It just seems to us that the main headline this week is the presidential elections. The truly dramatic event was Yair Lapid's speech at the Herzliya conference. In the place where Ariel Sharon stood and first announced the disengagement plan, Yair Lapid stood this week and announced his own plan, which includes three phases: the preparation phase (which involves withdrawing from areas without settlements and freezing construction outside the settlement blocs), the confidence-building phase (evacuating isolated settlements), and the adjustment phase (territory exchanges and negotiations on core issues).
I listened and didn’t quite understand: Wait, the negotiations on the core issues will only begin after we hand over territories? Why? But I didn’t have time to think about it, because then came the next resounding pause: “These settlements are expensive for us. They negatively affect growth, the GNP, our economic ties with the world. In addition to the billions we lose in building unnecessary infrastructure, we are losing many more billions in economic activity that we could have used to lower taxes, increase security, and improve civil services. Somewhere between Itamar and Yitzhar is buried the money that could have been used for smaller classes, better health services, reducing inequality in Israeli society, and also for Iron Domes and Arrow 3 missiles and the strengthening of the IDF.”.
Commentators are making a comparison this week between Lapid’s speech at the Herzliya conference and the speech Bennett gave there after him, but I want to briefly compare Lapid and Lapid. Because oops, in the political speech he gave before the elections in Ariel, the Yesh Atid chairman said this: ”We must not repeat the historical mistake of the Israeli left, which always announces in advance what it is willing to give up and causes the Palestinians to only want more and more. We know today – and we learned a painful lesson about this during the disengagement – that unilateral steps do not help. So our job is to strive for an agreement. We need to return to the negotiating table, and while we are there, no new settlements will be built, but there will also be no freeze, because we must take into account the natural growth of the existing settlements and if babies are born in or near Ma’ale Ephraim, it is impossible not to build a nursery or kindergarten for them.“.
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What has changed? In my opinion, deep down, not much. A few years ago, before I had my own personal column, I worked on imitating Lapid's personal column. At the time, I edited a satirical section in Haaretz, and the icing on the cake was the regular parody of Lapid's popular column. Our best writers sat down every week and tried to imitate the original, and it was difficult. You had to get into his pseudo-Israeli head, of someone who is rich but exudes popularism, who lives in Ramat Aviv but pretends to eat falafel in the neighborhood, who talks about having a barbecue with friends but doesn't write that the friends are Rita and Shari Arison. In those days, when Lapid's book of columns was published, the editor of Haaretz gave it to me with a dedication: "For his friends, 358 pages of homework. Good luck.".
Well, based on my professional immersion in all of Lapid's writings, I was very surprised when, after the elections, the man made an alliance with Bennett and decided to exclude the Haredim. After years of careful and meticulous study of his texts, it was clear to me that he despised the settlers much more. He hardly addressed the Haredim over the years (only the little he committed to from the law of respect for a father), while he used to endlessly skim between the lines about the settlers and tried to make them, along the way, illegitimate with countless small provocations. And of course, he did not differentiate between them and any average knit kippah wearer. From his slanderous column in ”The Rampant Hananel,” that distinguished soldier who refused to shake the hand of the Chief of Staff-Hagrush Halutz (a column for which he was forced to compensate Hananel Dayan with 12,000 shekels) to his statement that he supports disengagement only to ”teach the settlers a lesson“ – it was clear who was the most ”un-Israeli“ in the eyes of someone who considers himself Israeli number one.
I don’t know what caused the ”Brotherhood Alliance” just after the elections, probably cold political considerations, but it’s clear to me that a day will come when Lapid the publicist will re-emerge from Lapid the politician. I just didn’t dream that it would happen in such a short time. I’ve written here countless times that this alliance is meaningless and that the real alliance is between those who believe that Moses received the Torah from Sinai, but I never imagined that I would be able to write “I told you so” across the pages of this column so quickly. I assumed that it would take a few good political years. That Lapid would first crush ultra-Orthodox society, make it poorer, more extremist, and more hated while rising in the polls, and only then, I thought, in preparation for the next term, would he free up time to deal with the settlers.
But something went wrong for Lapid along the way, and that something is apparently called public opinion and public sympathy. And so, overnight, the new politics turned into old leftism. If the answer to the question “Where is the money?” was not found between Zalman and Haimke, then come on, let’s say it was between Yitzhar and Itamar.
