The writing was on the wall. Or as my Polish grandmother would say: "I warned you, why didn't you listen to me?".
Or as Eli Yishai used to say: 'I, I warned you.'.
A year ago, Sivan 25, 5770. The Haredi factions are safely seated in the Netanyahu-Gantz coalition, Avigdor Lieberman is thrown into the opposition. I am invited to his room. Many security guards are waiting outside, a reminder of the days when he served as defense minister. The room is next to the room of the then opposition chairman, Yair Lapid. Today, he is a neighbor of Benjamin Netanyahu, the current opposition chairman. How the wheel turns for him.
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“They float in the air, Gafni, Deri, Litzman. They don't step on the ground”, He shot the arrow in the face.
I ask difficult questions, I don't give up, I don't let go, but I have trouble freeing myself from the knowledge hanging in the air: There is also a lot of truth in what he says.
As he speaks, I sail back to Monday, Iyar 22, 5779, a year ago. Two days before the dissolution of the Knesset and the start of the second term elections. Who dreamed of a third term in those days?.
Lieberman and Netanyahu meet in the Prime Minister's Office in the Knesset. Netanyahu's entourage summarizes the meeting as positive, but Lieberman claims, for his part, that it was bad.
In those days, he walked around humiliated. The Haredim never stopped whipping him. "We are 8 plus 8, you are only 5, you are irrelevant, go inside.".
And he is the face.
He understood that sitting with them under one coalition umbrella did him harm electorally. It's not just the Russian public that didn't like it, these are also the voices of Israelis who may identify with him on the right wing, but definitely not in the automatic connection to the bloc that includes Haredim.
If the Haredi were acting wisely, they would speak to him with political lip service, reassuring him that they are not inclined to impose religion and laws that many young Israelis are unable to really connect with.
But they continued to beat him, leading to the unfortunate result of going to the third-term elections.
Want to know how I became a manager with a bombshell salary without leaving home?
This time we were miraculously saved, I think to myself and also write this in a column published here in Haredim 10. And the million-dollar question that accompanies the paragraph is: Are we guaranteed a political miracle in six months? A year? In the next term? Isn't it worth changing the discourse? Trying to be friendly even to those who don't see eye to eye with you on politics?
“My goal is a coalition without Haredim,” Lieberman insisted again.
Could it be that one day he will succeed in doing this? Could it be that it is worth doing everything to prevent this? - I asked the questions then.
But none of the ultra-Orthodox representatives came to their senses. There was a sense of intoxication in the air, and they continued to whip him.
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When he formed the current coalition, of which he is arguably the thinker and creator, as the first to brand the impossibility of 'being right-wing and not joining Bibi's coalition' - the haredi media, at least the majority of them, slammed him and the government. 'A government of destruction', 'Antiochus'.
I gave them a chance, until the shameful daycare law.
Today, I am no longer.
And yet, it's hard not to remember the lesson that the Haredi delegation refused to internalize: the soul-searching that was never done.
Could it be that there are some other spiritual reckonings waiting in the corner, and no one is willing to do them? Could it be that we, the public, the Abrechim - are the ones who will pay the painful price?
