Been There, Done That. Time for a Change

By Moshe Feiglin

Twelve years have passed and it is as if nothing has changed. The same youth, the same police and the same politicians. Every side fulfills its role in the show.

The same show.

The same politicians, who have been elected by the same evictees come to comfort them and to be evicted with them and to be elected by them once again and to make speeches and to abandon them to the next eviction and to comfort them and to be evicted again and again.

Nevertheless, we witnessed a new level of cynicism in Amona. The destruction of the village was described as an historic achievement, no less. "Amona will indeed be destroyed, but in its merit a historic bill that will save the settlements was legislated…"

Everyone knows that the "historic" bill will end up somewhere in an abyss and all that will be left of it will be the destruction of an entire Jewish village. But the rightist politicians, on the very day of the destruction, continue to string their voters along and to tell them stories of historic achievements.

The Jewish Home party could have prevented the destruction of Amona. After the previous elections, Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennet made it clear that the party would not join the government coalition if his party would not get the ministerial appointments that he desired. "If not", he threatened, "there won't be a government." Bennet could have threatened that the government would fall if the bill to save Amona would not be legislated and the threat of destruction would not be lifted from the village.

But political self- sacrifice – the willingness to go to the Opposition for desirable appointments – is non-existent when it comes to the Land of Israel. Why is this so? After all, most of the members of the Jewish Home party are good and worthy people.

The reason is that they have no alternative to the current Chairman of the Likud and they have no intention of creating a leadership alternative of their own. When you are not capable of creating national leadership, you become captive to the existing leadership. The way the Israeli election system works, after the general elections, each elected party endorses a particular candidate (usually the head of the largest party on their side of the political divide) to head the next government. Then the president asks the candidate with the most endorsements to attempt to create a governing coalition. Regardless of the number of mandates the Zehut party wins in the next elections, we will not endorse anybody but the head of our party for the role of prime minister. Israel needs new leadership – not more of the same.