The Dispatch Podcast - Bibi's Back, Baby

Episode Date: November 6, 2022

With religion, political corruption, nationalism, and court reform on the ballot, Israel concluded this week its fifth election in three years. Tomer Persico, research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, joins Adaam to offer a quick explainer about Benjamin Netanyahu's comeback, the rise of religious nationalism in Israel, and the universal language of populism.  Show Notes: -The Morning Dispatch on the Israeli election Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Adam Livingerity. I'm the digital producer at the dispatch, and today I'm joined by Tomar Persico. Tomar is an Israeli public intellectual and social commentator, as well as a religion scholar. Tomer serves as a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and was a visiting professor at the UC Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. He joins me today to break down the elections that took place in Israel this week, Benjamin Netanyahu's comeback, and the rise of religious nationalism. Let's dive right in, as Sarah says. So the reason I was rolled out of the dungeon at the pits of Jonas Fortress, where most of the podcast production happens, is because I grew up in Jerusalem. and it's where I had my start in journalism. And Tomar is one of the most interesting political and social commentators in Israel that I love listening to and often disagreeing with.

So Tomar, thank you for joining us. Thanks, Adam, for inviting me. So before we go into the elections, let's just make sure that we understand what we're talking about when we say the left and the right in Israel, because they're not exactly the same as the American left and right. For instance, you are deeply religious. You are an observant Jew and you consider religion

to be a core part of your identity. in your politics, but also you are on the liberal side of the spectrum, maybe classically liberal. So maybe for table setting, tell me where you see the political divide in Israel right now. So, okay, I don't think there's a lot of difference, I mean,

relating to what you said. There's a huge correlation also in Israel between the political rights and the religious public. In fact, many surveys have shown that a very useful parameter to understand

and political right or left cleanings is how religious is the person. So I'm a bit of sort of rarity also in Israel. But for me, I'm religious. I'm not orthodox. I consider myself a traditional Jew. I also observe many of the commandments of the Jewish law. But I'm also a liberal and very dedicated to liberalism. And there is a connection there because I grew up in a secular family,

even an atheist family. And my way to religion was facilitated through the freedom I had to investigate, to research, to go and experience religious life in different places. I went to India. I was there for a long time. It was through pluralism rather than coercion

that you got to religion. Yes, and I'm very happy about it. I think, I mean, it changed my life for the better. And so I want everybody to have that chance to have no religious coercion and to be able to... investigate and explore and engage and see what happened. And again, when Tomar is talking about liberalism,

it's in the Israeli vein, which in America would probably be called classical liberalism, the tradition of the Enlightenment. Yeah, basically rights discourse, individual autonomy, and the public sphere that is, you know, protected from coercion, protected from state, also intervention, et cetera.

Okay, into politics. Israel this week had its fifth election in three years, I think. It looks like this time it's going to stick, fifth times to charm. What's going on there, Tomar? Why is this a big deal? What's going on is a very dramatic victory by Netanyahu's block, which was, you know, I mean, it's dramatic because Netanyahu has a resounding victory. He can do basically whatever he wants.

And what he wants, basically, is a complete rehash of the Israeli judiciary, the judicial system. He wants to make the position of the Supreme Court much weaker. He wants, perhaps, to eliminate a felony that we have that's called public fraud. For which he's currently indicted. He is indicted for his own trial for at this time. I mean, many such changes that will, you know, I don't think it's too dramatic to say that will change the structure of the Israeli state will make it, I mean, as it were, a second republic. So that is one. People are also bracing for religious changes. Netanyahu got to power

on the backs of a lot of traditional religious and ultra-Orthodox citizens of Israel that want to want changes in many, many, many parts of the Israeli public sphere. You're talking about parties that want to see the state govern according to religious atheist atheists. And for, I guess, American ears, this might echo the post-liberal common good movement in the U.S. that wish to reduce the secular nature of the state and have more religious elements, coercive religious elements introduced into the menu. Yes, a much more coercive religious state. They want to disallow pride parade. Also, on the Sabbath, things will stop working. You know, there's a whole list of things they want to do. I'm not saying they will do

