Internal elections in the Likud were held this week, and in the “big picture”, nothing groundbreaking occurred. As expected Prime Minister Netanyahu overwhelmingly won the election to lead the party, and nearly all of the top MK’s received realistic places on the new Likud list. Following Netanyahu is current Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, followed by Gilad Arden – then Israel Katz, Miri Regev, Silvan Shalom, Moshe Ya’alon, Ze’ev Elkin, Tzachi Hanegbi, and Danny Danon.
Ze'ev Jabotinsky: You cannot believe in anything in the world, if you admit even once that perhaps your opponents are right, and not you.
Largely, the noise surrounding the Likud’s list is unimportant – what is important is the fact that not a one of these politicians campaigned for votes inside the powerful Likud central committee on a platform of ceding any land to the Palestinian Arabs. Nor, did any of them mention during campaigning the need to appease America or the European Union, stopping the building of settlements, or allowing the south of Israel to be attacked by Hamas without retaliation.
Let’s hope that they remember the electorate who put them in power – and the words they used when campaigning. For good reason, nationalists have long been concerned about Likud-led governments.
Netanyahu noted after the list was announced, “This is the list of a ruling party that can continue leading Israel.” With the possible exceptions of Gilad Erdan and Tzachi Hanegbi, there are no people on the Likud list who support a Palestinian State- so he too should remember the people of the Likud who elect Israel’s leaders.
Revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky once said, "Ninety per cent of Zionism may consist of tangible settlement work, and only ten per cent of politics; but those ten percent are the precondition of success.”
If only the Likud can do the right thing 90 percent of the time, there is no question that Israel will be in the right place.
This Likud must remember the ideology of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who once wrote: “Everybody is wrong and you alone are right? No doubt this question springs by itself to the reader’s lips and mind. It is customary to answer this with apologetic phrases to the effect that I fully respect public opinion, that I bow to it, that I was glad to make concessions….All this is unnecessary, and all this is untrue. You cannot believe in anything in the world, if you admit even once that perhaps your opponents are right, and not you. This is not the way to do things. There is but one truth in the world, and it is all yours. If you are not sure of it, stay at home; but if you are sure, don’t look back, and it will be your way.”