We have said many times that there is not much difference for
us between the various candidates for Prime Minister. We will
vote for one, but no secular politician can be in any
important sense acceptable to us; our task is just to decide
which is the least bad.
Our measure of what is good for the Jews vis-a-vis Israeli
secular politicians focuses on what is good for Judaism. From
this perspective, anyone who is not deeply committed to Torah
must be found wanting.
All the major candidates are very far from Torah commitment.
Not only do they lack commitment to Torah, they hardly know
what it is. Unlike earlier generations, the secular leaders
of today -- even those in Israel -- had basically a Western
education and they are steeped more thoroughly in Shakespeare
than the Shloh. Most do not even have more than a rudimentary
familiarity with Jewish laws and customs, and no knowledge at
all of the major Torah works. Their reactions and decisions
are founded not in the Jewish tradition but in non-Jewish
culture. How can we feel good about letting such people run
the Jewish State?
If Israeli politicians have always looked the same to us, it
seems that this perspective is becoming much more general.
The two big parties -- and even the centrist-party-in-
formation -- are so similar that modern politicians can go
wherever they get a better deal.
When he left the IDF, Yitzchak Mordechai, the popular
Minister of Security in Netanyahu's Likud government, was
courted by Labor as well. Lately he has said that he is
considering his next steps, and this is widely understood to
mean that he is considering joining either Labor or the
Centrist Party. David Levy, former Foreign Minister in
Netanyahu's government and a lifelong Likud member, is the
subject of widely believed rumors about a possible deal with
Labor leader Ehud Barak, and it is clear that he would join
the centrist party without hesitation if they offered him a
better deal.
The Likud of today includes members in good standing who
insist on a greater Israel, as well as supporters of the Oslo
Agreements, the Wye Memorandum, and withdrawal from most of
Yehuda and Shomron. There are champions of the poor and
lobbyists for the rich. Labor is no more ideologically pure.
Politicians of all stripes call it home.
There is, of course, still a Right and a Left in Israeli
politics, but they are marginalized. Benny Begin or the
Moledet Party are not serious candidates from the Right, and
neither are Yossi Sarid and Meretz on the Left.
Everything has broken down in Israel. There is no more
ideology and no more ideals. The bitter political campaigns
are really just about who will be first and who second. The
success of one side does not mean the choice by the people of
a particular idea, but rather that one or another group of
foreign media advisors has prevailed. From the perspective of
the politicians as well as from ours, the only difference is
the image they project to the media. They are really all the
same.
