Confused? Change the Axes (Column 382)

With God’s help

Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.

Until now I ignored the elections we went through. After all, one can’t write a column every time there are elections, otherwise I’d never deal with anything else. Still, I have a few thoughts in the wake of the latest results, and I hope you’ll allow me to share them with you. I’m quite sure you won’t be surprised, but I do think some of you may find them useful.

The confusion

The results of the recent elections have sent our public discourse into a tailspin. Apocalyptic prophecies—or just embarrassments, confusions, and misunderstandings—keep popping up from every direction: Who won—right or left? Who are the good guys and who are the bad? What even is “right” and what is “left”? Who here is a racist-chauvinist lowlife, and who a postmodern lowlife? Who here is religious-Zionist and who is enlightened? (And are those really opposites?) Did minorities win or the majority? Who even are the minorities and who is the majority here? How exactly do Mansour Abbas and the Muslim Brotherhood join the religious-Zionist-racist-chauvinist pole and form a coalition with it for Bibi and Likud? How is it that so many people want and expect Bennett and Sa’ar—who are to the right of Bibi—to build with their own hands a left-wing government with Meretz and the Joint List?

Some think that Bibi the man created all this confusion with his own corrupt hands. The entire political split is for or against Bibi, and it dwarfs all the other axes of disagreement. If not for him, everything would have lined up according to the familiar axes, and there’d be no confusion. With all due respect to his abilities and talents and the strong feelings he evokes for or against, I find it hard to accept such a thesis. There’s something deeper here that needs clarification at the root. At most, Bibi helped reveal it; he didn’t create it.

Examples of confusion on two planes: the general political and the religious

This morning someone sent me what Amit Segal wrote on his Telegram channel:

That is a description of the confusion on the general political map. Within the religious map, the confusion is no smaller. Here is what the filmmaker Yair Lipschitz wrote on Facebook:

There are more voices from within the religious camp who feel confused in the face of the unholy and repulsive union between the musty religious diehards of the old NRP, the nationalists à la Smotrich, the racists à la Ben-Gvir, and the chauvinist-homophobes à la Avi Maoz, Rabbi Tau, and “Noam.” “Is this religious-Zionism?” they ask themselves. “Is that where I belong?” It seems to me (and maybe that’s just my wishful thinking?!) that a not insignificant portion of the six mandates that voted for this benighted and repugnant bunch feel such feelings, but belonging and identification lead them to vomit and, pardon me, diarrhea (!) that ballot slip into the box. When one sees the wondrous unity among all parts of religious-Zionism—a marvelous blend of chauvinism and racism with nationalist pathos—how can one stand idly by?! Who can behold this wondrous unity with the longed-for peace of generations and not join? Why, that would be betrayal of the camp.

It seems to me that the recent elections illustrated perfectly the words of the late Rabbi Steinsaltz:

The ballot box is one of two places one enters when no one is watching, drops something smelly, and leaves. It’s important, it’s necessary, but there’s no need to talk too much about what I did there.

A word hewn in stone. I fully agree—except for the four words: “it’s important” and “it’s necessary.”

In any case, this is a description of confusion on the general political plane and on the religious plane. New and surprising (apparently) coalitions are forming, and it’s no wonder that people are perplexed and find it hard to define where they stand, who is with us and who is against us. But before I get into the confusion itself, a few side notes.

My response to Yair Lipschitz

In response to Yair Lipschitz’s words, I wrote the following:

Nonsense. It doesn’t touch anyone’s life. And it’s also not about the split. Rabbi Tau was always like that; the only question is whether it’s mixed into Mercaz or separate from it. Finally, I have an update for him: there have been many revolutions in the past that turned backward. Maybe most of them. Communism didn’t, but in Zionism there’s certainly a return from exile to the Bible, and in the Reformation it’s all backward, and in Islam the main revolutionary thrust is backward. Classicism and romance of the past are excellent fuel for revolutions. Revolutionaries who invent values face forward, but revolutionaries who strive to realize existing values usually draw from the (idealized?) past.

I then added that I don’t understand the surprise and the intense reaction to the election results. None of this has anything to do with Netanyahu in any way. No one can deny that there’s a very large group in the public that espouses these views, whether or not it has political expression (marginal: one MK in a fringe party). Those who represent all these values more powerfully are the Haredim, and there are dozens of MKs like that. How does Avi Maoz change anything on the map? The Haredim also do not give women a place, are in favor of stoning gays (and certainly restricting their steps), and of course most of them are dyed-in-the-wool racists (because of their conception of Judaism). And I haven’t even mentioned the Arabs—particularly the Muslims—who also espouse all these exalted values. But for some reason we’ve gotten used to all those, and only Avi Maoz’s election is the new Shoah.

