The daily cries of civil war, demonstrators blocking streets and shutting down highways, threats to
take up arms and Members of the Knesset leaping over tables, menacingly denouncing the chair of
the Knesset committee presiding over a duly held parliamentary meeting on judicial reform – all of
these frightening and escalating tensions arouse concern about an unprecedented, fratricidal
conflict that is supposedly tearing Israel apart.
But the headlines and photos are tragically misleading. All of these horrible things are indeed happening, but they are far from unprecedented. They are reverberations of a century-long struggle for power among the Jewish people in our newly reconstituted commonwealth – a battle that has been mostly one-sided.
On one side is the Jewish elite, mostly Ashkenazi, Tel Aviv-based and educated in Western or Western-influenced educational institutions. These are people who have money and connections, who run the media, education system, and comprise the legal and business elites, or who deeply identify with these groups.
On the other side are the historically voiceless masses: Jews who are religious or traditional, whose jobs are unglamorous, whose families come from the Middle East, or from haimisheh European backgrounds.
Menachem Begin represented this latter group. He led the Irgun Tzva’i Leumi to fight the British, who, despite pretensions of being a civilized people fighting Nazis, actively facilitated Hitler’s genocidal plans by denying Jews sanctuary in their ancient homeland – the only place they might escape death at a time when the whole world was either hunting them or slamming doors in their faces.
On one side is the Jewish elite, mostly Ashkenazi, Tel Aviv-based... who have money and connections, who run the media, education system, and comprise the legal and business elites, or who deeply identify with these groups. On the other side are the historically voiceless masses: Jews who are religious or traditional, whose jobs are unglamorous, whose families come from the Middle East, or from haimisheh European backgrounds.
Begin wasn’t interested in fighting a civil war. The historical record is clear that he offered to subordinate his fighting force to David-Ben Gurion’s Haganah, and his leadership to Ben-Gurion’s, in order to jointly fight their common enemy. Ben-Gurion and his Ashkenazi, Tel Aviv-based elite at times accepted the Irgun’s men and materiel, and at other times revealed their identities to the British and even destroyed desperately needed ammunition in an effort to kill Begin and rid themselves of their rivals (the Altalena affair being the most vivid, but not only illustration of this).
Elite Israel attacked its internal enemies again during the Gush Katif expulsion. Religious Jews who lived wholesome lives in this area, who ran productive farms, orchards and greenhouses and whose very presence brought security and blessing for both Jews and Arabs in the area protested the expulsion, but ultimately obeyed military orders to leave. They did not initiate a civil war.
There had been talk of a right-wing initiated fratricidal conflict at the time of the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin, but the prime minister’s murderer, Yigal Amir, was a lone wolf, and the suspicion that attached to any Jew with a kippah in the aftermath of Amir’s heinous act subsided some time after his arrest.
Today’s supposed civil war is no civil war – yet – thank G-d. Despite Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai’s egregious and pugnacious call for “bloodshed” and Tel Aviv-based Verbit CEO Tom Livne’s threat to leave Israel with his and his companies hundreds of millions of dollars, and many similar outrages,
the other side in this conflict has not now or ever responded in kind. To the contrary, even after Ben-Gurion’s men turned on the Irgun and even tried to assassinate its leader, Begin announced that he was folding the Irgun and deferring to Ben-Gurion. Israel could not survive a civil war, he cried. He commanded his fighters to integrate in the Haganah.
So too the residents of Gush Katif reluctantly handed over their homes and factories, lock, stock and barrel. At the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee judicial reform meeting where Members of the Yesh Atid party disgraced themselves and their country with their theatric assault, chairman Rothman sat with quiet dignity until order was restored. He did not bolt, he did not scream, just as the Gush Katif refugees did not threaten to take what remained of their resources out of the country and just as Begin did not fight back.
In all of these cases, they could never contemplate such a move. They loved their homeland and their
people.
What makes today’s battle over judicial reform so pitched is most likely the reality that the Ashkenazi, Tel Aviv secular elite no longer commands a numerical majority or even close to it. They remain in control over powerful institutions, but democracy – that is, majority rule – has become a mortal threat to their hegemony.
Israel’s silent majority, which managed to elect a government that actually reflects Israel’s social reality despite an opposition entrenched everywhere needed to repress the masses – be that in the educational system or the state prosecution – should not miss this opportunity to correct a century of abuse and mistreatment. (And note that many in Tel Aviv deeply identify with the Jewish people,and some Jews of Middle Eastern origin bear elitist pretensions.)
Israel’s majority should adhere to Begin’s fairness, civility and peacefulness. But it must encourage its representatives to continue strengthening the country every day in every way: by fighting terrorists, improving the administration of civil affairs in Judea and Samaria, undoing illegal Arab construction, forging an independent foreign policy and by resolutely restoring the people’s sovereignty over their state that was usurped by the Ashkenazi, Tel-Aviv-based elite. It is not their country alone but the collective God-granted inheritance of the entire Jewish people.
Gil Weinreich is a writer living in Jerusalem. His latest book is A Torah Guide to Personal Finance.