The Religious Zionist Paradox

Posted on October 17, 2026 | Leave a comment

   (First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

If political parties attracted voters simply based on the performance of its ministers the Religious Zionist Party would be dominating the polls.

It is hard to argue otherwise. Betzalel Smotrich as Minister of Finance has steered Israel’s economy masterfully, and perhaps unprecedented in the history of war, left Israel in a better financial position with little added debt, increased foreign investment, a strong shekel, and a positive outlook for the future. Inflation has been kept to a minimum – far lower than in other Western countries.

As minister in the Defense Ministry in charge of settlement, and together with Minister of Settlements Orit Strook, Smotrich effected a revolution in Judea and Samaria, founding or legalizing over 100 new communities, expanding the Jewish population, and rendering the prospect of another Palestinian state even more implausible.

And with other right-wing ministers, he emboldened PM Netanyahu not to succumb to the pressure – domestic and foreign – to end the war prematurely, with a fortified Hamas and Hezbollah ready to strike again, and a nuclear Iran ready to attack.

There are other ministers who has been quite effective in their ministries – Amichai Shikli stands out for putting teeth and substance in the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combatting Anti-Semitism – even as most ministers are place holders who leave no lasting mark.

So why does the Religious Zionist party struggle to attract votes?

One reason is that Religious Zionism is a victim of its own success. Candidates who claim to be Religious Zionists – however they define it – can be found in most of the parties running for office. The RZ mantra – “the land of Israel for the people of Israel according to the Torah of Israel” – is a mantle that is claimed by many. For some it is a good fit, for others less so. Whereas the political party is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as sectoral and parochial, the RZ ideology has permeated much of the nation and engendered a variety of interpretations. And some of its potential voters see themselves as too cosmopolitan to vote for a “religious” party.

There are some critics who yearn for the halcyon days when the National Religious Party focused on religious issues like kashrut and mikvaot, and some are enraged that those spheres (and the accompanying patronage) were abandoned to Haredi parties like Shas and Degel Hatorah. But the NRP of old was often castigated for being the “kashrut supervisors for the socialist state,” consciously limiting its influence to matters of ritual and being uninvolved in the issues of state. That NRP has been supplanted by today’s Tzionut Hadatit party, which has a muscular platform that sees the realization of the Torah vision in the leadership and direction of the nation and not merely in the provision of religious services.

Another reason is that Israeli ministers are expected to opine on all issues, even those outside their framework. By contrast, American cabinet secretaries know how to stay in their lanes. The Secretary of Housing is not expected to offer his opinions on the war with Iran, and the Secretary of the Treasury does not weigh in on environmental issues. Such diffidence is unknown in Israel, where almost every minister has opinions on almost everything, and generally sees himself as a potential prime minister.

Thus, Betzalel Smotrich often comments on matters outside his immediate purview, always from a well-sourced Torah perspective, but such is anathema to those – even so-called religious Jews – who draw their moral system less from the Torah and more from the West. Some find his opinions strident, but the successful politician whose positions are mellow has yet to be invented. And, as I learned in the Rabbinate over many decades, when people cannot refute what you say, they will criticize the way you said it, style over substance.

I asked a number of young people, Religious Zionists all, what complaints they or their peers had against the Religious Zionists party, and their answers were quite illuminating.

The strangest among them was the contention that the party is too focused on settlements, strange because one would expect the Minister of Settlements to be focused on settlements, not to mention both the fulfillment of the mitzvah of settling the land of Israel as well as the profound security advantage in breaking up the contiguity of Arab settlements in Judea and Samaria and thwarting the possibility of a Palestinian state arising. And there are still people who are bitter that the provision of religious services has been outsourced to Haredim, and Religious Zionists still struggle to become city rabbis or dayyanim.

Neither of these is the primary reason some people feel disenchanted with the Religious Zionist party, and the reason proffered deserves a response. Briefly, the RZ party is blamed for not insisting on a universal draft that includes Haredim and for tolerating – even entertaining legislation – that would exempt yeshiva students from the IDF or national service. Indeed, this is a searing, open wound that is polarizing our society, especially in the Religious Zionist world, which paid a disproportionate price in the ongoing war in terms of casualties and reserve duty. Is the criticism fair and justified?

