Rotten to the Core

A friend of mine suggested that Gal Gadot be Israel’s next prime minister given the manner in which she speaks up on behalf of Israel and the Jewish People.

I told her to forget it, because the Israeli political system is rotten to the core and she wouldn’t have a chance of being elected.

It starts with a dysfunctional electoral system of party lists, which gives party leaders inordinate power, results in a multitude of factions entering the Knesset and forces any potential prime minister to make political and financial deals with them to form his government.

No right-wing or left-wing party, as much as there is one, can form a coalition without including the ultra-orthodox parties and giving them both huge sums of money and making promises in order to gain their support.

How else explain the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu approved this week the allocation of the colossal sum of five billion shekels (!) in coalition deals?

But it is not only the manner in which tax payers’ money is distributed. While the IDF is frequently referred to as “the People’s Army”, nothing could be further from the truth. The haredim continue by and large to abscond from military service and the government is ostensibly incapable of passing legislation to force them to enlist.

As a consequence, reservists have been called up for many months of army duty given Israel’s ongoing defense needs. The IDF is short of soldiers and the haredim are mostly unwilling to fulfill their basic civic duty of serving their country.

The situation could be described as one of anarchy both in terms of the coalition deals and the refusal of most haredim to undertake military service.

It is difficult to see what future Israel has as a democracy given such a situation. When a building’s foundations are rotten, the entire structure eventually collapses.

Israel desperately needs a government that is prepared to take the bull by the horns and put the house in order.