If someone wants to prove that Avigdor Lieberman is probably not yet fully Israeli, and maybe never will be, his accent does not prove anything, nor do his (his) claims that racism is directed towards him. The proof can be found in what the finance minister himself said. Things that prove that he has not yet assimilated the essence of Israeliness within him. Here’s what he said: “It’s important that we don’t develop delusions of grandeur, as if Israel can do anything and that we are a world power.”
This is the proof. Lieberman is of course fundamentally right. Israel is not a world power. Lieberman, of course, warns against the obvious: Israel needs to guard against its tendency to madness of grandeur. He is wrong in only one thing: in assuming that this tendency can be changed. Assuming that Israelis have the ability to look in the mirror and see themselves in their natural size. Quite small, quite remote, players – admittedly interesting and even quite successful – on the fringes of a world that is twenty times bigger than them.
This may be the essence of the difference between Finance Minister and Diaspora Minister Nachman Shai, who demanded to raise the level of Israeli aid to Ukraine. Xi threw a tweet into the well, and Foreign Ministry officials had to jump in after him to save Israel from drowning. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned against “an irresponsible move that will destroy relations”; Israel calmed down: No, Xi’s words were not spoken at the government’s discretion. No, Israel does not intend to supply Ukraine with weapons; Xi himself also explained that he did not mean offensive weapons, but this was already done after the Russians took the opportunity to remind Israel of the level of the stake in question.
Megalomania? To Xi’s credit, he is quite consistent in his recommendations to Israel in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. This is his principled position, not a megalomania that suddenly attacked him. If you want to try an explanation of psychology in a dime, look for it in the biography of Lieberman and Shay. One – born in Chisinau, Moldova. He came to Israel and is 20 years old. The second is a native of the country who spent some of the most important years of his life, at least professionally, in the corridors of power of the United States, as an envoy to the United Nations, then at the embassy in Washington, and later also as the CEO of an American Jewish organization.
As mentioned, psychology in a dime. Lieberman recognizes the world as a brutal place, where you should be wary of those who are stronger than you. Xi looks at the world through the lens of the American optimist, who recognizes in every teacher an opportunity for correction. And of course, it is quite possible that this is a hasty hypothesis, a forced interpretation of the motives of two personalities whose positions are simply different. Be that as it may, Lieberman warned of the puddle that had cloudy water in it, Shay jumped into it with his boots and splashed its water everywhere.
What should Israel do in the face of the conflict that is tearing the world apart, and putting almost every other development in its shadow? The Gallup polling institute began publishing this week its findings from an extensive survey it conducted in Ukraine in September, before the widespread bombings, before the Iranian drones. 70% of the respondents said that the country should fight “until it wins the war”.
What does win mean? 90% of the 70% – that is, of those who want to continue fighting, said that winning would mean “that all the territory lost since 2014 until now, including the Crimean Peninsula, will be returned.” Men said this more than women, the northerners more than the southerners, the more educated than the ignorant, but the total, even among the groups that drink a little less to fight, is impressive, awe-inspiring, awe-inspiring and even envious. Here is a nation that knows how to stand up for itself under conditions that Israelis have long since forgotten. Here is a nation that stands the test of fire and blood.
Last week I wrote here about this crisis, and about Israel’s, and the rest of the world’s, mistake in assessing its results. This week we will add a floor to it: the false assessment affected Israeli policy. She influenced public opinion in Israel. The memory is short, but it was interesting how Israel would have treated the war at the beginning, if it had known about the continuation what it knows today. I wonder what our leaders would do, I wonder what we would think.
And again, the end of history
Here are two samples of what we actually thought: We thought US President Joe Biden would not be up to the task. Israeli right-wing voters mostly thought so (only 35% said they had confidence in him in the context of the war). Maybe some still think so. But if they think so – they are wrong. His conduct so far is admirable. He does not embroil the US and the world in a world war (for now) but provides the Ukrainians with the back that allows them to fight like lions and also embarrass the Russians.
We also thought that Israel should not fully join the sanctions against Russia. Most Israelis assumed that Russia would win. They assumed that after she wins, she will be free to settle accounts with those who acted against her, and Israel has an interest in not opening accounts with Russia, whose forces are stationed in Syria.
When we asked as part of a study of the index how Israel should balance moral considerations against interests, whether it should clearly choose a side, the answers reflected two clear sentiments. The first – like Dr. Shay, the public is with Ukraine. Only a few Israelis thought that the Russians had a reasonable reason to attack their neighbor.