Two points are worth making. First, it is important to underscore that this issue will never be resolved. Never. The big lie of the campaign comes from those politicians who proclaim that they will insist that a law be passed that conscripts everyone and exempts no one. That is all well and good – except for the fact that such a law already exists. That is the current law. Yeshiva students had a ministerial exemption that has now lapsed. No new law is needed, just enforcement of the existing law, and any politician who claims that such a law is needed and he will pass it is simply lying.

The question to ask is this: are politicians willing to enforce the law in the face of mass public protests (akin to those of the Kaplanistim) that disrupt the lives of ordinary citizens? Are politicians willing to incarcerate all shirkers? Well, there are roughly 50,000-60,000 eligible men who were exempt, but Israel has a maximum prison capacity of 20,000. Do the math. And which terrorists do you want freed from prison to make room for these former yeshiva students, who, if it suits them, can keep learning in prison?

The problem will never be solved via legislation because the Haredi parties exist to ensure that Torah students are not drafted (even though I struggle to find the Torah source that exempts a Torah student from a Milchemet Mitzvah, an obligatory war for the land of Israel, or a war of self-defense; please do not cite the Rambam, end of Seder Zera’im. If that were applicable, Rambam would have placed it in Hilchot Melachim U’milchamoteihem, the Laws of Kings and their Wars). Their politicians are masters at stalling and delaying, from one election cycle to the next, knowing, confidently, that some constellation of parties will ultimately meet their demands in order to assume the reins of leadership.

You can take away their funding and their rights and their privileges and make life miserable for them, but that is not a good look for a Jewish state, and certainly not when there are plenty of secular shirkers who are not learning Torah. And the problem becomes intractable when we realize that the Haredi world now largely deems IDF service a sin, even as Religious Zionists and others deem it a mitzvah. Change will come not from the rabbis who tell the world that those who are not learning Torah should serve and then stress privately that everyone should be learning and the IDF is a spiritual danger. Change will only come from the people, when enough develop a sense of shame and feel responsible for the fate of the nation beyond their four cubits. And perhaps the new Haredi party can assist in that capacity and invigorate the grass roots.

Second, and consequently, should the onus of solving this problem be on the Religious Zionist party? Some answer yes and even insist that they should have left the government over this issue, notwithstanding that we are still are war.

But this is a classic example of what the great American economist and thinker Thomas Sowell called “Stage One Thinking.” Sure, they leave the government and the right-wing government falls. It feels great. They made a real statement. They can pat themselves on the back. And then what? That is Stage Two. What changes? A left-wing government still mired in the conceptziya, that would have ended the war prematurely and thus endangering our future? A left-wing government that promotes policies that are inimical to our survival, hostile to Torah, and indifferent to Israel as a Jewish state? A left-wing government yearning for another Oslo, an expulsion of Jews from Judea and Samaria, and that will confiscate the guns licensed now to 300,000 additional Israelis? And there would still be no universal draft law which, as noted, is not needed because it already exists!

Stage One Thinking always feels good but leaves its practitioners in a worse state. Stage Two Thinking, seeing the consequences of our actions before we act, is how the sages (Masechet Tamid 32a) defined a wise person.

Those who castigate the Religious Zionist party for not leaving the government should ponder the consequences had they left the government: energizing our enemies, rendering the sacrifices of war meaningless, and jeopardizing the Jewish character of the state. And still no universal draft. Nothing changed – but it felt good… until it didn’t.

Leaving the government precipitously over this issue would have been a tantrum, not a policy, harmful theatrics rather than constructive substance, a populist but thoughtless act. Fortunately, the Religious Zionist party did not succumb, even as the issue remains contentious among their natural constituents. Sometimes there is a political cost for acting maturely, for doing the right thing.

No person and no party is beyond reproach, but respect should always be shown to those, in President Theodore Roosevelt’s words, who serve the public with dedication and are steadfast in their values. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…”

Politics is not simple, not beanbag, and usually involves compromise that leaves many unsatisfied, and even the compromisers with marred faces. But it is the only way that progress is attained and our values advanced, albeit gradually.

The natural constituents of the Religious Zionist party should return home rather than chase the chimera of new politicians and new parties that will promise everything and deliver nothing. That constituency consists of those who cherish “the land of Israel for the people of Israel according to the Torah of Israel.”

