Reality is an elusive, deceptive thing. Those who steer a company, a country, a factory, a movement, must keep eye contact with it. But it is often not a simple matter. Who reflects reality to Benjamin Netanyahu? There are intelligence agencies, there is the press, there are consultants, pollsters. But Netanyahu chooses what to listen to. Which agency to believe more, which surveyor to prefer, which consultant to fight. Netanyahu has interests, the advisers have interests, which do not always coincide. The information that flows into it is filtered in a thousand ways.
MKs from the coalition and the opposition in a joint initiative for compromise: “time for mutual guarantee”
Veterans of an elite unit attack the legal reform: “a serious damage to democracy”
Were you impressed by a news survey here, according to which only 31% of Israeli citizens support the legal reform legislation? Were we alarmed by the “Maariv” poll, which dropped the Likud to 26 seats? Has he heard about the CEO of the Israeli company who has already begun practical procedures to transfer it and its employees to a country in Europe? Has he been exposed to the simmering hardships of reservists in important units, some of whom have already given up two or three days of service in the coming weeks, and even if they did not explain why, the commanders know why ?
It is not easy to deal with such information. Maybe the information reached Netanyahu or maybe not. And if it arrived, maybe Netanyahu considers it to be important information and maybe not. And if he thinks he’s important (or not), maybe he’s right and maybe he’s wrong. A prime minister should constantly engage in risk assessment. It operates under conditions of uncertainty in the face of complex challenges.
There is legal reform. She is important to him for all kinds of reasons – principled, personal and political. There is a public uproar, which includes quite a bit of ridiculous rhetoric (women dressed as “The Handmaid’s Tale”), a lot of unnecessary ranting (Ram Ben Barak and Nazi Germany nonsense), and also an impressive, exciting mobilization of a large crowd that has given up its traditional indifference and is taking to the streets.
The Prime Minister has to decide what is noise – and what is a signal. What is foam on the surface of the water, and what is water. He has to decide at the right moment which is worse, because he has no good options: take a risk and stick to the course his coalition started or take a risk and change direction.
Netanyahu’s decisions depend to a large extent on the question of who reflects reality to him. So are the decisions of his cabinet members. Or at least those of them who have a minimal ability to connect to reality. Does Simcha Rothman have any acquaintances in the hi-tech entrepreneur community who tell him what is going on with them? Does Levin’s opponent have acquaintances in the business community who update him on their and their friends’ moves? Already, many Israelis are not enthusiastic about their reform.
But what will they say if it turns out that the choice is between renouncing reform and maintaining the current standard of living, and passing reform and a 3% drop in the standard of living? And what about a 5% drop in the standard of living? And what about 7%? It is very difficult to estimate how much the reform will cost Israel. Maybe it won’t go up – maybe, as some of its initiators think, in the long run it will actually raise the standard of living.
Yariv Levin and Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Oren Ben Hakon)
existence and destruction
Long term thinking is complicated. Suppose there is reason to think that the reform will streamline and improve Israel’s ability to facilitate entrepreneurship. On the other hand, suppose that because of the passing of the reform, a thousand entrepreneurs will leave Israel. Will the entrepreneurs return in a few years, because they will realize that leaving was unnecessary? Will the entrepreneurs not return, but in their place will come others, more numerous and more successful, because of the improved circumstances? What will Israel’s profit and loss balance be in the next 5, 10, 20 years? There is no way to know, and yet, the decision makers are required to assess the risk and the chance. They are required to decide whether their actions will bring benefit or harm.
More than that: they are required to decide what is defined as benefit and what is defined as harm. They can decide – and this is just an example, but not necessarily far-fetched – that entrepreneurs who leave Israel relatively easily and quickly are not worth the trouble. If they don’t leave now, they will find another excuse. Next time there will be a right-wing coalition. Or the next time a law is passed that aims to please the ultra-Orthodox. Or the next time Israel is forced to launch an operation in Gaza.
So your leaving right now is not a real loss. It is simply damage a little early, compared to the possibility of the same damage, a little late. If these are not Israelis that make an effort to keep them here, surely there is no point in renouncing the legal revolution for them, or, in contrast, continuing to build outposts, or, in contrast, continuing generous allocations to the ultra-Orthodox.