The second – like Minister Lieberman, the public wants to be careful about Israeli involvement, and the extent of Israel’s exposure to risk. Most of them thought that the Russian aggression should be condemned, as long as the condemnation does not result in a significant damage to the relations with Russia. That is, the relationship with the aggressor.
The Israelis who chose this obviously understood that this was not the most moral choice. This is a choice that weighs what they think about the war – Russia is an aggressor that deserves every reproach – and what they think about Israel’s needs – an expected Russian victory requires Israel to preserve itself.
Now it turns out that Russia is not winning. At least for now, she loses. So much so, that she is able to mobilize Iran on her side. A leper clings to a leper. Iran provides Ukraine with another tool of persuasion in the mobilization of Israel.
Is it conceivable that Israel will continue to sit on the fence when drones from Iran are exploding in the sky of Kyiv? Is it conceivable that Israel will find itself hesitating when Russia joins its most bitter enemy? Many unthinkable things have happened in the past year around the Ukraine crisis. A lot has happened – And you have to hope that not much will happen, because the following possibilities are quite scary.
Israel also takes this into account, when it maintains a safe distance from the crisis. China also keeps its distance from what appears to be entanglement. India fell silent. Benjamin Netanyahu explains in his new book that Israeli weakness does not bring friends closer to it, but that Israeli strength is the key to making friends.
This lesson is now also being learned by Vladimir Putin, who is left almost alone. If the Russians want to pull out a victory from the situation they found themselves in, they will have to do it themselves, pull themselves out of the drowning swamp with the tip of their heads, like Baron Munchausen did – a literary character from the brainchild of the German writer Rudolf Erich Respa.
And indeed, it was a literary character, but it was not entirely fictional. The real Munchausen, the one on whose colorful plots and descriptions the stories were based, was a German who acted as an officer in the service of the Russian army. He fought against the Turks in the 18th century. Fought against the Turks in the Crimea. So the parable definitely fits the parable.
Has Russia already lost the war against Ukraine? In America there are already sounds of jubilation as if yes. Too early, too optimistic, in the somewhat naive way of Americans. An interesting article by Francis Fukuyama was published in the “Atlantic” weekly. For those who don’t remember, this is the scholar who announced the “end of history” in the early 1990s, wrote several more interesting and important books since then, and has returned now to echo the message since then: yes, it was early – but not excessive. At least he thinks so.
What he stated in the early 1990s, that history came to an end with a clear decision in favor of liberal democracy and against any other system of government, is proven these days in the killing fields of Ukraine, and in the political abilities of China. Authoritarian Russia only knows how to offer its citizens madness and suffering, so it’s no wonder they run away from it. And even Great China, which crowns Xi Jinping a sort of emperor for his entire life, is in a governmental and economic crisis that is not clear how it will get out of it.
Democracy won. The other powers have nothing to offer, nothing to sell. They may be strong, and they may sometimes be seen as victorious, but there is no one in the world who would prefer to live in them, under Xi and Putin, and not in prosperous Germany, or even in America, which is busy with internal wars.
In view of all these developments, is it appropriate to claim that Israel’s behavior during the crisis was too measured, too lax, too pessimistic? Did Israel think she was being careful, but in fact avoided jumping on the winners bandwagon, and remained on the sidelines, perhaps understandable but not exactly glamorous?
Already at the beginning of the war, it was clear that the Israeli government itself was divided: the Prime Minister at the time, Naftali Bennett, chose a very cautious line vis-a-vis Russia (and also toyed with dreams of mediation, which Lieberman probably considers grandiose insanity). The foreign minister at the time, Yair Lapid, tried to take a slightly firmer line, a little more aligned with the messages of the US and other Western countries.
In retrospect, it is possible to determine that Lapid was right and Bennett was wrong, but this is a little wisdom, after the fact. In practice, leaders only have the reality in front of them. If they estimated that Russia would win, they acted on that estimate. If they estimated that Ukraine would not last, if they assumed that the West would quickly give up, that Biden would behave in Ukraine the way Barack Obama behaved in the Crimea, they acted according to these assessments. God
If it means that next time you have to behave differently, be a little less careful and a little more moral? The clear and swift Israeli response recorded this week after the Shai Medvedev incident shows that even Lapid, as Prime Minister, sees things from here that he did not see from there.