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The Netanyahu Question

Posted on October 9, 2026 | Comments Off on The Netanyahu Question

In recent weeks, reports have saturated the media claiming that PM Netanyahu was warned about an impending Hamas attack by Egypt, the UAE, Ronen Bar, probably hundreds of others, and ignored them. No report has been corroborated in the slightest, which has not stopped his foes from using this information as campaign fodder to try to unseat him as prime minister. Indeed, that is the sole purpose of these reports, which reminded me that this is a movie that I have seen twice before.

A look at the reaction to similar catastrophes in the United States is instructive. The two analogous intelligence failures in American history were the bombings of Pearl Harbor by Japan on December 7, 1941(roughly 2400 Americans killed) and the Arab terror attack of September 11, 2001 (roughly 3000 Americans killed).

On May 16, 2002, just six months before the midterm elections in the United States, the New York Times breathlessly reported that on August 6, 2001, scarcely a month before the Arab terror attack of September 11, President George W. Bush was warned by the CIA (!), with the Presidential Daily Brief headlined, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” The criticism was thunderous and caustic, with Bush lambasted for his indifference to this report (he received it while vacationing in Texas) and his failure to respond.

Almost two years later (well into his reelection campaign), Bush released the full text of the briefing and explained that this warning meant nothing. Bin Laden was “determined,” but the CIA provided no details of what he was planning or when and where he planned to do it. Essentially, Bush said, someone “who hated America” was going to attack, and the FBI since 1998 had detected “patterns of suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks” (italics mine), none of which was any actionable intelligence. The briefing said nothing that Bush didn’t already know but that did not prevent the Times from falsely claiming that Bush was actually told who was planning an attack, with “hints” of what the attacks would be and where they would occur. Not quite accurate – but the leak was meant to cause political harm to Bush, not reflect historical reality.

Similarly, soon after the Japanese sneak attack, reports circulated in the United States – it continued for years – that FDR knew about the Japanese attack in advance but did not respond because he was seeking to enter the US into World War II. Nothing came of either accusation which was devoid of credible evidence but such accusations persist until today.

This is what is happening here and now in Israel – and we can expect a few more such excited offerings in the coming weeks from the anti-Netanyahu media, none of which will be true but all of which are designed to suppress his vote from a public the leftist media believes can be easily manipulated.

It is as if someone three years ago or today said that Hamas, or Hezbollah, or Iran is planning a terrorist attack against Israel. Yes, duh, one or another group of Arabs have been planning attacks on Jews for more than a century…and are still planning. The purpose of this hysteria is purely political. Not a shred of credible evidence has ever been adduced that suggests that Netanyahu had actionable intelligence that a Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, was imminent – just allegations repudiated by the purported sources. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case – that actionable intelligence was concealed from Netanyahu, before and even as the massacre was unfolding, and by some of the very people who are now leaking to the tendentious media to impugn Netanyahu and salvage their own battered reputations.

This is not to suggest that Netanyahu bears no responsibility for the massacre. He certainly does, as the prime minister, but the problem his enemies have to contend with is that responsibility is shared by almost everyone in the political class, the military and security establishment, the courts, and the media. No one is immune from criticism, including some of his biggest critics. It was a colossal, systemic failure.

Yet, the failure was so widespread and the flawed intelligence so pervasive that it is fair to say that the Hamas massacre would have taken place regardless of which party was in power on October 7, 2023.

It is also fair to say, in retrospect, that what has happened since October 8, 2023 – the devastation of our enemies on multiple fronts, the deterioration of Hamas and Hezbollah, the battering of Iran, the disintegration of the Syrian threat, and Israel’s emergence as the leading regional power – could only have happened under Netanyahu.

Most of the political establishment would have within months cut a cease fire deal that returned the hostages and let Hamas survive, rebuild, and regenerate, and never attacked Hezbollah.

In truth, the antipathy towards Netanyahu from his adversaries in politics and media long preceded October 7. What remains a mystery is the differing reactions of Israeli and American societies to national traumas.

No American hung placards saying that “FDR is guilty!” or that “Bush failed!” No American highways were littered with signs calling on either president to resign or be incarcerated. Indeed – timely message to Netanyahu’s irrational haters – both FDR and Bush were reelected, approximately three years after their respective catastrophes. Both men were judged for what they did in the aftermath of the attack and less for not anticipating what they did not know.