everything that they want. But this is definitely the direction that they want to take Israel. And again, they have the power to do it now. So let's take a step back. Israel is a parliamentary system where in order to attain power, a party must figure out how to form a coalition of at least 61 parliamentary seats out of 120. Before this cycle, we had four elections in which no party was able to form a stable majority. That's right. And that led to a couple of years of rapid tug and pool between the Netanyo Block and

the anti-Natineo bloc. And here it's important to understand we don't have, for the last five runs of election, we don't have a clear left and right division between the blocks that wish to form a government. It's an anti-netoniao and a Netanyahu division. Really, Netanyahu is running on a populist ticket of, I represent the will of the authentic, simple Israeli and the more Jewish and faithful bloc.

And the other side runs on a ticket of we represent law and order and a liberal public sphere and equality before the law. Okay, so let's take these apart. Number one, you said law and order. That refers to the fact that Netanyahu is currently on trial for breach of public trust. And so the trial and the investigation and the indictment by the public prosecutors have all been central to his campaign, claiming to borrow a phrase that it was a political witch hunt. That's right.

But let's make this very exact. Netanyahu was always a divisive character, I mean, contentions. But this move towards pro or anti-Bibi as the main question of each election happened only after he refused to step down when he was indicted and later trialed. We had a norm in Israel that prime ministers who are indicted step down and conduct their trial, not from the position of the prime minister's office. And Nathaniel wouldn't. And so from that moment, the whole political arena shifted towards either your pro, law and order, inequality before the law and norms and values that we hold dear, and the will of the people, they want BB. And so whatever happens with the trial, it really doesn't matter because it anyway, these are preposterous allegations and Netanyahu should rule as much as he can with the popular vote. These are the two blocks, and it happened right there when Nathaniel refused to step down.

And what were the allegations exactly? So basically it has, I think, three different trial cases with different allegations of fraud, a breach of trust, and bribery. Mostly alleged graft and the occasional pressuring of media companies to induce positive coverage. But I also had a chance to interview a lot of people from the Israeli judge. judicial system, who actually do think that the investigations against Netanyahu were somewhat overzealous and potentially even politically motivated. And they point to the fact that many of the allegations have fizzled out. Yeah. So I don't, I want to rule out that there are, that there is no truth in that at all. I think, I think there was some overzealatory, let's say.

But, but having said that, there is also some truth. There is also some actual content to these delegations, that he now himself recorded himself offering a publisher, a head of the biggest newspaper in Israel, to limit the spread of another newspaper in exchange for good coverage. This was a recording he did himself, right? Of course, not wanting for it to leak out. So, I mean, you know, there's some substance here. But the real question, and I think this is something that kind of echoes right now in the U.S. as the Justice Department considers whether to bring charges against Trump, is this enough to bring a case against a prime minister, former prime minister, or somebody who is running for office and potentially interceding in his political career, especially when he's enjoying such popular support? It's a question of populist rule versus lawful norms.

I mean, and it's a serious question. Is a leader that is so popular among his base that has a majority in parliament, should that leader be taken down over, you know, breaches of the law that are relatively minor? That are, you know, he didn't rape anybody, right? So, and I think it's an important question that we should consider. And just to give this a little more spice, in 2009, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Ulmert actually stepped down after similar allegations of misconduct were raised against him.

