Team Bennett has what we desperately need — competence

Here’s a word that has fallen out of fashion and, in Israeli government circles, out of practice too. “Competence.” In Hebrew, it has more of a songlike ring — “יכולת” (yecholet) — but that still doesn’t make the word a vote-winner. It should. Because competence is what Israel desperately needs right now, after four years of utter incompetence (choser yecholet, in case you’re interested) — of catastrophic failures, criminal irresponsibility and deep incompetence in almost every government department — have brought the country to a precipice. Naftali Bennett’s party, B’Yachad, announced this week a line-up of truly impressive people, bursting with yecholet. It was a rare moment of hope in these dark days.

Some of them were familiar from four years of Parliamentary heroism on the Opposition benches. Israel’s system gives almost no power to the opposition when it is facing a united government with a majority — yet across these four terrible years, the Opposition, led by Yesh Atid have, remarkably, managed to block almost all of the anti-democratic measures Netanyahu wanted to steamroll through. There were Merav Ben-Ari and Meirav Cohen arguing thousands of points against the government’s authoritarian bills; Vladimir Beliak bringing his formidable financial knowledge to relentlessly nail government representatives on shoddy, or politics-first, economics — and all of them arguing and filibustering and working the system however the system allowed them to work, deep into the night, most nights. And now these highly capable people, with all of their experience, are part of B’Yachad, where they have been joined by other highly capable people. The kind of people you’d want running a country, and especially this one with all its challenges. Israel cannot afford to be run by incompetents.

Number three in B’yachad, behind Bennett and Yair Lapid, is Keren Terner, the extremely-highly-regarded former Director-General of both the Ministry of Finance and of the Ministry of Transportation. She is widely respected across the Knesset as one of the most competent and consequential administrators we’ve got. That’s yecholet.

Just below her, Merav Ben-Ari is now B’yachad’s number four. The first woman to serve as Chair of the Internal Security Committee, she has achieved real progress in the legislative fight to protect women against domestic violence and rape, and to protect all victims of crime. Below her at five, Liran Avisar Ben Horin, another brilliant administrator who as Director-General of the Communications Ministry rolled out the fibre-optic revolution and did it fast and capably, unlocking new possibilities for Israel’s tech sector, and all of us.

In the number six spot is one of Israel’s most accomplished security experts, one of several such on the slate. Noam Tibon, famously an October 7th hero who rushed to save his family and many others on that terrible day, is a top specialist on combat operations and counter-terrorism, and he was formerly commander of the 202 Paratroopers Battalion, the Nahal Brigade, the West Bank Division and the Northern Corps.

We don’t need to go through each ever person on the list (though if you want to cheer yourself up, I suggest you do — it’ll bring some pride and optimism to your day). But everywhere you look, yecholet. People who get it done. In almost every area.

Security? Alongside Tibon, and not to mention party leader Bennett, former commando and Minister Of Defence, there’s Ram Ben Barak, who was Deputy Director of the Mossad, Director-General of the Ministry of Intelligence and Strategic Affairs, and Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. There’s Maglan commander Shahar Varon, who was wounded in Gaza and returned to fight alongside his comrades, and is an expert in military use of AI.

There are indeed many such, but this excellent group are often more than a single resume item. Nisan Zeevi is leading the charge to return security to the north, while also being an investments and innovation expert. Moshe ‘Kinley’ Turpaz — paratroopers’ battalion commander and an operations officer in the Gaza Division — has vast experience as an MK (rushing back for nights at the Knesset while spending hundreds of days in the reserves), but also as a leader in establishing education networks, across both secular and religious communities. Incidentally, it was Turpaz’s highly innovative ideas on education, so far ahead on what I was hearing from other parties (which wasn’t much), that first piqued my interest in, then, Yesh Atid.

It’s the same in almost every area one can think of. Finance (Beliak who fights corruption with one hand and led the tax credits reform for new immigrants with the other, Finance Committee member and serial stopper of illegal finance transfers Naor Shiri, cost-of-living expert Simon Davidson); diplomacy (Yair Lapid for one, Jeremy Saltan, Shelly Tal Meron for others); innovation (high-tech entrepreneur Bennett,  biotech and AI maven Mati Gill, Orly Harel — one of the most impressive and influential women in tech); transportation, health, you name it…

Faced with the rogues’ gallery of corruption and failure that is the current government’s personnel (not to mention the staggering number of their current members who boast either criminal convictions, indictments or are under serious investigation), reading through this list is, to sound corny, inspiring. Take a look at a newcomer Yonatan Shalev who, at just 24, is already a commander in the Maglan and an inspiring, influential activist in the struggle for equality in enlistment and social responsibility, and tell me he doesn’t represent part of the future Israeli society we want to see.

But OK, leave ‘inspiring’. Inspiring is nice. Come back to ‘competence’. Why, exactly, is this idea, competence, the thing we should really be focussing on (at a time when so many politicians tend to focus on social-media-orientated soundbites or divisive, playing-to-the-base tribalism)?

Well, one can answer that question in five sentences (or, lots more than five, in the same depressing vein, but let’s leave it at five for now). Sentence one: the murder rate in Israel has more than doubled since this government took power (having been declining under the previous government), with various towns seemingly dominated by organised crime organisations and high-street restaurant chains across Israel regularly the objects of grenade and other attacks. Sentence two: Israel’s public debt is at about 69% of GDP.

Sentence three: like crime, the cost of living is skyrocketing; a recent study showed that the cost of living in Israel is 21 per cent more expensive than in Europe’s richest countries, and 65% pricier than in poorer countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain, with one in five Israelis facing food insecurity. Sentence four: emigration is at record levels, with many analysts pointing out that many of those leaving are among the most productive members of Israeli society, and predicting that many more are waiting to see the results of this election before making their decisions. Sentence five: to take a random category, transportation is crumbling — road deaths in Israel are at record highs, bus lane developments have failed to meet targets and indeed been removed from work plans, while staffing issues led to Ben Gurion Airport being closed on one of the busiest days of the year (while the Transport Minister and staff were on a jolly to Morocco, rumoured to be visiting rabbis’ graves).

So there you are. Five sentences. Let these stand for the rest. And all of this while we approach the third sombre anniversary of a war the government failed to see coming or prepare for, and rumbles on with almost all our enemies still in power.

Let’s finally reduce that to one sentence, We are, largely thanks to this government’s vast incompetence, in deep trouble.

Look across the extremely detailed and orderly B’yachad platform. They’ve mapped out precisely what they’re doing on day one, and they’ve staffed up with exactly the people capable of executing.

In my opinion, none of this is a luxury, or a ‘nice to have.’ It’s nothing short of a rescue plan for a country that, for all its potential is, after four years of disaster and calamitous mismanagement, teetering on the brink.

Yecholet can save us. Competence can move us forward. B’yachad, in my opinion, brings Israel’s A-team. We need them.