Is there a basis for hope in the event of the coup d'état? • Opinion

introduction

On a pleasant afternoon, at the end of May 1967, we, a group of children, were standing on Geula Street in Haifa, and were talking anxiously about what was happening around us. Usually, there were afternoons devoted to games like "hide and seek", "match and puzzle", or "road signs", but on those difficult days, we were busy with something else.

This was the "waiting period" for the Six Day War. Our brothers and some of our parents were recruited, on the radio we listened to the "thunder from Cairo" threatening us with annihilation (we made sure to treat it as a joke, but it was disturbing), and we also helped dig trenches and fill sandbags.

It was not pleasant, and even if we didn't admit it, we were afraid. It was a fear I had never known before - an existential fear.

Everything was released, as we know, on Tuesday morning, when it was published in the morning papers that the Air Force had decided the war in three hours. I still feared for the fate of my two older brothers who served as reservists at the front, but it was already a different kind of fear. We knew that the State of Israel would survive, and that no one would throw us into the sea, as "The Voice of Thunder" boasted.

Since then I have gone through difficult times in this country. I experienced the fear of being under fire in war, and of driving down the road after a bus that might explode, but it was nothing like the collective existential angst I experienced as a child in 1967.

In the last two months this fear has returned. Some will argue that I am exaggerating. Maybe, but it's hard to argue with feelings.

So what happened to me?

In the last two months I lost the existential security I had.

What the Iranians and the Palestinians have not done to me in decades, the right-wing government managed to do "completely" (a phrase whose irony suits it very well) in two months.

After a year and a half of relative silence, and a rest from the incessant noise of dramatic speeches every day at 20:00, there was a bit of silence here. And now the noise has not just returned, it has become the central motif of our life here.

Suddenly almost nothing is obvious to me anymore:

• It is not obvious that Israel is a democracy and will remain so.
• It is not obvious that racism is a dirty word.
• It is not self-evident that the Declaration of Independence is our founding document and that it will not be replaced by another ("Shulchan Aruch"?)
• It is not obvious that human rights are a fundamental value
• It is not obvious that equality before the law is a fundamental value
• It is not obvious that the Israeli government is a responsible institution and not a job center for criminals and trolls.
• It is not self-evident that the label "Member of Knesset" guarantees that a reasonable person will hide behind it.

But it is clear to me that there is a government here that has succeeded, in just two months, in jeopardizing the existence of the country that is so important to you and me in terms of security, economy, politics and society.

And that's why that old fear came back to me.

the mother Is there hope?

I have an Israeli American friend who left Israel for Silicon Valley about 40 years ago. He came from a secular family that had an ultra-Orthodox branch, and even then decided, based on what he saw on the ultra-Orthodox side of his family, that for demographic reasons, the State of Israel has no chance of surviving in the long term as a country worth living in, if at all.

Years ago, my friend offered to arrange a job for me in the valley, so that I could move there with my family. I told him then that I am Jewish and Israeli, and I would not want to live as a Jew in another country. Israel is important to me, and it is important to me to raise my children there, even if I am not a religious Jew in any way.

A few days ago he called. He reads and watches every bit of information that comes from here. I thought I would hear a sound of joy for Id in his voice, because he foresaw decades ago what would happen here, but I didn't hear such a sound. He sounded frightened by the events, and to my surprise, I found myself overcoming my own anxiety attack, and trying to calm him down, and tell him that as strange as it sounds, there is also something good in this difficult situation.

So I want to share with you the positive side of what is happening to us. Maybe it's just a whistle in the dark, but agree with me that without hope it's hard to carry on.

But this is after a few words about the coup d'état that is proposed to us.

"Let him renew"

Our younger generation doesn't read much, but my generation is very familiar with George Orwell's work "1984", a dystopian novel about life under a totalitarian regime in a country called Oceania.

In this regime, which is headed by "Big Brother", history is rewritten according to the needs of the leadership, and the spoken language gradually becomes a language called "Newspeak", which is aimed at limiting the citizens' ability to think. So, for example, in "Shichdan", the word "freedom" does not exist.

In Oceania, the "Ministry of Truth" is where they engage in rewriting the truth, spreading propaganda and gross lies, and in the "Ministry of Love" political enemies are investigated.

