Ehud Barak's Copernican Revolution (Haaretz – 2000)

In the supplement dated October 27, Ari Shavit describes the Copernican revolution of Ehud Barak, who conducted an experiment that empirically tested the dominant paradigm in Israel regarding the roots of the conflict and the Palestinians' readiness for peace.

A point that bothers me about comparing a comet between Barak and Copernicus is that Copernicus would not have conducted an experiment whose results were known in advance. An experiment of a Copernican nature is intended to discover something new, not to understand the obvious to anyone who is willing to observe reality with open eyes.

Shavit, in his talk about the dominant paradigm in Israel, is referring to the dominant paradigm in the Israeli left, that is, in the overwhelming majority of the media, the well-known academia, the legal system, and the systems of government in Israel. He ignores the fact that the 'surprising' results of Barak's experiment, unlike that of Copernicus, were predicted with 'surprising' certainty by a fairly broad public of laypeople.

This phenomenon points to the fact, also well known to anyone willing to observe with open eyes, that the Israeli left, much more than the right, lives in a bubble and is unwilling to see that there is anything outside of it. The frightening coalition that exists in Israel between all of the above systems (= the elites), is a real danger to the very existence of the state and its democracy. The danger lies not in the positions that these advocates, but in their unwillingness to listen, and therefore also to examine alternative positions.

A striking example of this phenomenon is found in an interview conducted in the same supplement with Professor Sand, who for the umpteenth time explains to us that there are no intellectuals on the right. He, like all his friends, live in a bubble that is reflected in the newspaper Haaretz, and to a large extent in the general press in Israel, where there are indeed only intellectuals from the left. By the very fact that a common leftist's acquaintance with intellectuals in general is through the newspaper Haaretz, he has no chance of discovering that "empty group" of right-wing intellectuals. Readers of Yated Ne'eman are also convinced that there are no non-Orthodox intellectuals. Continuing to live in this bubble ensures that the disillusionment of those elites, about which Shavit speaks, will never come. To see this clearly, we only have to read the letters section of the aforementioned Haaretz supplement.