Israelis aren’t stupid and they no longer trust a word their politicians say, especially when main players, Netanyahu and Livni, have deceived them before
Deceit is seen by Judaism as especially repugnant. As a prelude to the Israelite’s entry into the Land of Israel the Torah warns the Jewish people against acting dishonestly. It says (Deuteronomy 25:13), “You shall not keep in your pouch two different weights, one large and one small”.
The great commentator Rashi explains that the verse is warning against one who has two weights which appear to be the same, but are in truth unequal, thus allowing him to cheat the seller by purchasing goods with the heavier weight and to deceive the buyer by selling with the lighter one.
But the next part of the passage is especially instructive to today’s political reality in Israel (Deuteronomy, 25: 15-16): “You shall have a full and honest weight…in order that your days will be prolonged on the land which the Lord, your God, gives you.” Israeli politicians have often ignored this warning and at their own peril as the recent election results have shown.
In February 2001 Ariel Sharon was elected as prime minister of Israel with 62% of the vote. The day after the elections I was interviewed in Jerusalem by an Arab television station. They said that the Arab world felt that by electing a hawk the Israeli public were turning their backs on peace and deciding to wage war instead.
In fact this was correct after Ehud Barak bungled the peace process with the Palestinians and brought on the second intifada instead, the Israeli public elected the hawkish Arial Sharon. What followed was two years of almost nonstop terror and mayhem on the streets of Israel’s cities.
In the 2003 general election the then Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna campaigned on a platform of unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians if peace negotiations failed. Ariel Sharon and his Likud party campaigned against the policy of disengagement. In the 2003 elections Ariel Sharon won the by a landslide—the Israeli public had clearly rejected unilateral disengagement.
Unbelievably, less than a year after the elections, in December 2003, Ariel Sharon, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert adopted the position of their former opponents in the Labor Party and started promoting the disengagement plan. In the end they forced Jewish citizens from their homes in Gush Katif and gave the land away to the Palestinians. In return Israel has received nothing but rocket fire into their cities.
Public confidence eroded
But Ariel Sharon was not the only one to do a bait-and-switch on the Israeli public. In 1996 Benjamin Netanyahu who campaigned against Shimon Peres and the Oslo Accords was elected. After taking office Netanyahu continued along the path of Oslo and eventually signed the Wye River Memorandum agreeing to an Israeli withdrawal from an additional 13% of the West Bank, the release 750 Palestinian security prisoners and the building of an International Airport in Gaza.
Israelis confidence has been further eroded by the election of Ehud Olmert in 2006 who was plagued with criminal corruption allegations dating back to 2003 when he was a minister in Ariel Sharon’s government. In the second half of last year the police recommended that criminal charges be brought against him. Finally the attorney general’s filing of a criminal indictment against Olmert forced him to resign from politics, to take effect when the new government is formed.
But arguably the biggest fraud carried out on the Israeli electorate is the Kadima party itself. Everyone seems to accept now that that Kadima is a left-wing party. But I have not forgotten that Tzipi Livni and most of her Kadima colleagues came from the right-wing Likud party. They only moved to what was touted as the centrist Kadima party because at the time it was politically expedient to do so. Now they have moved further left for the same reason.
This background information is fundamental to understanding this week’s election results where there was no clear winner. While I was in Israel two weeks ago I got a taste of the pre-election mood there. I would ask people who they were voting for and the response often was: “They are all the same; we can’t trust any of them.”
Israelis aren’t stupid and they no longer trust a word their politicians say especially when the main players, Netanyahu and Livni, have deceived them before. With this type of history it is little wonder that Israelis cannot decide who to choose as their elected leader. It is also not surprising that Avigdor Lieberman’s party was so popular—at least his positions have remained consistent over the years.
It is important for politicians in Israel to know the final statement the Torah makes on the subject of Just Weights: “Whoever perpetrates such injustice is an abomination to the Lord, your God.” An abomination is indeed a more fitting description of some of these political leaders.