Some nations believe they have been blessed with great leaders. Other nations have leaders who believe they have been blessed with a great nation.
President Isaac Herzog, in perhaps the most stirring speech he has given since the beginning of the war on October 7, made it clear that Israel falls into the latter category.
And he was not alone. In speeches delivered in the Knesset at a special session to mark the parliament’s birthday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Yair Lapid, along with Herzog, sang the praises of the people of Israel.
“Israeli society came together” and proved its enemies wrong for believing it was “as weak as a spider’s web,” said Netanyahu, while Lapid called the citizens of Israel “the best people in the world.”
But it was Herzog who was the most poignant.
The words of the president resonate
“And we, all of us, and especially the elected officials, who are blessed with such a nation, such a generation, we ask ourselves and are obliged to ask ourselves all the time: What must we do to be worthy of them? To be worthy of their sacrifice? To be worthy of their heroism? To be worthy of their memory?”
The answer, he said, was contained in the words of bereaved parents, fallen soldiers, and victims of the October 7 massacre: Unity. Letter after letter, eulogy after eulogy, repeated this common theme, Herzog said.
He quoted Druze commander Salman Habaka as saying, before he fell in battle, “Our strength is our unity.”
He cited Itzik Azoula, whose son was murdered at the music festival in Re’im, as saying, “If the heavy price of losing my son was for the unity of the people, I am ready to accept surrendering him with love.”
He quoted the father of Asaf Tubul, who fell in battle in December, as saying, “I sacrificed my son not so that we would be divided. Wake up. We are all one people.”
On a day when the front page of the country’s daily newspapers featured the smiling, hopeful, neighbor-next-door faces of the 21 soldiers who died the day before – faces that represented nearly the entire mosaic of Israeli society – Herzog said, “This is the order of the day: to know not only how to fight together, not just to die together, but how to live together, to build together, to be worthy together.”
It is not only Herzog who hears that message. It comes across loud and clear when listening to reservists, volunteers, and bereaved family members giving eulogies for their loved ones or speaking in the media. It is a plea for unity.
But unity, as Herzog made clear to the Knesset, is not uniformity. There will not be, nor should there be, a uniformity of opinions or ideas. Debate is what makes the country strong, successful, and dynamic.
“Unity is not stifling debate,” he said. “Unity is not the end of discussion and debate in matters concerning the core of the very being of the Israeli state, society, and democracy.”
That debate, he continued, will surely return to the Knesset passionately after the war.
But here’s the rub. Here is what the president, whose role involves gauging the pulse of the people, emphasized: “There is a way to argue. Even when arguing, be worthy.” That is what he hears “from the hearts” of the people.
Yes, there is a way to argue. There is a way to disagree, not only without being disagreeable but also without delegitimizing or stigmatizing whole sectors of the population.
THAT, HOWEVER, was largely a lost art over the last few years.
In recent years, the “other side” was not only wrong; they were traitors, parasites, messianists, fascists, or lily-livered leftists. And then all those folks – the traitors, parasites, messianists, fascists, and leftists – met up in one tank or one platoon and no longer appeared to one another as caricatures. Nor did they appear to each other as evil.
Israel cannot afford to return to the type of discourse that marred it before October 6, Herzog said, and that change needs to begin in the Knesset.
“We cannot talk about mutual respect and unity without the Knesset taking a central part in the change,” he pointed out.
Netanyahu followed Herzog to the podium and delivered a speech that was similar to the types of speeches he has given regularly since the war began: Israel must win; Israel will win. And he, in turn, was followed by Lapid.
Lapid, it seemed, internalized Herzog’s message: he got across his anti-government message without insults or invectiveness. Some may criticize Lapid for giving a speech that, because he spoke of a sadness in the country that “sits in the air like a stone,” had a demoralizing effect when what is needed now is to build up the nation’s spirit, not bring it down.
But the sadness Lapid described – over the languishing hostages, over the daily toll of fallen soldiers, over the hundreds of thousands of Israelis forced to leave their homes – is real, not fabricated.
He, too, spoke of change, though the change he meant was a change in government.
Yet he delivered that message void of the poison and vitriol that have characterized many of his speeches as well as those of nearly all the country’s leading politicians in the months leading up to October 7.
“Israel will win the war, but the victory is not only in killing [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar,” he said. “The victory is that we will be better – better for each other and better as a nation. For the sake of life and for those who are being led to their graves at this time, we must make a change.”
He added, “We know today that the fact that we did not make the change in time led to a disaster, the greatest disaster in our history. We will not allow the next disaster to happen. Israel will make the change it must make. There is no other possibility.”
The change Herzog spoke of was a change in discourse. The change Lapid had in mind was in government. Yet this time, the way Lapid argued that point was different. Perhaps the change that Herzog called for is starting to seep in.