About a month ago, Yesh Atid MK Boaz Toporovsky was in a car accident. He sustained moderate injuries and spent a few days in the hospital. In the weeks since, he has mostly recuperated at home, resting and regaining his strength.
On Monday, after a month out of the Knesset, Toporovsky – who served as the coalition whip when Yair Lapid was prime minister – returned to the plenum for the fateful vote that was held that evening on the first part of the coalition’s judicial reform.
Wearing a neck brace, Toporovsky entered the plenum as Justice Minister Yariv Levin was introducing the bill that the Knesset would be voting on in the coming hours. Levin spotted the Yesh Atid MK and interrupted his speech. “I welcome Toporovsky’s return to us. We missed you,” the Likud hard-liner said.
At that point, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looked up from his seat and walked over to Toporovsky. The two men shook hands and the prime minister said: “I am happy to see you. You did not need to come for this. Stay healthy.”
“I am happy to see you. You did not need to come for this. Stay healthy.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Toporovsky shook the prime minister’s hand as a crowd of coalition and opposition MKs gathered nearby. The moment was captured on camera and all of the MKs – including Toporovsky and Netanyahu – were recorded smiling.
The natural way to view what happened was to smile as well. Here was an opposition MK who had returned to the Knesset after a month on the mend and was warmly welcomed by both sides of the aisle. At the end of the day, even MKs who argue with one another and accuse one another of destroying democracy, are human beings. That should be something we can all appreciate.
The other way to react to what happened was to be furious. One prominent Israeli journalist called Toporovsky a “poodle” and said that he didn’t need a brace on his neck but one around his head. Hundreds – maybe even thousands – of people slammed Toporovsky and the rest of the opposition MKs who stood there smiling at Netanyahu.
“We are outside protesting and you are inside smiling at Netanyahu,” was the message many of the protesters shared on Twitter and Facebook, causing some of the Yesh Atid MKs to issue clarifications that they were not smiling at the prime minister or his gesture, but at Toporovsky who had returned to the Knesset.
“The photo that was taken, in light of the circumstances, does not look good and I apologize for it,” explained Yesh Atid’s Vladimir Beliak who was one of the opposition MKs who dared to smile.
Smiling is now a sin?
HAVE WE lost our minds? Smiling is now a sin? It is a transgression to display a grin when the prime minister gets up to greet an MK who had been out recuperating for a month after a car accident?
Something is wrong in Israel today and it is not only the speed with which the coalition is trying to pass its legislation on the judiciary. It is the way we, Israelis, speak to one another and the way we have let legislation and our position on it turn everyone into enemies.
This is the true danger to Israel’s democracy – the inability to speak to one another or to accept that there is legitimacy on both sides of this battle over the future of the balance of power in Israel’s democratic institutions. Instead of acknowledging the fears of the protesters, the coalition refers to them as anarchists who are promoting BDS against Israel. On the other side, the coalition’s reasons for advancing the legislation are also ignored and instead all people chant our slogans of how democracy is coming to an end.
Talk like this leaves no middle ground and no room for compromise. That is why it is no surprise that until now there still has not been a genuine attempt by both sides to sit down and see if there is a way to pass legislation that would be acceptable by all.
Lapid is demanding a 60-day freeze to legislation and the coalition is demanding that it not freeze the process even for one day. Lapid says he will not negotiate with a gun to his head and the coalition says it will not stop doing what it was elected to do and had promised its voters.
Do we have to agree with both sides? No. But that does not mean that we should completely delegitimize from where each side is coming. Both the proponents of the legislation and the opposition to it have their patriots even if they come with different visions for how they want the country to look. To treat one another as a hostile enemy does no good for the country.
What we also have to recognize is that this did not come out of nowhere. The foundation for this type of rhetoric and this atmosphere was set during the five election campaigns this country went through over a period of three-and-a-half years.
CONSTANT ELECTIONS meant constant mudslinging. It forced the public to constantly hear how one side was wrong and the other was right. This negativity did not just disappear because a new government was formed. Just like the Likud did everything it could to delegitimize the government established by Naftali Bennett and Lapid, now its members are getting a taste of their own medicine.
We saw this play out on Wednesday when the Knesset Finance Committee convened to discuss a request by the Prime Minister’s Office that the state increase the funding it provides for the management of the prime minister’s residences. Since the official residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem is under renovation, Netanyahu is splitting his time between his two private residences – one in Jerusalem, and the other in Caesarea.
This is a legitimate request. There is no official residence and the prime minister does need to live somewhere. The problem is that something that should be simple and straightforward has turned into a cesspool of filth. Netanyahu though has no one to blame but himself. He and his supporters did the same thing to Bennett when he decided to remain in his private Ra’anana home after becoming prime minister.
Then, Netanyahu and his supporters spread fake news that the state was spending NIS 50 million to renovate Bennett’s home. It didn’t make a difference that it wasn’t true and that the money that was spent – it was nowhere near 50 million – was on security measures that were installed on the street nearby. They spread the lies then and it is naïve of them to assume that the opposition will not fight back now.
It would also be one thing if there was nothing else going on in the country except the judicial reforms. There is the hike in the interest rate that is affecting mortgage rates, the weakening of the shekel that will increase the cost of living, the rockets from Gaza, the terrorism in Jerusalem and our health system, which a report on Thursday showed continues to lag behind most of the OECD.
This is what happens when the conversation becomes poisoned. Problems don’t just go away; they linger, and not being able to smile in public will soon be the least of our problems.