There are those who will find this kind of definition of benefit and harm unbearable, but it is not unbearable. Leadership sets strategic priorities for the country. Leaders are allowed to decide that it is good for the country to pay an economic and social price to achieve a political or military goal. The leaders are allowed to decide that it is more important in their eyes for Israel to have a distinct Jewish character, which is expressed in the prohibition of chametz in hospitals, than that there will be citizens in Israel who insist on eating chametz specifically, specifically on Pesach, specifically in the hospital.
The Hungarian leadership chose to strengthen its version of Hungarian nationalism even at the cost of the departure of a million citizens. The Russian leadership chose to try to conquer Ukraine, even at the cost of heavy economic sanctions. Say – what kind of decisions are these? We will offer more examples: Great Britain (with the backing of a referendum) chose the move of “Brexit”, in order to preserve the Englishness that is different from the Europeans, and continues to pay a price for it. South Africa opted for equal civil rights, and lost a significant part of its productive white population.
On each of these choices it is possible to offer an opinion that touches on different aspects. There are moral aspects (war against innocents, abolition of apartheid); There are economic aspects (sanctions, abandonment); There are aspects of national identity and national vision (Kiev is the cradle of the Russian nation); There are aspects related to the nature of the regime (press freedom, minority rights).
The decisions that Israel will make in the coming months are also not flat, but multi-layered. They concern the vision of the state, the ability to live together, the nature of the regime, the standard of living. They have security aspects (the level of terrorism), political (relations with America), moral (the Hawara rioters will prove).
Israel can exist as the state of Itamar Ben Gabir, it can exist as the state of trooper troops, it can exist as the state of Ayman Odeh. or not. That is – it may turn out that it cannot exist as one of these possibilities. But one must humbly admit that it is difficult to know in advance which possibility leads it to existence and which to destruction.
What can be known in advance is which possibility leads her to which path of vision. Assuming you survive, you can imagine, approximately, Israel in the spirit of Rothman, and you can imagine, approximately, Israel in the spirit of Trooper, and you can imagine, approximately, Israel in the spirit of Odeh. So, once again, a choice is required that requires two elements to be taken into account: which country you want to live in, that’s one element. And which of the countries has a better chance of surviving, that is the second element.
If you want to live in a trooper state, but think it won’t last, you may have to accept, without a choice, the possibility of an Odah state. If you think that only the Trooper state will last, but really want to live in the Rotman state, you might grit your teeth and agree to live in a state that is not exactly what you wanted.
Right and not wise
The law was passed “with the opposition of one member of the Knesset”. So it is written in Haim Ramon’s book, “against the wind”. Wikipedia says that no one objected to the law. Zero opponents. Who is right? It seems to Ramon that Anat Maor of Meretz voted against. I decided that it did not warrant an in-depth investigation, because either way, the state health insurance law passed by a large majority. A very large majority. An especially large majority if you think of all those who opposed it, and prevented its transfer for many years.
Ramon was the Minister of Health, but in order to fulfill his dream of passing a state health insurance law, he had to resign from the government, run for the presidency of the Histadrut, win the race – and then allow the passage of the law, which the Histadrut was the main brake that prevented it. The stars aligned in exactly the right place. Baiga Shohat was the finance minister at the time. He supported the law, even though a considerable number of finance officials opposed it. Later, the finance officials also changed some of its sections.
Haim Ramon, 1999 (photo: Avi Ohion, Leam)
“Bibi and the other members of the Tea Party”, as Shermon calls them in the book, “rubbed their hands with pleasure when they could finally fulfill their promise to cut the law”. Not sure that’s a completely fair description. Netanyahu was indeed prime minister in 1997, when the “corresponding tax” that obliged employers to participate in financing their employees’ insurance was abolished. But the finance minister was Dan Meridor. Does he also deserve the title of member of the tea party? Ramon believes that in a sense the answer is yes.
Ramon writes in a tone of anger about changes in the law that have taken place over the years, but understands very well that he has brought about “dramatic changes” in the health care system. He enacted a necessary law. He enacted an important law. There was a dispute, and he overcame it. There was opposition, and he convinced the opponents. Want to talk about a revolution? It was a revolution, one of the biggest in the history of internal policy, society and the economy in Israel. And there were no demonstrations in the streets, and there was no sense of the end of the world, and there was no one who threatened to spend his money, or leave the country, or break out into civil unrest.