Additionally, the Israeli media, goading the public, has a peculiar obsession with hearing (and recording) Netanyahu saying the words “I am responsible.” This is not because they are avid proponents of the “Jewish Ethic of Personal Responsibility,” a two-volume work I published years ago, but because they want to use the clip of “I am responsible” to open and close the evening news and flash it several dozen times in between.

For the record, neither FDR nor George W. Bush ever accepted responsibility for their respective failures. In FDR’s famous speech to Congress on December 8, he said nothing about his own role. In Bush’s address on the evening of September 11, and in a subsequent speech to Congress several weeks later, there was nothing remotely close to an acceptance of responsibility. The focus was on the enemy. The obsession here is purely political and personal.

FDR and the American people blamed Japan and waged against it a brutal war of unconditional surrender. Bush and the American people blamed Al Qaeda and fought it for two decades. Yet, too many Israelis blame Netanyahu and let Hamas off the hook. Who is the enemy? Not Hamas but Netanyahu. That is pathological.

Certainly, there are differences in the two forms of government. Israel’s parliamentary system has a history of prime ministers resigning, whereas no US president (except for Nixon) has ever resigned. But that does not mean it couldn’t have happened. And both FDR and Bush acted immediately. Within days, FDR fired Husband Kimmel, the head of the Pacific fleet, and appointed Chester Nimitz to succeed him. Contrast that with Netanyahu’s inability – owing to the corruption and even sordidness of Israel’s courts and Attorney General – to fire the heads of the IDF, Army Intelligence, the Southern Command, and Shin Bet despite their blatant failures on and before October 7. Strange indeed.

President Bush rallied the nation and began a long campaign called “the War on Terror,” which, despite avoidable and unavoidable errors, and with the involvement of his successors, has kept the US safe from similar terrorist attacks in the quarter century past, and dispatched Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Qasem Soleimani to the nether world. And FDR rallied the American people to fight a two-front war for four years in which more than 400,000 American soldiers were killed.

Nevertheless, it should be underscored, the Muslim war against the world has not ended, not here obviously, and not against the West, and all non-Muslim nations remain targets.

Are we preternaturally different as a nation that many are hellbent on ascribing blame to someone, soon, especially someone so detested by the media? The oddity is that the media hope to replace Netanyahu, liable in their eyes for October 7, with another person who is perhaps even more liable for October 7. Those who advocated and recommended the coddling and funding of Hamas, were reluctant to eliminate it when given the opportunity, neglected the tunnel networks of Hamas and Hezbollah, and proposed a “small and smart army” should be kept far from politics. People whose policies created the conceptziya that engendered the catastrophic intelligence failures are the problem, not the solution, and the proof is that their campaigns are devoid of substance beyond “anti-Bibi” and platitudes. And yet they are all running.

His opponents are running on October 7. Netanyahu is running on October 8 and beyond.

Who is responsible for the colossal failure of October 7? Here is a brief list: Netanyahu, Gallant, Herzi Halevi, Aharon Haliva, Ronen Bar, Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot, Yaron Finkelman, Yair Lapid, Yair Golan, Naftali Bennett, and others, and everyone who endorsed the conceptziya. Add to that list Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres, Yitzchak Rabin, and Yossi Beilin who thought it was a grand idea to invite terrorists into Israel and arm them. Add to that list the Supreme Court and the Military Prosecutor who imposed Draconian “open fire” laws on our soldiers that effectively preempted a meaningful response and counted it among the highest aspirations of Jewish morality never to win a war.

This is one reason why true accountability for what happened on October 7 will not come for fifty years. Every branch of government, and almost every political figure for the last 35 years, has something to hide.

And add to that list the segment of the Israeli public that, had Netanyahu been apprised of Hamas’ plans and launched a preemptive strike on October 6, would have accused him of fomenting a war to distract from his legal problems. And there are plenty of others.

We are not the only country in the world in which many people have a neurotic hatred for an elected leader. But we are the only country that has real enemies that want to destroy us. We would do well as a nation to recall the words of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “The Jewish people right now needs leaders, people unafraid to face the challenges of today and build for tomorrow instead of, as so often happens, fighting the battles of yesterday.”

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Countering the Genocide Libel

Posted on September 23, 2026 | 1 comment

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

In the court of trendy international opinion, a court consisting of Israel bashers and Jew haters of all stripes (including some Jews), Israel stands convicted of perpetrating a genocide against the people of Gaza.