And in Israel of the government of the "full right" (hereafter YMLML):
A plan to change the system of government and move to one authority that is above all judicial review, to abolish the value of equality before the law, and to lower the value of human rights, is called in the government's "new" - "legal reform"

In Oceania, the ruling party summarizes its principles in three slogans, which are constantly drilled into the minds of the inhabitants:

• War is peace
• Freedom is slavery
• Ignorance is power

And in the government of Yamlal:

• "War is peace" –  not yet definitively addressed, but the extreme side of "full on" seems to be working on her.
• "Freedom is slavery" - the "legal reform" treatment of individual choices is sold as something liberating and democratic.
• "Ignorance is power" - they run a dangerous process within a few weeks, without any understanding of its consequences.

Since I am not interested in adopting the Himmelal government's "Shimadz", I will call here what it is trying to do in its name - "regime coup".

The coup d'état

Before we move on, it is important to say the following:

• The justice system does need reform. The system is congested, and almost every encounter with it is a judicial torture that goes on to infinity, the sentences are not deterrent enough, and more.

• The system undoubtedly needs reform, but there is nothing between the required reform and the proposed coup, and there is no attempt in the coup to address the real problems of the system (increasing the number of judges, raising the punishment threshold, etc.).
• The coup d'état is aimed exclusively at the places where someone - the High Court of Justice or legal advisors - can pass judicial criticism on the government.
• The coup states that a "dictatorship" of the judicial branch is intolerable, and in the same breath claims that a dictatorship of the executive branch is something wonderful and democratic.

The coup d'état - who is it bad for?

The regime change is very bad for the following populations (some of them overlap):

• Ethnic minorities (Arabs, Druze, Circassians,...)
• Religious minorities (Christians, Muslims...)
• LGBTs
• women
• Citizens who need the protection of their individual rights (such as Mizrahi ultra-Orthodox girls who were rejected from Ashkenazi institutions)

All these populations (the absolute majority of the population) will be tolerated.

And we haven't talked about the things that will hurt everyone:

• The economic deterioration, which we are beginning to see the end of.
• The social divide, which eliminates the little solidarity that remains here, and causes that part of the population that almost single-handedly holds the economy, security and art of the State of Israel, to think twice, if they are willing to continue doing so.

The coup - who is it good for?

The coup is good for the following populations:

Offenders/accused:

Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial. It suits him to pass resolutions that will relieve him of this trouble, and the only way to do this is to cancel the judicial review.

Aryeh Deri is a convicted felon who was disqualified by the court, Malkhan Kosher. In this situation, it is convenient for him to change laws retrospectively, to invent new and far-fetched laws to avoid the consequences of his actions, and to receive a chair and refreshments. This corrupt move cannot be done with judicial review.

Orthodox parties:

Abolishing the enforcement of the principle of equality before the law will benefit the ultra-orthodox parties, and will allow them to obtain even greater benefits for their sector, whose members are the real privileged in Israeli society. They aim to put generations upon generations of privileged people who do not have basic life skills, and to increase their electorate, when the rest of the population is required to pay the bill.

The abrachs do not go out to support themselves, because their leaders convinced them that a lack of life skills, avoiding national service and a life of a cord, bring them closer to the Creator of the world (by the way, this is a modern invention. Maimonides thought exactly the opposite).

It is not for nothing that the leaders of the ultra-Orthodox parties claim that the Supreme Court is the number one enemy of the ultra-orthodox public.

Extremist settlers:

Ignoring human rights will bring them closer to their vision of annexing all the territories of Judea and Samaria, while ignoring the local population, and taking another step towards a binational state.

What do all the things that benefit the populations I have listed here have in common? All of them are strengthening trends that will destroy the State of Israel.

So what's good anyway in this crappy situation?

We all know the parable of the frogs that cook in slow heat, do not feel the danger of death that awaits them, and do not jump out until it is too late. The factual basis of this parable is weak, but the story is good.

In the last ten years, they put us all in a pot of water, started heating it, and we, frogs that we are, didn't feel that much about the creeping change in temperature.

In the last two months, perhaps because of the urgency of the needs of the accused and the criminal, it was decided to add wood to the fire, and boil the water quickly.

And then what happened? The frogs finally understood what was happening around them, and now they jump, and how they jump.

This short period also revealed the shameless and restrained greed of the ultra-orthodox parties, and the rapacity and misery of the fascist parties we were blessed with (see the artistic video "Bera Bara" from the creator of a racist Knesset member, one of many).

The result is that the token has finally fallen, and people who have never participated in a demonstration against the House Committee, are now coming up in their hundreds of thousands to demonstrate in Jerusalem.

I, personally, do not believe that the coup will go through, it's just too crazy. Why would we want to be Turkey?