Ramon’s law was brewing for many years, even before he reached the priesthood. There were previous attempts, there was the Judge Shoshana Netanyahu Committee, there was public and political maturity. There was an opportunity that someone knew how to take advantage of with great skill. True, the Histadrut tried to block the law. True, it was a hard fight. Every political achievement involves a hard struggle. But in the end there was a decision that the Knesset accepted by a large majority, and almost without reservation.
Ramon also supports legal reform, but apparently recognizes that today’s reform is not like yesterday’s reform. As Minister of Justice, he wanted to change himself, and ran into a wall. Then he was sued, tried and convicted. A familiar affair, which left a scar. If Yariv Levin and Simcha Rothman had been a little more patient, Ramon could have been their partner. His trust in the justice system is not much, if any, higher than theirs. Still, when he was interviewed by the newspaper “Makor Rishon”, he asked “What are they in a hurry?”, and not because he changed his mind about the need to restrain the judicial system. Do we need a reform? Ramon sure does. But, he said, “the feeling is that they are making an all-out attack on the lifestyle of half the people… They don’t know how to work, and even when they are right, they are not smart.”
revolution by consent
I was reminded of Ramon’s successful reform because of the legal battle, and because of the questionnaire we are asked to fill out on the index website – a questionnaire that asks to rank 25 decisions of Israel’s leaders in 75 years. We will publish the full results closer to Independence Day, when it will really be 75, but several hundred questionnaires have already accumulated, and curiosity is growing, so we took a look at the partial results, checked the pulse, to see what the Israelis think.
Among other things, we summarized the question data on the state health insurance law. If you follow what is happening in other countries in the world, you probably know that in America health insurance is one of the most controversial issues between the Democratic bloc and the Republican bloc.
A great many Americans, with whom Israelis actually tend to sympathize, because they are the conservatives, the hawks, who support right-wing Israeli governments, believe that state health insurance is a form of socialism. By the way, Ramon testifies in his book that Netanyahu once asked him about the law: “What is this socialism that you are legislating for us?”.
But the American confrontation is not evident in the Israeli arena. No party proposed to repeal the state health insurance law. The religious Zionist party, some of whose leaders entertain radical economic ideas, wrote in its platform about “the vital need for a strong and functioning public health system.”
The index survey (photo: courtesy of the Index)
Netanyahu did not put on his lips an offer to turn the wheel back. Those who want Israel without Ramon’s law will have to vote for Moshe Feiglin, if he ever runs again as part of the Identity Party. Not only did Ramon’s reform pass without opposition. She was also left without opponents. Not in the Knesset – not in the public.
Pay attention to what the data from the 25 decisions questionnaire teaches. And just to be clear: these are interim data, for impressions only, not final and not fully weighted. On the other hand, the figures are so clear that even if they change quite a bit they will still remain quite similar to what they are now: an unequivocal admission that the Israeli public is satisfied. The decision to enact state health insurance was an “excellent” decision, or in the worst case, a “good” decision. The number of people who oppose this statement is quite similar to the number of people who oppose the law itself (as mentioned, zero or one, Anat Maor).
This is what a decision that is both “revolution” and “consensual” looks like. This is what the revolution looks like that Levin and Rothman can also deliver, if they are a little more patient, if they agree to compromise, if they give up the offensive rhetoric, if they consider that a significant reform with broad support is better than a complete reform in a social upheaval.
It seems to me, but I didn’t ask, that they could recruit Ramon for such a reform. And the president of the country has already agreed to such a reform. And he has a team you can agree with. And Benny Gantz wants to talk. Vayair Lapid does not seem interested at the moment, but a reform that resets may still change his mind. Why not? Why not pass a reform with the support of 70 MKs and zero opponents – or one – or even 10 or 20? Why not try a revolution by consensus?
Look at the graph and ask yourself: in 30 years is there a chance that this is what the Israelis will say about the decision to pass the legal reform? If you – the initiators and supporters of the reform – understand that there is no such chance, maybe you should recalculate a course and try to row in this direction. Because it’s no shame that almost everyone says you made an excellent decision. Because it’s no shame that almost everyone says, after 30 years, that you made a necessary revolution. Because it’s no shame that even after 30 years no one thinks of canceling your reform. Definitely not a shame.
This week we used information and data from the index website, surveys here and news 13, and the book “Against the Wind” by Haim Ramon (full disclosure: I had a secondary role in editing the book).