Mere weeks ago, when rockets and internet memes were flying, in real time a portrait of Israel coalesced that was less than flattering. The damning images went something like this: evictions in Sheikh Jarrah, riot police on sacred ground, a military flexing its might against those scrappy Hamasniks in Gaza, a West Bank waiting for Godot and Palestinian sovereignty. For its adversaries, rather than an illustration of of what Israel has to do to survive, the events of last month indicated what the Jewish State was at its core.
The base for all of this painterly propaganda was a view of Israel as irretrievably right wing, perpetually under the retrograde rule of Benjamin Netanyahu. His endless reign made it easy to conflate him and the country he led: it didn’t help that he did exactly the same thing, and was all too willing to highlight his own indispensability. As Bibi and Israel merged, they came to comprise an all too easy bogeyman: Trump adoring, disinterested in peace, allied with forces of reaction rather than progress. Progressive American Jews looked at Israel and didn’t catch a hint of their own reflection, seeing only everything they abhorred.
When we think of the miraculous in the life of a nation, it is easy to gravitate towards origins. The Red Sea parting and crossing on dry land, the world turned upside down at Yorktown, the constellation of constitutional creativity that yielded our founding documents, or various wars of liberation where new polities were birthed by treaty or the sword.
But then there are miracles down the line, mid-life flips of fate that don’t create a nation but renew it. They are reminders that miracles have shelf lives, and that just one is rarely enough to keep a good thing going. Foundings need refoundings, and a miracle in the rearview mirror calls for one around the next bend. The wonder of George Washington’s leadership would have meant little if Abraham Lincoln had not graced the national stage, and something in Thomas Jefferson’s eloquence was completed in Martin Luther King Jr’s cadences. All revolutions begin with lofty aims and renovating visions, but if they cannot stay young as they grow old, their future will be written in blood.
Among the nation’s of the world, Israel’s seventy years seems lousy with the miraculous. The resurrection of an ancient liturgical language into a vibrant and flexible tongue. A 2,000 year old dream that put on flesh and blood and stone. A tiny minority charting a democratic course in a region rife with brutality and autocracy. Rebirth as a sequel to unimaginable devastation. An economy that continues to innovate and has found its stride in the tech ruled ethos of the 21st century.
But if some of these miracles still astound, others are beginning to feel more distant: new breakthroughs are needed. The Abraham Accords, which brought Israel into relation with Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco, the UAE, and Qatar, offer the potential to revise what once felt stale and inevitable.
The replacement of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with what is being called the ‘change coalition’ is another kind of provisional and tenuous miracle. The new government, now just a week old, is comprised of eight political parties, from the far right, the ideological left and the pragmatic center. In a groundbreaking development, the Arab Islamist party Ra’am will be part of the coalition as well, placing Israeli Arabs in the heartland of the Jewish State’s politics.
The new government is diverse across nearly every axis, stuffed with Israelis of every hue and background. Even as anti-Zionist prejudices get ever more cruder, with the exclusion of an Israeli food truck from a festival in Philadelphia following vicious threats just the latest example, Israel continues to demonstrate a liquid dynamism. Its democracy is a wild and boisterous thing.
First up at bat in this kaleidoscope of a coalition is Naftali Bennett, a man of the right who was Bibi’s chief of staff in a past life. In politics as in life luck plays a starring role, and Bennett has ascended to the top post despite only holding his party holding only seven seats. The physics of Israeli coalition politics can sometimes border on the metaphysical. The real power behind the throne is Yair Lapid, to the manor born of Israel’s secular and cultural elite. It is the oddest of political couplings, but taking down Bibi was always going to be the work of many hands. As Bret Stephens astutely pointed out, nearly everyone in this new government is a traitor to their own ideology. Out of such turncoat stuff is compromise and progress fashioned.
Nothing is for certain, not even miracles. The grumbling of the Jews in the desert began when the last plague had scarcely ended, and they were twerking around the Golden Calf just forty days after hearing the voice of G-d. Thomas had to get his fingers bloody before he was convinced. Once time passes, many might doubt whether a miracle truly took place at all. So this new government, uncertain though it may be, has all the hallmarks of the miraculous: improbable, unexpected, refuting critics and reviving supporters, and perhaps providing us something we’ll be marveling at for years to come.
Happy Father’s Day,
A
P.S. This week, I thought a little bit about the Jews, the left and Israel for a piece in the Forward.