Dear Ms. Levine,
I don’t embarrass easily. I find much of the Israel-Palestinian conflict coverage biased against Israel. Reporters scrutinize Israel’s behavior obsessively while forever undermining Israel’s legitimacy. Still, when I read how masked vigilantes assaulted you and other unidentified journalists and Palestinians, I was – and am – ashamed.
I know that many Palestinians – not just some of their Jewish neighbors – trigger violence. I know the scene was chaotic. But I also know the attack on you was inexcusable, reprehensible. Despite your body armor and large press tags, they barraged you with bats, sticks, and kicks, breaking your rib, bloodying you, and cutting your left hand severely.
What kind of people kick a fellow human repeatedly when she is down – let alone when you posed no threat and were simply doing your job as a photographer?
And what kind of government enables such violence?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pooh-poohs these thugs as “fringe.” Yet – once again – minimizing the problem maximizes his negligence. If it’s only a “handful of juvenile delinquents” that causes such trouble – and such reputational damage to Israel – does his failure to handle them demonstrate cowardice, fecklessness, or malevolence?
Last week, before the attack, I published a Hebrew article in Makor Rishon detailing the fundamental Israeli, Zionist, and democratic covenants political extremists keep threatening, and many coalition leaders keep violating. The crimes against you compelled me, shortly before Election Day, to sharpen the critique and blast it broadly.
Democracies rely on implicit and explicit agreements that bind citizens to one another and their government in a web of obligations and responsibilities. Israeli society saved itself on October 7 because an active, involved citizenry, today’s Minutemen and Minutewomen, mobilized spontaneously, heroically, saving us all, even when the government flopped catastrophically.
Next government needs to restore trust
On October 27, Israelis shouldn’t just ask “Who are we voting for?” but “What are we voting for?” We need leaders to restore the trust this government has shattered – occasionally abetted by extremists from Right to Left, too.
The seven broken covenants the next government must restore are:
1. The covenant of personal security: Even if you believe that Netanyahu has functioned effectively every day since October 7, the Hamas bloodbath shattered the faith most Israelis had in the government’s and the IDF’s ability to protect them.
That betrayal was exacerbated by Netanyahu’s refusal to allow a commission of inquiry to learn from the mistakes, while scapegoating Israel’s army and security personnel.
2. The covenant of shared burden: Social trust requires equal burden-sharing, especially in a besieged society, not the creation of a protected, heavily subsidized class of Torah scholars.
Meanwhile, soldiers, reservists, and their families keep sacrificing. True, every major political party indulged the ultra-Orthodox over decades. But this government was in charge precisely when it became broadly understood that mass draft evasion is unacceptable.
3. The covenant of Zionist morality: This, Ms. Levine, is the covenant most violated by the wink-wink, nudge-nudge toleration of violent extremists.
Zionism – or any form of nationalism – without morality is like a car without brakes; it hurtles wildly, endangering everyone.
True, extremists from both sides have bullied politicians they hate. We, Israel’s silenced and moral majority, must temper the crazies, demand proper law enforcement, and change the tone.
4. The covenant of human dignity: The right-wing provocateur Yinon Magal’s despicable characterization of Gadi Eisenkot as a “monkey” being manipulated by “elitist Ashkenazim” proves what happens when leaders unleash the demons of demagoguery and disrespect. Evil metastasizes.
And while so many extremists overstep, those in charge are most responsible for setting the tone and reining in the rhetoric.
5. The covenant of shared citizenship: Many of us have long mourned how Netanyahu’s mainstreaming of Itamar Ben-Gvir mocked the liberal and Jewish values of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin.
But four years of Ben-Gvir’s ministerial antics, with his bigotry riling up other goons, amid the complicit silence of many on our government payroll, has harmed Israel’s democracy.
Whenever ministerial rabble-rousers question any citizen’s equality, liberty, or dignity, every citizen’s rights become conditional, not inherent. A democratic Jewish state cannot put all its citizens on probation, with their rights subject to what the government deems “acceptable” behavior.
6. The covenant of the Jewish people: As anti-Zionist antisemitism intensifies, our government and people must reinforce Jewish unity, not strain it.
While expecting basic loyalty from Jews everywhere, we Israelis, and especially our leaders, should protect Diaspora Jews, respect them, and engage them thoughtfully.
7. The covenant of competence: Finally, although Hebrew lacks an elegant translation for the term “good governance,” the pandemic of corruption, cronyism, and sheer ineptitude on so many governmental levels is unpardonable.
For four years, we’ve endured a government that cannot govern straight, occasionally reflecting softheadedness and usually hard-heartedness.
These repeated affronts threaten our even more essential covenant, of “Hatikvah,” hope. Ms. Levine, I truly regret you got caught in this maelstrom of incompetence and malice. I also hope that whoever triumphs on Election Day will create a government that renews these covenants, showing respect for all citizens and everyone our complicated Jewish state takes responsibility for.
Meanwhile, in that spirit, I call on all citizens to accept the electoral outcome, whether their side wins or loses.
On October 7, 2023, our enemies reminded us of how much unites us, and how intertwined we are. This October 27, let’s remind the world how safe, functional, and inspirational our remarkably successful experiment in the world’s only Jewish democracy continues to be.
The writer is a distinguished scholar of North American history at McGill University and a senior research fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute. He is the author of nine books on presidential history and nine on modern Zionism, including To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream, as well as his latest e-book, The Essential Guide to the US-Israel Partnership: the 250th Anniversary Edition.