What we can and should learn from “if only…”
Every so often, a film revolves around the question “What if…?”, say the heroine hadn’t missed her train, changing the entire course of her life. Reality, of course, is not a movie, and it’s usually pointless to dwell on what might have been, but sometimes it can help regarding the future. For example, since right-wing ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich did not leave the government, even though the war ended without Hamas’s elimination or the establishment of settlements in Gaza as they demanded, it’s hard not to wonder: what would our situation be if our prime minister hadn’t regularly panicked at their threats?
Imagine that fear of losing power and its privileges hadn’t prevented the necessary discussion of “the day after.” Suppose that as early as 2023, Israel had initiated a debate about Gaza’s future. Not in October, perhaps, but shortly after the initial shock, say in December. At that time, the entire world agreed that Hamas was illegitimate, but who would govern? Israel, mimicking generations of Arab intransigence, refused to say what it did want, insisting only on what it didn’t: chiefly, no Palestinian Authority. Why? Because Ben Gvir and Smotrich have their own doctrine, and if they were to resign, what would become of the coalition?
So, instead of leading, we were dragged along. Not only is the PA now in the picture, so is Hamas. A struggle that was meant to be between us and our neighbors now involves international forces, including Qatar and Turkey, with all that implies. Our opinion is barely taken into consideration; we are at the mercy of an unpredictable, aging redhead.
It’s also worth imagining what would have happened if Trump had beaten Biden in the 2020 election and had been U.S. president on October 7. He lost, and Biden embraced us warmly in our tragedy, while warning politely against unnecessary and unpredictable entanglement, lessons which America had learned the hard way. Later, Israel having successfully marketed the idea that anyone who failed to applaud its rampage was nothing but a vile antisemite, we occasionally heard hesitant murmurs of criticism from the Democratic administration.
Conversely, after Trump compelled Netanyahu to apologize to the Qataris, and after he told him that unless Israel immediately stopped the war, it would be left to fend for itself, Trump was welcomed in the Knesset as a savior, the direct heir to King Cyrus, the greatest American president of all time, and other superlatives. Imagine how many lives could have been saved and how much damage avoided if someone (besides his son Yair, who meddles from Miami) had frightened Netanyahu more than the right-wing duo known jointly as “Smotgvir.”
The reader may well wonder what the point is of such speculative digging into the past, especially after I wrote that we cannot turn back the clock and must look forward. I will therefore limit myself to one more “what if,” one that looks backward but points ahead.
Imagine what our situation would be if responsibility, not ego, had determined the makeup of the electoral lists in 2022, so that a gap of 30,000 votes between the blocs hadn’t translated into an “all-in” right-wing coalition, seasoned with ultra-Orthodox partners. Think what might have happened had not stubborn insistence on minor distinctions sent hundreds of thousands of Meretz and Balad votes to waste. Netanyahu would likely have formed a government anyway, but there’s a world of difference between a fragile coalition of 61 or 62 out of 120, and a solid bloc of 64 loyalists.
We must ensure that after the next elections — may they indeed take place, and be free — we won’t again find ourselves asking: What if?