I will celebrate it as MMMD – Muscular and Menschedika Moderate Day. Isaac Herzog’s presidential victory shortly before Yair Lapid presented his coalition deal with Naftali Bennett as prime minister was calendrical coincidence.
Hopefully, Israel’s “change government” will change Israel, flipping from a politics of division, denigration and despair to a politics of unity, mutual respect and hope – “Hatikvah.”
Amid mounting policy headaches, Prime Minister-to-be Bennett and President-to-be Herzog must heal the country and reaffirm faith in democracy. They should remember that, if pictures are worth a thousand words, grand gestures can generate infinite goodwill.
In 1897, Theodor Herzl hosted the first Zionist Congress in white tie and tails. Had he failed to back up this flamboyant gesture with substance, he would have been a joke. Because he succeeded, his gesture proclaimed the Jewish people would rise again – with dignity and class.
David Ben-Gurion, born David Grün, pushed his ministers to Hebraize their names, as he did. This low-key, personal gesture affirmed that the Zionist revolution entailed establishing sovereignty in our land and transforming ourselves into New Jews, proud Hebrews.
Ben-Gurion also backed a young army rabbi, Shlomo Goren, who defied every religious cabinet minister’s demand that religious kids serve in religious units.
“Soldiers should be divided by skill in fighting, not religious outlook,” Goren insisted. Ben-Gurion agreed: “We have one nation, one army, one state....”
Decades later, in 1977, a freshly elected prime minister, Menachem Begin, impulsively accepted 66 Vietnamese “boat people” fleeing Communism who had been spurned by Panamanian, Norwegian and Japanese ships. It was his first official act.
Begin remembered how in 1939, 900 Jews on the St. Louis traveled “from harbor to harbor, from country to country, crying out for refuge. They were refused.... Therefore it was natural... to give those people a haven in the Land of Israel.”
None of these gestures solved the nation’s hard-core economic, political or diplomatic problems. Nevertheless, each of these memorable gestures unified Israel by elevating the national soul: cultivating citizenship, uniting the nation, broadcasting Israel’s values globally.
Inevitably, some gestures stretch leaders and nations, while others can diminish both. Benjamin Netanyahu has frittered away many of his substantive achievements, from freeing the economy to signing the Abraham Accords, with a politics of coarse, demeaning and now violent, deluded and despicable gestures. (See also Trump, Donald.)
In democracies, tone counts; morality matters; the nation’s soul needs tending.
Fortunately, Lapid, Bennett and Herzog are up to this task – no matter how long Baby Bibi’s antidemocratic temper tantrum continues.
Lapid has dazzled many who underestimated him by not dazzling. He has been steady, stable, principled and – remarkably for a politician – humble. Staying focused on liberating Israel from its paralyzing Bibi-woven spell, he showed depth and leadership. If Israel had a Noble Peace Prize, Lapid would be a worthy winner.
Lapid’s approach is not just tactical and reactive: he’s more than the anti-Bibi. A true muscular moderate, he doesn’t treat centrism as “a geometrical point between Right and Left. It’s a worldview.”
Here’s his chance – and this coalition’s opportunity – to show the democratic world that building consensus isn’t for wimps, that leading from the Center is a principled stance, not a stand lacking principles, and that nations flourish when their leaders emphasize what unites us as a people, not just what divides us, party by party.
Bennett’s strong feelings about the territories blinds many to his moderate instincts. As a minister, he has been a “bitzuist,” a get-it-done type of guy, which requires dexterity and pragmatism, not fanaticism. His elegant calls for national unity, laced with a toleration for dissent and debate, prove once again the dangers of defining Israeli politicians only by the “where do you stand on the territories?” litmus test.
In 2013, as Diaspora affairs minister, Bennett chaired Birthright’s steering committee. In his first meeting, he exclaimed that Birthright had to turn students into soldiers fighting delegitimization.
Silence. That’s not what Birthright’s about. But no one wanted to confront this newly elected powerful minister.
That’s why it’s fun to be tenured – and to be voluntarily chairing the education committee. Having fought for 20 years against campus anti-Zionism, I explained that Birthright Israel is a no-strings-attached program offering Jewish identity building 101, introducing young Jews to Israel and the Jewish people.
Silence again.
Bennett smiled and invited me to his Knesset office for a fuller discussion.
Our thin-skinned prime minister who thought he was king-for-life abandoned such grace, agility, goodwill, ability to learn from others, good humor and humility. Bibi crushed iconoclasts, always trying to prove he was the smartest guy in the room.
He delivered so much that in our all-or-nothing culture, Bibi junkies made the Trumpian mistake of justifying his flaws with his strengths, rather than sifting, appreciating his strengths and critiquing his flaws.
As evidenced by his gracious handling of this no-name professor, Bennett is more elegant and confident. Our excellent Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief Yaakov Katz reports that since 2013 Bennett and Lapid have kept seeking the 70% that unites them, not the 30% dividing them, exercising their moderation muscles while honing their instincts for consensus building.
Israel’s centered and centrist new president, Herzog, will reinforce these menschy moderates. Together, these three can exorcise Bibi’s message that “Anything goes, because nice guys finish last.” On June 2, Lapid, Bennett, and Herzog showed that nice guys can finish first. Now they have to show that menschedik muscular moderates can lead effectively, too.
The writer is a distinguished scholar of North American history at McGill University and the author of nine books on American history and three on Zionism. His book Never Alone: Prison, Politics and My People, coauthored with Natan Sharansky, was just published by PublicAffairs of Hachette.