By Rabbi Dow Marmur
JERUSALEM — If Israelis want to be proud of their current prime minister, they should avoid reading local media and stick to American television.
Binyamin Netanyahu’s current visit to the United States is obviously a great success. He’s the president’s guest at Blair House next to the White House where only very important visitors are housed. He has had very “productive” meetings with Trump who may even turn up to inaugurate the US embassy in Jerusalem around Israel’s Independence Day in May. Though the American media are aware of his troubles at home and refer to it, it doesn’t stop them from treating him seriously.
His appearance at the annual convention of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, was a triumph. He presented himself as a world statesman in charge of a major power that’s prepared to take on Iran, perhaps even single-handedly, in order to thwart its nuclear ambitions. Watching the applause of the crowd reminded me again of the late Abba Eban about to address an international Jewish conference in Jerusalem. He thanked the people and remarked, “Normally I have to go abroad for this kind reception.”
Netanyahu doesn’t have that kind of self-deprecating sense of humor, but he knows that what awaits him at home when he comes back later this week is very different from what he got in Washington and New York. There’re now three former apparently once trusted aides who have turned state evidence and will have things to say about Netanyahu, his wife and even one of his sons that will not earn him applause but bring him and his wife closer to jail.
The three men had his confidence and his trust. But in a world where only expediency and not integrity counts, turning against your boss who confided in you doesn’t seem to result in moral qualms on the part of the perpetrators. What we can glean from the media is that nobody, from the very top down, deserves sympathy, let alone respect.
Whether or not Netanyahu will actually go to jail isn’t yet clear. Things may be delayed until he’s out of office, and he’s likely to stay in office for some time. Though his coalition is fragile and was just in crisis again, this time over the ultra-Orthodox insistence on freeing their boys from military service, it seems that no party in the present government really wants to go elections. They’re obviously afraid to lose. They’ll pretend to compromise in order to stay put.
Judging by the polls, even after the next election, Netanyahu’s Likud party will still be ahead of the others – for all we know, with him at the helm. Like in the case of Trump, the leader may not be up to it – in the case of Netanyahu, it’s not his skills but his values that are suspect – the electorate may nevertheless elect him. So much for the dark side of democracy.
We want Israel to be a Jewish and democratic state. For the Orthodox political parties this means imposing Jewish law as understood by them on the rest of the population; their fight against conscription of yeshiva students in part of it. But for all of us, surely Jewish must mean Jewish values beyond rituals. That is what the Hebrew Prophets taught us. Skillful conduct of government business is indeed important, but it’s rendered meaningless when the value system stinks.
Netanyahu was once overheard saying to a Jewish mystic something to the effect that the opposition doesn’t know what it means to be Jewish. We now suspect that he’s the ignorant one.
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Rabbi Marmur is spiritual leader emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. Now living in Jerusalem, he may be contacted via dow.marmur@sdjewishworld.com