Here’s how not to defend ourselves against such a libel, which not coincidentally is the approach that we have largely taken: it is to argue the facts and the evidence.

Facts and evidence are irrelevant when the charge itself is rooted in rancid bias, blatant Jew hatred, calculated and intentional lies, trendy witlessness, and mob pandering. The charge itself is meant to weaken our resolve and doubt the justice of our struggle for survival and is one of the primary tools in the arsenal of our enemies (hence, the genocide accusation first arose on October 8, weeks before Israel invaded Gaza in order to destroy Hamas, the ruling entity in Gaza, which had launched its massacre of Israel civilians on October 7).

Facts and evidence do not matter when the libel itself is meant to appeal to emotions, not logic or reason. Trying to counter an emotional argument with logic is doomed to fail, and each time we do so, we wonder anew why our counterclaims are not resonating.

We have responded, cogently but ineffectively, with facts. Our soldiers have routinely endangered their own lives – some have been killed and wounded – in order to avoid inflicting harm on Gazan civilians. Hamas as a regular tactic hides its weapons among civilians, hospitals, schools, and mosques and other locations generally held to be sacrosanct in any conflict. Hamas uses civilians as human shields and has deliberately killed their own civilians and counted them among the victims of Israeli attacks. Hamas has starved its own people, depriving them of aid (foolishly) provided by Israel during the war, and blaming Israel for the consequences. Hamas has staged obviously false scenarios of killed and wounded civilians (remember the NY Times’ cover picture of a “starving child,” whose bony frame was, in fact, entirely attributable to his cerebral palsy, which, surprise, was not caused by Israel,).

All true, but not really relevant to the information war, as is our emphasis on questioning whether “Gazan civilians” are really innocent. Suffice it to say that “civilians” who held our hostages in their apartments and starved them are not “innocent,” nor are children who were used by Hamas fighters to run weapons, food, and supplies between depots and hideouts. Children, yes; innocent, hardly. This too is immaterial to countering the rabidly vicious charge of genocide.

The most egregious example of a truth that misses the mark in this battle is constant reference to the “civilian-to-combatant ratio of casualties,” in which our conduct of this war grades out as the best in the history of urban conflict. G-d bless John Spencer and his erudition and articulation of this data, which serves the constructive purpose of reassuring ourselves of our morality but does not convince our detractors in the slightest. Indeed, when we trot out the “civilian-to-combatant ratio of casualties” in order to confute the claims of our slanderers, we have already lost the information battle because we are fighting on their battlefield. Does anyone know or care about the “civilian-to-combatant ratio of casualties” in Russia’s war against Ukraine? Turkey’s war against the Kurds?

In the battlefield of lies, truth is always at a disadvantage, and it could well be that truth is always at a disadvantage. As Mark Twain attested, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” And perhaps the greatest of all the lies in this context is the purposeful distortion of the term “genocide,” coined in 1943 by the renowned Jewish international lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, to describe what the Nazis attempted to do to the Jewish people: “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.”

That is what the Holocaust was, and one reason the tendentious and malicious international community delights in indicting Israel is to minimize the Holocaust as a prelude to denying that it occurred or that it was unique. It is not by any definition what happened in Gaza or is happening in Gaza, but we also convince no one when we refer to the relatively low level of deaths in Gaza compared to real genocides that have occurred across the world – the Holocaust, the Holodomor, Cambodia, Rhwanda, and others.

So how then can we refute this blood libel rooted in emotion – the emotion of Jew hatred? By defusing their emotional argument. Israelis, Jews, Israeli diplomats and media types should respond to the genocide libel quite simply. Here is a sample response to the shrill sloganeer or perverted politician who utters this accusation:

“By your definition of genocide – the death of any civilians in war – every war is a genocide. In every war, civilians are killed, usually unintentionally, but dead, nonetheless. If so, then every country is guilty of genocide. The United States perpetrated genocides – by your definition – against American Indians, and against Germans and Japanese in World War II, as did Britain and all the Allied countries in the latter conflict as well. China, Japan, Russia (Russia is still at it in Ukraine), Germany, France, Spain, the Arab countries, and most African countries are all perpetrators of genocide. Turkey accuses us of genocide, having committed a real genocide against Armenians over a century ago. One would think they would know what a genocide is.”

