopping at mowing the grass after Hamas attacked. This policy was duly rationalized by Israeli analysts as a national strategy. It bore the largest single share of the fault for failing to prevent October 7.
* No more talk of West Bank annexation.
* Return to support for a carefully prepared “two-state solution” – not what is called “the two-state solution” with two symmetrical sovereignties, but a carefully prepared bespoken deal, one maintaining asymmetrical Israeli sovereignty in security matters.
* Finish the job on Iran. Jointly overcome Trump’s inhibitions about arming the opposition, Jointly overcome the self-canceling mantra, shared by too many Democrats and Trumpists alike, of “no boots on the ground”. Jointly overcome the insistence on just throwing the dice to see if we can get the great gains of victory without risking real costs.
Breaking through the thin obstacles to the thick coalition
In the way of the coalition stands, not grand realities, but the habits of two leaders who have been taken in by their own rhetoric. They seem like Gulliver, who in a fit of inattention let himself get tied down by tiny Lilliputian strings.
Fortunately today it is only mental strings that have to be overcome. And overcome they can and must be.
Herzog’s warning cannot be repeated often enough: Now that the election is over, the leaders urgently need to pull out of the rut that they talked themselves into during the campaign.
It may feel hard for Bibi or Gadi to do this. But it is the right thing for a democratic leader to do. All it requires is to grow up and out of one piece of their rhetoric. It is much easier than trying to form a sound coalition without it.