The Fair is in Town, but where is the Merchandise?

The color has returned to the cheeks of religious Zionism. If the fair is in town, then there must be merchandise.
Everyone is running around, convincing others and arguing, brandishing lists of rabbis who endorse one candidate or another. It's as if the Jewish Home party was governing Israel, or at least attempting to run the country. But the Jewish Home is a splinter party. An honest evaluation of the party will easily reveal that it has no merchandise. So why all the excitement?

First, we must explain why we did not react in any significant way to the mega-effort undertaken by the Jewish Home party to convince Manhigut Yehudit voters to leave the Likud and join up with them, instead. We thought that there was no reason to fight against this process. After all, it repeats itself every time there are elections. One time it is Effie Eitam's Achi party, and the next is the Unity of who knows what. Religious Zionists love to be a sector. The gene for national leadership seems to be nowhere in their sights. We simply have to get used to the seasonal damage.

After the elections, Religious Zionism will be in the same place from which it started. All the campaign posters will be in the trash bin, forgotten forever. But in the arena where the real decisions are made, the Religious Zionist votes will be sorely lacking. They will have no say in who will lead this country. There will be no fateful national decisions for the sector that made itself irrelevant.

If we truly want Jewish leadership for Israel, we must be in the Likud, taking on all the challenges it presents. They may cheat us, defame us and build obstacles everywhere. But as we persevere, we come closer and closer to triumph, as we see with each election. In the last elections, approximately one fourth of the Likud voters - most of who were not registered through Manhigut Yehudit – voted for Moshe Feiglin for head of the Likud. They preferred him to a popular incumbent prime minister who used all his power and enlisted the entire cabinet and party machine – using threats and extreme pressure on Likud activists - not to vote for Feiglin. This is overwhelming proof of the fact that we are always winning.

Religious Zionism is constantly fleeing its vision, rendering itself irrelevant. Then it blames it problems on the politician who the political commentators have called the most influential person in Israeli politics: Moshe Feiglin.

And one more important insight:
The very same leaders, rabbis and laymen – who encouraged the Religious Zionist public to circle Kfar Maimon, are once again encouraging the public to walk in circles. This time, between the political fences of the sector.