He was tried and served time in prison, but politics being what it is, Netanyahu was one of the most vehement voices at the time that insisted that Omort must step down, given the allegation. That's right. Now, the Ormert's case was much more clear cut. He took envelopes of money in exchange for allowing some contractor to build a hideous building. Yes, that was while he was mayor of Jerusalem, and I can attest as a Jerusalemite

that the building is indeed hideous. It's terrible. And really, again, Olmert stepped down the minute the police told him that there is a serious case against him. He stepped down, and Tanyao did not. This is the main difference. So the real big story that was catching people's attention

around the world was the rise of the Utsmaiudit party. which literally translates to Jewish might, something I can't say without cringing. Esther Eaton wrote for the Morning Dispatch a great summary of the party's success and its leader, Itemal Ben-Gvier, and I'll link to it in the show notes. So the party is basically an extreme version

of Israel's messianic religious nationalism movement. For years, it's been in the fringe, and now it's the third largest party in Parliament. out of 10 who made the cutoff. Can give us a little bit of history and explain why these elections were so dramatic in this sense? Okay. If we want to understand

Otzma Yudit, we need to go back to the 80s when an American Jew called Mayor Kaana, rabbi mayor Kaana, immigrated to Israel, and founded the Kach party. Kach, which might be translated as vass. The Kach party had enough votes to enter parliament and Kahana was a member of parliament And while there, basically tried to realize his, I can only say, rabidly racist ideology.

He suggested laws such as segregated beaches. He suggested that a law that said that non-Jews cannot live in the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem should be in a Jewish, a purely Jewish city. To be clear, when you're talking about racism, you're not talking about the way it's sometimes used in the American district. course watered down, but full-fledged racism, real segregation between Jews and non-Jews, not to mention the forced expulsion of Arab Israelis. This is a racist theory, ideology that this person has of Jewish superiority as the chosen people and non-Jewish inferiority and especially Arab inferiority, which needs to be implemented by law in Israel. The Israel,

political system was shocked and it took only a few years before the law, the election law in Israel was amended and forbid such racist parties from entering parliament. That happens in 1988. And indeed, Kahana was, you know, next elections, he couldn't, he simply could not be a contender and he, he was out. He continued, you know, distributing his ideology until he was assassinated in 1990 by a Palestinian. So that's Kahana. But his ideas, of course, lived on

and in the Khakh movement, which later changed forms because it was anathematized. That's right. And Itamar Ben-Gvier, our current protagonist, was a member of the Khakh movement in its different forms from an early age. Now, once again, Itamar Ben-Gvier is the current leader of Otsmae Udit, which is the sister party of religious Zionism,

which together form the third biggest party in parliament, which means without getting too technical, that Edemar Ben-Gvier is one of the most powerful players in politics after these elections. That's right. Now, Ben-Gvier, if you ask in Israeli, where did his face first appear? It's in a news item about him as an 18-year-old

ripping off the emblem of the governmental Cadillac that Prime Minister Rabin was driven around in and he was holding the emblem, the Cadillac symbol, sort of to the camera and saying, just as we got to this symbol, we will get to Rabin.

And indeed, we all know that Rabin was assassinated not by Benvry, of course, but another... By Rabin, you mean Prime Minister Tzhak Rabin of the Labour Party who was assassinated in 1995 by a member of the Jewish nationalist movement? 95, actually the 4th of November 95. exactly this day, that year.

So that's the first time the Israeli public met Ben-Vir. Now, Ben-Vir studied law. He became a lawyer. He defended many Jews accused of terrorist activity of different sorts. And he was for a long time ostracized by the political system, even by religious Zionism, which he now runs with, right? In fact, it was only two years ago when Netanyahu had to, you know, bend a lot of arms and extend not light pressure in order for religious Zionists to agree to run with Ben-Gvier.

So we need to know Ben-Gvier, though being an Orthodox, a religious Jew and a Zionist in his way, is not part of mainstream religious Zionism. In fact, Kahana, the whole Kach party, and Ben-Gvir and his friends were always ostracized by the mainstream religious Zionist movement and public. And two years ago, when Netanyahu understood it, he would need every single vote in order to defeat the other block of parties, he made Ben Gvier into a legitimate partner to run with. He forced him on the religious Zionist party.