Let me dwell for a moment on these three words: “Between Yitzhar and Itamar.” Why did Lapid choose these two localities? Let’s start with Yitzhar. Well, it’s clear, Yitzhar is a brand. A symbol of a ’price tag,” for a flat tire on a radar, for storming a reservist tent. As far as Lapid is concerned, you said Yitzhar – you said it all. But why Itamar? Well, first of all, because it rhymes. Yes, yes, we’re not talking about a statesman and security official who lives by the maps, but rather a columnist and songwriter. Yitzhar and Itamar sounds good. Such a catchy one. The Minister of Finance found a treasure between Yitzhar and Itamar.
But wait, Yair, are you sure about that? It really goes without saying for you, to incite the residents of Israel to think that they don't have apartments and don't have a good education for their children and even don't have health, just because of the residents of Itamar? Because the first figures that come to many Israelis' minds when they hear the word Itamar are Udi and Ruthie Fogel. It's a matter of association. That's what's hidden in Itamar. People like that. And actually, why talk about the dead when you can talk about the living? Let's talk for a moment about "Ricky Cohen" from Itamar. After all, the working Israeli, who makes a living, who served in the IDF and who pays taxes – unlike these ultra-Orthodox, who until this week were the state's problem – is the one who lives there (and, by the way, in Yitzhar too).
And in Itamar – and this is really a joke of fate – there is also one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the alliance between Bennett and Lapid. His name is Rabbi Avichai Rontzky, and just a few weeks ago he wrote this: “Joining Yesh Atid is not just a political necessity. The two movements have a broader common denominator than with the Haredi parties.’ In interviews conducted with him following these words, he did not even try to say that he was taken out of context, but repeated this amazing statement: the common denominator with Yesh Atid is greater. Why? Because Yesh Atid is not sectoral but is concerned with the future of the entire Jewish people.
Wait, what does it even mean to “care”? And what is “the people of Israel”? And what “future” do we want to reach anyway? What is the destiny that Rabbi Rontzky envisions for our nation, and is it closer to what Eli Yishai sees, or what Adi Kol sees? In the past month, Yesh Atid has brought up the surrogacy law, the marital union law, the suicide law (sorry, ‘the euthanasia law’), and finally announced that all the hardships of the residents of Israel are because of the locality where Rabbi Rontzky lives and teaches – all of this, according to its theory, out of “concern for the future of the people of Israel.” So is the concern the same concern, and the future the same future?
I read Rabbi Rontzky's words on 'Yesh Atid' on the very day that Ruth Calderon announced on the Knesset Channel that at her Seder table she eats matzah along with a loaf of bread, in a symbolic act that is supposed to combine leaven with matzah. It is a true reminder of the Temple as a calderon.
Or maybe we shouldn't be so dismissive of its leadership? There is nevertheless a significant common denominator here: matzah.
The day after Lapid’s speech, commentator Ben Caspit wrote: “Better late than never. Lapid has finally gotten there: the alliance with Naftali Bennett has exhausted itself and the harm far outweighs its benefits.” I wonder when someone will write about Bennett: “Better late than never. Bennett has finally gotten there: the alliance with Lapid has exhausted itself and the harm far outweighs its benefits.” Why? Well, after all of the above, I don’t think I need to explain, but one of the Jewish Home MKs used the image of brakes in my ears this week: ”We are the brakes of the car,” he said, “Every day we stop a new and dangerous initiative.” It’s truly an admirable effort, but between brakes, the car is deteriorating in a certain direction.
Meanwhile, at the end of a week in which political commentators have not stopped talking, I want to introduce you to another and refreshing commentator. His name is Adi Ran. Yes, the Barslav singer. On his Facebook page, he occasionally posts comments on the situation, which sometimes seem like the most genuine and brilliant political analysis.
Here's what he wrote this week: "Lapid went on the offensive against the settlers. This time he focused mainly on settlement in Judea and Samaria. With him, it's all PR strategies. They came to the conclusion that Yesh Atid could perhaps only survive at the expense of the left-wing parties. No one buys the Center's bluff anymore. The alliance with Bennett belongs to distant history. And yet, the rapprochement that will eventually come between the national religious and the ultra-Orthodox has not yet been created.
""Bennett has severely damaged relations with the Haredim because of his spiritual poverty and worldliness, and for their part, they have not spared him and his party the multitude of nicknames and curses in their arsenal. But it will happen. It must happen, because among the common people in both sectors, not the politicians, there is more in common than there is between them.".
""The average knit kippah wearer loves the Torah just as the average Haredi loves the Land of Israel and is thrilled by the possibility of its transmission. We need the alliance of believers. Those who believe in Hashem, the Torah, and the integrity of our holy land.".