A change is emerging… (in America)
The elections are in exactly three and a half weeks. And no – we were not confused. Elections in America will come a week after the elections in Israel. Mid-term elections, which will decide who will be the majority party in both houses of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate, and who will be governors in many states. A lot of details, a little less interest. They don’t elect a president. Elect a congressman from Kentucky’s third district, elect a senator from Oklahoma, elect a governor for Wisconsin.
Some of the races are fascinating, close, indicative of America’s fundamental problems, race, populism, polarization, crime. There’s an interesting Senate race in Georgia. There are some interesting races in Pennsylvania. The viewer from afar – the Israeli – will be interested in the bottom line (if at all). Does Biden have a Democratic majority in Congress or does he not have a majority.
And what is his condition? Here, this is the reason to write about this political battle this week. There is not much point in writing about our choices. Another week has passed, another week in which nothing has changed. But things happen in America. Until recently, Biden’s condition, and the condition of the Democratic Party, seemed better. This week he already looks a little less well.
It could be that the last line of the race heralds a change, in favor of the Republicans. One should be careful with this statement, because it is based at this point on a few signs, and not on an established stream of facts. But the signs are piling up.
Among them, a comprehensive survey by the “New York Times” newspaper. According to this poll, 49% of voters prefer, in general, a Republican candidate over a Democratic candidate. A month ago, there was a one point advantage for the Democrats. Now the Republicans have a 4% lead. If this small advantage translates into a few more wins in a few more states, Biden and his party will be beaten.
If you want to go into details, the big change is in the position of independent women, that is, neither Democrats nor Republicans. This is a fascinating change, because it heralds – perhaps – the failure of the democratic strategy for these elections. And it’s a strategy that until recently seemed to work.
Now we will explain: in midterm elections it is common for the president’s party to lose. Therefore, there is nothing special in expecting a Republican victory. Last February it was pretty clear that the Republicans were winning. Also in March. Also in April. The question was just how many winners. And in detail: do they win enough to transfer control of Congress into their hands.
Then a dramatic change took place. It took place following a Supreme Court ruling that canceled the constitutional right to abortion. A topic that was relatively on the margins, became a central topic. The conservatives celebrated a legal victory, but most voters did not celebrate – they thought that the ruling was taking away an important freedom from them. They saw the Republicans celebrating, and squinted at the Democrats.
And of course, the Democratic leadership immediately recognized the political potential of the ruling, and made the right to abortion the main issue of its election campaign. Target audience: undecided women. If they all vote – pardon the bluntness, but this is how Democratic strategists expressed themselves – “with the womb”, the Democrats will be able to stop a Republican achievement and possibly keep the Congress, or at least the upper house, the Senate.
And it worked out pretty well. The plan worked. The early Republican advantage eroded, and during the summer and early fall the Republicans seemed to be on their way to a relatively small victory, much smaller than they wanted and expected to achieve. The percentage of support for Biden was low, but it did not help. The economy faltered and inflation rose, it didn’t help.
The Republicans chose some crazy, election-denying candidates (in fact, most of their candidates are election-denying, at least on the declarative level), Trumpists, that didn’t always help either. There are states where the public might elect more moderate Republican candidates, but would find it difficult to cast a ballot that is tipped with a denial of reality.
All this was true until two or three weeks ago. All this was true in the less important period, when people talk in polls and not in ballots. Now the time for the notes is approaching, and as it approaches, the impression that maybe the Democrats’ tactics have worn out, grown tired, started to wear itself out grows.
Maybe she was good as long as the impression, the shock, of the supreme ruling was at its peak. Maybe it was good as long as inflation seemed to be paying a short visit that would soon be over. October is already a little far from the ruling. October heralds that inflation is more stubborn than it seemed. that the fear of a long-term slowdown, perhaps a recession, is real.
Two-thirds of voters believe that America is not going “in the right direction” (64%). And what is important to them? 26% say “economy” is the most important. Another 18% say “cost of living” and “inflation”. Abortions? Only 5% remain for whom this is the main issue. Abortions – this is the issue that works in favor of the Democrats. Economy – this is the subject that is not comfortable for the Democrats. Not because they are to blame for inflation, but because they hold the wheel of government.
You control, you are responsible, we are not satisfied – we will replace you. This is how it looks in the new survey. This is what it looks like when the elections are getting closer. Some of the models still predict a significant probability of maintaining the Democratic majority in the Senate. But models are influenced by surveys. If the next polls point to a new trend, especially if they point to it in the key countries, the models will also change their minds.
This week we used data and information from the index website, as well as the “New York Times” and Gallup polls, and articles in “The Atlantic”, “Wall Street Journal”, “Maariv”.
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