So what do we have here? The Hardal (Haredi-nationalist) segment with other traditionalist add-ons together with Haredi society and with Muslim conservatism comprise, in my estimate, at least 30% of Israel’s public (and that’s an underestimate, in my view). All these indeed espouse chauvinism toward women, restricting the steps of gays, and the Jewish part among them also restricting the steps of Arabs. Except that until now, all this had no expression in the political arena. Arabs aren’t heard in the public discourse, Haredim don’t speak about their views regarding women and gays because they’re more pragmatic and more intelligent than “our” obscurantists, and what remains is Avi Maoz of “Noam” and its satellites, who are ready to speak about it out loud.

If you look at it this way, then what happened up to these elections is the real surprise: they succeeded in silencing some thirty or forty percent of the public and denying them a political voice. Now one marginal MK walks in and says out loud what something like three million muzzled citizens have been thinking for many years already (truly Gideon Hausner, isn’t it?), and the feeling is that the Flood has come. Very odd.

And again, these views repel me. They are benighted and racist and ought to be fought with all our might. But silencing them is of no use. It only hides the problem and doesn’t solve it. True, our PC cousins think that if something isn’t said then it doesn’t exist, and therefore changing the discourse is the solution to all our ills, but I see no reason to adopt this drivel. On the contrary, it’s important to air things out and give them media and political expression so that we can contend with them and put forward counter-arguments. Unless you’re Don Quixote and Sancho—or Rabbi Tau—it will be very hard to fight against someone who doesn’t exist.

Changing the religious coordinate system

It seems to me that the main conclusion from all this confusion is the need to change our coordinate system. Many (relatively) religious-Zionists feel that as long as this exists among Haredim then it’s “them” and not “us.” But “Noam” is ours! It is the flesh and blood of religious-Zionism; that’s why it’s more worrying and infuriating. But this is, of course, a mistake. “Noam” is exactly the same “them” as the Haredim, only with a knitted kippah and one extra Hallel a year (plus ecstatic dances—avizraihu of idolatry—before a president, prime minister, and IDF chief on Jerusalem Day). They are nothing but Haredim with knitted kippot, with an added pinch of idolatry and a florid, pathetic language that reflects total disconnect from reality (what they call a “holy perspective”).

This confusion reflects a problem of anachronism in our conceptual framework. The ideological and religious groups are defined by a coordinate system that is not relevant today. “Religious-Zionism,” for example, is a term that reflects an uninteresting and irrelevant division between those who recite Hallel on the 5th of Iyar and those who don’t. But the relevant division is between modern religiosity (Modern Orthodox and liberal Haredim) and conservative religiosity (ideological Haredim and Hardalim). Just think where you would place R. S. R. Hirsch and Rabbi Breuer on your map. That is the more important and relevant axis in our day (let’s remind ourselves of a forgotten fact: the state has already been established), and when you look at reality through it, you discover that—at least in the religious sphere—the confusion disappears entirely. I’ve written about this more than once, and showed it clearly here, for example, in a discussion of the attitudes different groups showed toward the latest elections for the Chief Rabbis.

When you clarify the real coordinate system and don’t cling to slogans and ideas that defined the axes in the past, everything becomes simpler. A religious-Zionist should ask himself whether he is conservative or not, and based on that decide whether he should vote for Smotrich’s benighted racists or for some other party. He can reach the conclusion that although he recites Hallel on Independence Day, he is not prepared to persecute gays and see the New Israel Fund under every green tree, nor to adhere to the delusional writings and diktats of Rabbi Tau. Suddenly we understand that they are not “us” but “them,” and everything calms down. In sum, a very large conservative population in Israel received a minimal political expression. Nothing new happened. One can and should fight those views, but there’s no reason to panic over the election results, and certainly no reason to attribute this to Bibi. It’s unrelated to him, aside from the fact that he is the main magnet for excluded minorities.

Contrary to the demagogic excuses from the left (and the attacks on Avishai Ben-Haim), Bibi really does belong to a minority excluded from the media discourse, hence the strong identification with him. The votes for him and the coalitionary clustering of excluded minorities around him begin and end there—not in the “big,” classic questions of right and left. Whether you accept it or deny it, this is a war against the elites. That’s all.

And in general, apocalypticism always harms just causes. People feel that if they ignore the biased treatment Bibi gets in the media (and it seems to me in the judicial system as well), that strengthens their struggle. But no—it strengthens him. It paints him as a martyred saint and those against him as persecutors. Thus his image as the authentic representative of persecuted minorities is reinforced, and again and again he wins the most votes in elections. The apocalyptic magnification that “Noam” creates around the New Israel Fund and the liberal forces also works to its detriment. Seemingly it strengthens the camp and spurs it to act. But in fact it causes anyone who warns against PC and the calumnies of the New Israel Fund to look delusional. I, who share the feelings about bias against the right and about the violent silencing practiced by the LGBTQ community and PC discourse and its associated ills, am not prepared to identify with Rabbi Tau’s dark, delusional flyers and the axis of evil (there’s your apocalyptic amplification). The black-and-white sketch ruins every good plot of land; it dulls the discourse and the disagreements instead of sharpening them. It bears considerable responsibility for the confusion everyone feels after the elections.