“If every war is a genocide, then it behooves aggressors – like Hamas – to not start wars of aggression. But if they do start wars, they should not then cry “genocide,” or have their useful idiots in the West cry it, in order to avoid the condign consequences of their aggression and evil.”

“And if every war, by your definition, is a genocide, why do you obsess on Israel and its justified war of self-defense? Why not campaign against Russia, the United States, China, Turkey, and other perpetrators? Could you be motivated by, hmmm… Jew hatred? Is Israel, according to you, the only nation on earth that does not have the right to defend itself? Is Israel, according to you, the only nation on earth that has to justify its right to exist? Are Jews, according to you, inherently evil and so the more you defame, oppress, repress, torture, injure, and kill them, the better?”

“You know who thought that? The Nazis, who committed a real genocide. So put the placard down and take a good look in the mirror.”

And there the discussion with the spiteful scoundrel ends.

As for us, it is good to remind ourselves that none of this is new. As King David warned us, our history is replete with recurrent examples of enemies who wish to destroy us, with weapons and words: “For, lo, Your enemies are in an uproar; and those that hate You have lifted up their head. They conspire with cunning against Your people and take counsel against Your treasured ones. They have said, ‘Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may no longer be remembered’” (Tehillim 83:3-5).

And their ancient and modern technique inspired this prayer: “G-d, deliver my soul from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue” (Tehillim 120:2).

Amen.

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Who Leads?

Posted on August 28, 2026 | 1 comment

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

One of the most reviled figures in Jewish history is Yeravam ben Nevat, a former minister of King Shlomo who seceded from the Kingdom of Judah and crowned himself the first king of Israel. That split has never healed and Yeravam’s path and destiny inform our current political imbroglio.

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 102a) teaches us that despite Yeravam’s secession, and even his promotion of idolatry, he was a person of greatness and nobility. So much so that, in the Talmudic tale, the Holy One, Blessed be He, grabbed Jeroboam by his garment, and implored him, saying: “Repent, and you and I and [David] the son of Yishai will stroll together in the Garden of Eden.” Yeravam said to Him: “Mi ba-rosh? Who will walk in the lead?” God said to Yeravam: “The son of Yishai will lead.” Yeravam responded: “If so, I do not want it.”

Certainly, the tale is metaphorical and esoteric, but some aspects of it are both comprehensible and too relevant to our world. The Garden of Eden here is not the world after life but, perhaps, the perfect world, in this world. In an ideal world, a talented individual such as Yeravam has an important role to play in Jewish leadership. But the Davidic dynasty must take precedence and have the dominant role. Yeravam, and others, are also central to the story of Israel but must first acknowledge the Kingdom of David.

That Yeravam refused to do, and for the crassest reason. “Mi ba-rosh?” Who leads? If it is not me then I do not want to be part of Jewish destiny. Yeravam’s fate was sealed, as the prototypical “sinner who causes others to sin,” who lost his share in the world to come, and presaged the eventual downfall of the First Jewish Commonwealth.

“Mi ba-rosh?” That question is the bane of Jewish organizational life and one reason – perhaps the main reason – why there is a plethora of organizations that do the exact same thing. If they merged, they could do it more efficiently, but then several people would not be able to be the rosh, the head of the organization. So, it does not happen.

That is the state of the politics in Israel today, especially regarding the rapidly mushrooming number of right-wing parties competing for the same vote. The party names really don’t matter much, as most will disappear after the election, but there is the party of Ofer Vinter, the party of Avi Maoz, the party of Moshe Feiglin, the party of Sharren Haskell (which Jonathan Pollard joined this week), the party of Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein, and I am certain I have omitted a few.

These parties supplement the Likud, the Religious Zionists, and Otzma Yehudit, even though there is hardly a shekel’s worth of difference between them. Sure, each party addresses issues slightly differently, each has its own nuance, but most importantly, each has its own leader.

On Wednesday, Sharren Haskell stated that she has tried to integrate these parties into one list but has thus far failed. The problem is mathematics: there can only be one number one. Or as she identified the problem: “ego.” In other words, “Mi ba-rosh?”

The biggest losers are liable to be the State of Israel and the people of Israel.

