What Bennett and Liberman Owe My Daughter
My daughter and I have our differences. Let’s call her E. While we are both deeply religious, she’s more liberal than me. She is an extremely effective manager, fund raiser and political consultant, all of which are far beyond me. We are both politically right wing, but while neither of us could bring ourselves to support the Netanyahu coalition and its tolerance of Haredi draft-dodging, she felt she had to support one of the candidates that could in her estimation pass the electoral threshold and help bring that draft-dodging to an end. She supported Naftali Bennett, which I could not bring myself to do.
E’s support must have been worth a lot to Bennett’s campaign. She’s smart, perceptive, effective. She volunteered her strategic advice throughout the campaign (she usually charges thousands of shekels an hour). All the while struggling to hold her household together, with three children under the age of ten, because her spouse, A., was on another absolutely ridiculously long tour of reserve duty. Because when the State of Israel summons, A. always shows up. And E. sends him off with tears and a blessing, despite months of lonely nights.
But you see, E. is desperate. Just like tens of thousands of other Israeli wives and mothers. She says, “I know that this is what my life will be like for another decade,” until A. is too old or gets hurt too badly to continue, like E.’s two brothers. But she’s desperate and she has to do whatever she can to change it. So I disagree with E’s political choices, but I have to view them, and her, with compassion.
As for me, I didn’t think that Naftali Bennett would prove to be the solution to anything. I think his political cynicism is bottomless, and so I’m as cynical about him as I am about Binyamin Netanyahu. A few days before election day I was accosted by supporters of Bennett’s party, Yahad, with literature and offers to explain.
I responded with a slight paraphrase of the old saying: “One doesn’t switch grifters in midstream.”
Now we hear that Bennett and Liberman, having campaigned on the promise to my daughter to expand the draft, are considering a government with the Haredi parties. Their motives are revolting: Hatred of Netanyahu and determination to get him out of office no matter what promises they have to break, and lust for power and position.
To my cynicism has been added outrage. For this my daughter spent her time and energy, leaving her kids at home yet another evening, hoping that some politician would see her distress and do something to help her? Don’t they have any feeling of obligation toward her, to her spouse, to the hundreds of thousands of dedicated, serving citizens who voted for them? It must be too much to expect a politician to have a conscience. Or, having used people as a stepping-stone, do anything other than step on their heads and move on.
Daughter, I love you, and your children and your good man. Your grief and distress are mine.