Changing the political coordinate system

The same holds for the general political field, not only its religious dimension. The conflation of political conservatism with social conservatism creates confusion. The focus on security-diplomatic questions creates confusion. The traditional divisions between right and left (at least in Israel) come from the security-diplomatic field, but those aren’t very important questions right now. The question of what to do with the Palestinians is a halakhah for the messianic era, because nothing is on the table at the moment. The main struggle is over society in Israel, not the diplomatic arena.

When you see that the coalition forming around Bibi is a coalition of persecuted minority groups that all espouse social conservatism and receive no expression in public discourse, it immediately becomes clear what Mansour Abbas has to do with “Noam,” with Ben-Gvir, with Haredim and Hardalim. As I explained, voting for Bibi in no way reflects a diplomatic or security agenda. Anyone who wants the right should vote for Bennett and Sa’ar, not for Bibi (who, in policy and deeds, is a centrist—though in his demagogic rhetoric he, of course, winks at the right-wing electorate). But voting for him does not express right-wing worldviews—or worldviews at all—but rather a sense of exclusion and deprivation and a war against the elites (pardon me for stealing Avishai Ben-Haim’s very correct thesis)[1]. By the way, the same goes for voting against him.

The link between the two planes

From the previous paragraphs you could gather that there is a connection between the confusion in the two planes. The religious confusion is a special case of the general political confusion and entirely connected to it.

Rabbi Froman z”l spoke long ago about the natural coalition between Hamas and religious Judaism—two groups that can cooperate against secular liberalism (and I don’t know which of them frightens me more). His apocalyptic vision is these days taking on flesh before our astonished (and very worried) eyes. Fortunately, for now, Rabbi Tau and “Noam” are confused and are themselves captive to the mixed-up conceptual system that they themselves labor to maintain with great zeal. Hence they too (for now) are not prepared to enter a coalition with Abbas. But that could (politically) pass for them—or (ideologically) be adopted—and then “darkness will cover the earth and thick gloom the peoples.” For “the Lord will not forsake His people and will not abandon His heritage.” Give thanks to the Lord for He is good—He blinds the eyes of His enemies, keeps the feet of His servants, and binds the hands of His foes.

Suddenly it becomes clear and is laid on the table what was hidden from us in media and public discourse until today. Before our eyes stands proudly the fact that most of Israel’s public belongs to excluded minorities, and the clustering of these groups creates a worrying majority of dark fundamentalism. The problem is not that these minorities are finally given the right to speak and be heard and finally have political representation. That’s the good part of these election results and of broader processes happening in recent years also in the media and generally (as Kalman Liebskind wrote, there too, as part of the representation for excluded minorities, weeds are entering that have nothing to do with journalism). The problem is the very existence of such worldviews. In short, it’s not Avi Maoz and Ben-Gvir but their voters. Silencing these voices only strengthens them, and it seems to me it’s what brought us to this point. The way to contend with these dark views is not concealment and silencing but direct confrontation: examining our religious worldviews, and whether it is really right to cling to anachronistic, chauvinist, and racist interpretations—or whether we can refresh (and slim down) our tradition. In that sense I’m very happy about the new coalitions now forming. It’s time to demolish the old social and ideological structures and coalitions and update them for our time.

In this morning’s discussion with Chayuta that sparked this column, she raised Rabbi Kook’s well-known saying—when there is a great war in the world, the messianic force awakens. That messianic force means change, tectonic shift, and perhaps also renewal and repair. I have always thought that peace and unity of opinions are very dangerous (the Sages thought so too—hence they said that in a court where everyone rules death, the defendant goes free). This campish identification that strengthens at the sight of the wondrous harmony of opinions across the entire camp (each one contributing his ugliness to create the overall colorful picture) is, to me, a truly despicable process. War is great—down with unity. We already learned from Mohar”r Shauli that the only fitting solution now is a civil war (a wonderful bit—go watch).

[1] The criticisms and mockery of him also reflect a lack of understanding. They “prove” to him that Bibi is not an excluded minority, and not even Mizrahi. But none of that is relevant. Bibi, like Begin before him, is “Mizrahi” in the sense that he is the chief fighter against the Ashkenazi leftist elites that exclude him. In public consciousness (and in reality) that is entirely true, and it does not depend at all on the facts regarding Bibi’s economic and social status or background. The criticisms of Ben-Haim are simply a lack of understanding, at best, or demagoguery and disregard for the (cognitive and factual) reality, at worst.