Some – like Ofer Vinter, who is an attractive candidate and impressive personality, whose deeds, heart and ideology are in the right place – were offered prominent slots in several parties and spurned them. Others have been rejected by their original parties and daydream that the only way they can remain in politics is by leading their own party. Most, apparently, fail in another aspect of mathematics – the mathematics of Israeli elections.

The electoral threshold – the minimum number of votes that a party must receive in order to qualify for seats in the Knesset – is 3.25% of the valid vote total. The likelihood that all of these parties will qualify are zero. The likelihood that even one of these parties will qualify is slender, notwithstanding early surveys that show Vinter’s party squeaking by the electoral threshold. The greatest likelihood is that these parties will dilute the vote totals on the right-wing so that a left-wing government will assume power. Tens and potentially hundreds of thousands of votes will go to waste, the votes of people who want a conservative, traditional, proudly Jewish, security-minded government that loves the land of Israel in its entirety and sees it as the exclusive patrimony of the Jewish people. These voters will get the polar opposite of what they voted for.

As we know, it happened before, with catastrophic consequences. In 1992, the right-wing Hatechiya party (led by Geula Cohen) fragmented into three parties, none of which crossed the electoral threshold. Yitzchak Shamir and the Likud lost, and Yitzchak Rabin and Labor prevailed, formed a narrow government (although only right-wing governments are actually called “narrow”) and foisted the Oslo Accords and thirty years of horrors on the people of Israel.

It is quite simple. Had Hatechiya remained intact, those three parties together would have exceeded the electoral threshold and provided the requisite votes for a Likud government. The debacle of Oslo would have been averted. We literally brought disaster on ourselves. “Mi ba-rosh.”

To be sure, there is much jockeying on the right-wing among people who see themselves as potential prime ministers for the day after Netanyahu. And, it should be underscored, these people are not Yeravam, just like PM Netanyahu is not Rechavam, son of King Shlomo, who lost half his kingdom. But they are following the path of Yeravam: “if I can’t lead, then I do not want it.”

That is a losing formula. Invariably, there will be finger pointing when it happens, but all that will be needed is for these leaders – all number ones, all heads, in their own minds – to look in the mirror.

There is much to admire and much to criticize about PM Netanyahu but one point he emphasized this week is true and should not be doubted. “The left cannot beat the right. Only the right can beat the right.”

The media will do its best to promote Gadi Eisenkot, whose tenure as Chief of Staff was mixed and rooted in the conceptzitya that bedeviled almost all Israeli politicians, and whose service in the Knesset, and briefly in the Cabinet, was, to be charitable, undistinguished. His credentials to serve as prime minister are soft, primarily that he is the leader of the “anyone but Bibi” political camp.

There are right-wingers in Israel who, for whatever reason, will not vote for Likud, and they too deserve a political home. But not five or ten homes. One of the great anomalies of Israel’s electoral history is that until 1996, the largest party that formed the government always had at least 40 Knesset seats, whereas since 1996 (Netanyahu’s first term), the party that formed the government has never had 40 Knesset seats. A new party would be welcome – but governments led by a cluster of small parties are never stable, and the fragmentation of the political system has accelerated the fragmentation of the society. Beware of its implications. As it stands, all these new parties are just cannibalizing votes from the same base of voters, not adding but subtracting power.

Similarly, the Religious Zionists and Otzma Yehudit should unite as well. Whatever disgruntlement its leaders – Betzalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir – seem to arouse in their detractors, they have been two of the most successful ministers in Israel’s history, actually using their ministries productively and for the good of the people.

If these leaders don’t swallow their egos, and these parties don’t coalesce, we are looking at 1992 all over again. The fantasists of Oslo still remain, surrender is in the air, many on the left are actually offended by the meaning and implications of a Jewish state, and they will do all they can to debilitate it and sap it of any substance.  And they will surely snatch defeat from the jaws of potential victory and a reordering of the Middle East, a possible though not inevitable outcome of these years of pain and conflict.

There is an alternative. Humility, coupled with a dose of reality, can temper the fantasies of even the most quixotic politicians and forge true leaders. It is not too late for some or all of these parties to amalgamate. But the clock is ticking, the people are watching, and the dangers and opportunities ahead are looming. King David was among the humblest of men (Chulin 89a) and the eternal king of Israel – and lesson for all of us.

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