Why the West Will Be Disappointed with the Next Government

Antisemitism will not decrease.

Regardless of who wins the Prime Minister’s seat through whatever convoluted shenanigans of last minute coalition building form the next government of the modern state of Israel your antisemitism will be bad. Diaspora Jews may have bought into the rhetoric that terrorist supporting protesters are compelled only because of the warmongering Netanyahu government. Israelis disagree. For literally thousands of years, antisemitism has been woven into the fabric of every culture, religion, state, and every slash and burn genocidal megalomaniac in history.

Israelis will tell you that the horrific rise in antisemitism across the globe is not because of what happened on October 7. It was the silences of October 8. When a fully prepared, funded and placard printed pro-caliphate of angry juvenile delinquents were insulted that life may expect anything more of them than to receive. When these child protestors turn politicians were indulged in their denials of our girls and daughters and grandmothers and babies, while we were still searching for bodies. Antisemites were not born because of the warmongering Netanyahu government, they became socially permissible once again when an educated world looked away.

There will be no two state solution.

For us in Israel, that died on October 7. Maybe one day in the far far far future beyond when any sitting Prime Minister will still be alive. For now, please let us finish the job. Which party leader will do the most to fight the Western shackles of ceasefires at the moments when we have a chance of finally being able to end this thing…at least for a decade or two. At least so the kids of this generation have a chance to know peace is possible. That Daddy will be home every month. Build an Egyptian worthy wall. Let them settle somewhere else. Anywhere else. Let them be rich and successful and somebody else’s problem (sorry France.)

You don’t understand our rock and a hard place

Who’s responsible? Who will be accountable for what? Who could impact our next government in the most palpable way?

All of this can’t come close to the one decision that each vote rests on: do you partner with the Arabs or with the Charedim? At the end of the elections tomorrow, no one will have the necessary seats to form a government. Whether or not the Netanyahu or the anti-Netanyahu camps get more seats, neither can do it without partnering with either the people who don’t recognize the sovereignty of a Jewish state or the family members of the same tribe and tribulations who won’t be an integrated part of the modern Jewish state. And then which coalition is likely to become an uneasy home for one of the small party holdouts like the Reservists?

The next government will not be left

Whomever of the founding mothers and fathers of the socialist, virulently anti-religious left went to sleep holding tightly to their ideals on October 6, woke up on October 7 adrift in a political wasteland. The current battle is not right versus left, it is right versus a different right. Except the Arab parties. If not Netanyahu, no Prime Minister will be any easier for the West to work with. Language and culture alone would be less “Western.” But either way, the country does not have any appetite to appease Western leaders anywhere. Except maybe Trump…sometimes. Vance will not like this.

While you may not see it on the streets of New York and Detroit, Paris or Minneapolis, we see what’s already happening. Because you are being overrun, Israelis are preparing for a period of possibly very intense global isolation. We have to get self sufficient in every way fast. Who will get us there?

There is Tel Aviv and then the rest of the country

The high tech mega billionaires, the trendy chefs that insist shrimp is “very Israeli,” the antigovernment weekly protestors that you, my Western readers, see on your screens daily are Israeli. Betach. Of course. One type of Israeli (and we love them!) But what is unthinkable to them, what is completely reprehensible to my Tel Aviv colleagues, is actually a celebrated way of life for many throughout Israel, some would say for the majority of Israeli Jews.

I met a prison guard in the Northern border who had to live a year and a half evacuated in a single hotel room with his kids. “For over 20 years I’ve worked in the prisons. Ben Gvir is the first person who understands justice. I saw the videos. The minimum of the minimum as it should be.”

Parents of hesder boys living out in Judea and Samaria, parents who are literally on the front lines in the cultural scale of which parents who have given so much, perhaps too much, during this war for Gd and country. Smotritch is the only leader who 100% of the time can be counted on to support their boys on one of seven fronts.

I have met families who name their kids after Bibi. Reservists who hail King Bibi not as an insult, but as the highest praise of their version of truth. And other reservists who feel betrayed. So legitimately betrayed. And some liberal Israelis who felt so betrayed they left.

Because we are still in so much pain. And the war, endlessly, has no end in sight. And the losses keep mounting. And we are nearly at a civil war of Jew against Jew and not one candidate has run on the most basic platform that we need the most: to love every Jew. To figure out how to heal a country with not just the most vile and disgusting enemies. But our family. Who are tearing us apart from within. The very thing that caused the destruction of the First and then the Second Temple. The cause of our thousands of years of exile- Jew against Jew.

We need a country of unity that makes room for every Jew. That recognizes everyone’s contributions and requires everyone’s contributions. Where, when I want to contribute, you’ll make space for me to do so and still hold on to a life I hold dear.

And this is all inside family dinner politics that Westerners could not understand.

Israel will not be more sympathetic to the trials of Western Jews

It is not a lack of empathy. It is a lack of bandwidth. We’re very sorry what’s happening with your Arabs, but we have our Arabs to deal with. And, quite frankly, we are still preparing to deal with your Arabs whether they are flying your planes or running your cities. We will show up for you when you really need it. And as a people of action as a love language, Israelis led by the next government will not be any less willing to show up for you and love you in their way. But not in the ways you may want. You will be disappointed. You will feel, rightfully, that you have given so much for us and now we are ungrateful. I am sorry. It’s a bandwidth issue.

Over 3 years of reservist duty. And no end in sight.

Israel will still be a Jewish state – from the Nahal to the Beaches

The nuances that will be uncovered from tomorrow’s ballot boxes will not be whether or not Israel is a Jewish state. It will be how Jewish? How much will the government reflect a Torah Judaism whether I believe it or not? And this is the painful question we ask when watching the ultra Orthodox anti draft protestors literally break our hearts. So do we instead go with the Arab left who have literally broken everything else? (I can’t comment now on the complexities added by the pro-serving Arab communities or Christian Arabs who are living with ever increasing violence in their towns restricted from Jewish civilians. The Druze aren’t coming out for the Arab parties but for the pro Netanyahu camp. It’s complicated.)

And what about accountability? Why did no one stand up and cry and ask our mechillah for those beautiful girls who were joyfully serving our country and ignored and slaughtered and worse? And where on the scale of priorities is this very basic human need to know what went wrong so maybe when we tuck our kids in at night we can mean it when we say, “It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re home.”

And so, my dear Western friends, diaspora Jews and pro-Israeli supporters who are just trying to catch a breath with a next Israeli government that will be a little easier to work with, a little more flexible, a little less unbending… you will be disappointed. Israelis crave an end, or at least a few years with a chance to rebuild a life and catch a breath for the next generation. We no longer believe a two state solution could get us there. While we love you and care about your love, we need the Arabs fear more than we need your love to stay alive. The Prime Minister you would want is not a person we could have lead us today.

And one way or another, tomorrow is a sad day for us. But despite our sadness, tomorrow everything else in the country will pause. And one vote at a time Israelis will be the irrational optimists that makes our survival on this tiny and inhospitable sand strip surrounded on all sides by people who want nothing less than our total destruction possible:

Irrational hope.

Am Yisrael Chai