So I estimate that there are several possibilities here: either someone will come down from the tree, or there will be a violent conflict, or maybe this government (which, regardless of the regime coup, is clearly dysfunctional) will fall, and the next government will put order here.

the following threats

Even if the government falls, the threat will not end. The most dangerous threats to the State of Israel are two, and they are not necessarily the external threats:

1. The demographic threat from the ultra-orthodox.

2. The demographic threat in a binational state.

The demographic threat - the ultra-orthodox

The ultra-orthodox public is overwhelmingly poor, uneducated and lacking life skills. Economically, it depends on the other sectors in the country for its existence. For the most part, he does not serve in the army, or in any other national service, he hardly contributes to society outside of the sector, he is a fundamentalist, his ideal is a Halacha state, and at his core he is also not a Zionist (somehow, it is okay to be a non-Zionist and an integral part of the Yamlal government) .

The tragedy of this public is that it is made up of many excellent people, and it would not be such a serious threat if it were not for its leaders. These do everything in their power to keep him in his miserable, uneducated and unproductive state, so that he remains dependent on the alms they obtain for him from the public purse. These funds are the levers of power of these leaders to control the fate of hundreds of thousands.

The natural multiplication of this public is phenomenal, it is funded by the taxpayers, and as this public grows, it pulls the State of Israel down economically, socially and morally.

Such a situation is not feasible for long, and within one or two generations, the State of Israel will collapse economically (not to mention morally) and we will have no existence here.

The demographic threat - a binational state

The settlement enterprise has already done its part and obtained for the State of Israel areas of land that will remain under its control - the settlement blocs, but for the extremists among the settlers this is not enough. They are trying to spread new points everywhere, to block any political horizon for a future settlement. Their goal is to annex all the territories of Judea and Samaria.

It is enough to think about the damage we caused ourselves in the annexation of the villages around Jerusalem with 300,000 hostile residents who hold a blue identity card, to understand what will happen here if there is a full annexation. The country will contain an Arab population that will grow to be an electoral majority, or alternatively it will be an apartheid state. It will not be Jewish and democratic, and in any case, its disappearance will be a matter of time.

When I ask people who hold the vision of "a complete Israel" to explain to me the feasibility of this vision, I am surprised every time to discover that they do not see its obvious consequences at all. The most honest answer I received is "What are the Arabs looking for there? Let them leave."

Oh well, with answers like that it's really better not to ask.

So what needs to happen for us to stay alive?

The formula for introducing a cure for the two main threats to our lives here, should contain the following ingredients:

Government structure

• Any new government will be formed Only From parties that recognize the democratic state of Israel, which is the national state of the Jewish people. The government will not rely on ultra-orthodox parties or extreme nationalist parties (right and left).

Constitutional infrastructure

• A real constitution based on the Declaration of Independence, with a basic law of legislation and the Declaration of Human Rights will be drawn up.
• A law will also be enacted that regulates the relationship between the judiciary and the executive, possibly with a law of overcoming with a high bar.
• The government will declare that the State of Israel is a national home for all the Jews of the world, and will abolish the status of the extreme version of Judaism represented by the ultra-orthodox parties, as the only legitimate version of the Jewish religion.
• Racist parties that support terrorism (Jewish or Arab) will not be allowed to run in the elections.

education and family:

• The government will remove any support for an institution that does not meet basic criteria, and that does not teach citizenship, science, literature, English and the Bible.
• Ultra-Orthodox schools will be subject to state education (state-Orthodox), otherwise they will not receive any support.
• There will be no child allowance beyond the fourth child. Those who are interested in a larger family will be honored to finance it from their own pockets.

Is there a possibility that this will happen?

I believe so.

The coup d'état and the absolute trolling around us are starting to jump the sleepy frogs out of the pot, and make them understand that nothing, including the existence of the State of Israel, is taken for granted, and that we have to fight for it.

The greedy behavior of the orthodox parties

This event also revealed the greedy behavior of the ultra-orthodox parties, and their goal of placing their public above the principle of equality before the law. He also exposed the dangerousness of the Kahanists.

The sane public will remember this even after the current threat is removed, and will use the momentum it has gained to push for the establishment of a government that will deal with the other threats as well.

These days, the differences between the Likud, Yesh Atid, the State party and Lieberman are not that great, and it should not be too complicated to build a Zionist coalition without the ultra-Orthodox and Kahnites. This will probably require Netanyahu to step down from the stage, who has already clearly shown that he is unable to put the state above his personal interests and fears.

When that happens, we will still have the external threats, but I believe we will deal with them more easily.

The current crisis could be the funeral procession of the State of Israel, but it could turn out to be its wake-up call in retrospect.