This was already a few cycles ago, but just two years ago. ago. And from then on, religious Zionism was running with Ben-Gvier in the same political party. So when you say legitimized him, the relationship between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir has been cagey at best, because Netanyahu sometimes says Ben-Gvier has no place in government, and then three days before the election says, actually, you know what, I would consider him as my police minister. This is a gradual process that is happening over the the last two years, Ben-Gvier went from being totally taboo to being totally legitimate as the police minister. So can you talk about the gradual stages, not just from the BB side, because

there's always a difficulty in determining how much of it is intentionally, strategically pulled by Netanyahu at the top, and how much is it Netanyahu responding to trends from the public? You know, it's a difficult story to tell because it's a dynamic that feeds itself. And, you know, I would compare it to Trumpism. A person comes to the political arena that is totally loud, vulgar, norm-breaking. And at first, people are saying, well, you know, this can't be accepted. Of course, nobody will, this can't be put up with.

And we will just have to reject him outright. And then the public likes it. And things are changing. He is not being rejected. and he simply becomes the mainstream. You say he's mainstreamed, partly because these elections saw the highest voter turnout in decades, which was reflected in Uttmai Udit,

or the joint party that it belongs to, doubling its power in one election cycle. And it is totally, it's totally Ben Gvier's credit. I mean, he, again, like Trump, got people out of the house to vote, which had not voted before at all. Now, part of it is because last summer, there were riots around the country

between Jews and Arab Israelis that really rattled the population. And Ben-Vir definitely knew how to capitalize on the animosity that it engendered. But should we take the message from this that Israeli society is opening up or warming up to extreme nationalism? So asked if whether a large part of the Israeli society

is kahanist, I would say definitely not. Definitely not such racist and anti-democratic and anti-liberal. But when this option is presented to many

as a legitimate person to be voted into parliament, many people will jump on this and do it. Again, not because they are ideologically Kahanist, but it's an outsider. He's a maverick, as it were.

He will change the system. He's also incredibly charismatic in a U.E. Long kind of way. Yeah, he knows media. He is an ace in media manipulation, right? He knows what he's doing very well. I mean, one thing that it seems to be the truth of politics increasingly around the world is that pissing off the media pays dividends. And he just knows how to trigger Israeli media.

Yes, pissing off anybody grants you dividends. Just saying outrageous things gets your attention, gets your ratings, gets you clicks, and the media loves it. And so it's, again, it's a self-feeding cycle. He's being legitimized. Then he says some even more outrageous thing and everybody, there's a great who-how about it. But he just gets bigger and bigger, inflated and inflated. And we see what happens at the end of the selection cycle. Let's give it more context.

Ben-Gvier claims that he has moderated his views. He says that he has divorced himself from hardcore kahanism. He no longer promotes the force expulsion of Arab Israelis. On the other hand, he seems to be very strong on revoking the citizenship of Arab Israelis who've committed crimes against Jews. Not only Arab Israelis, but also Jews, by the way. He talked about Offer Ksif, a parliament member from the Hadash party, the extreme left, the Communist Party in Israel.

Under what logic that being part of the Khadash party, Ipsopacta makes you a traitor? Yeah, traitors can't be tolerated, you know. Which means that they should be made stateless individuals. Exactly, and expelled from Israel. I highly recommend to our avid listeners to read Hannah Arendt's chapter about stateless people in the origins of totalitarianism for,

for context of why this is not a great idea. No, it's not a great idea. But just to address Ben-Gvier's change, as it were, the man said only five years ago that every word that Mayor Kahana, right, the Kach leader, said is relevant and good for this day. He said only three years ago that the only difference between him and Kahana

is that he is handed over a microphone, a microphone, and that Kahana couldn't get such publicity. Only two years ago, he still had on the wall of his living room a big photograph, a picture of Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish zealot

that went into the tomb of the patriarchs in Hebron on Purim, the Jewish holiday Purim 95, and opened fire on hundreds of praying Muslims, killing 29, sorry, killing 29 and wounding over 100. He had a picture of this person on his wall with a quote of a verse from the Bible praising zealotry. Hey, but he took it out.

He took it down two years ago, yes. Because he had this game, I would say, in which he, as if moderated himself or, you know, matured. Yeah. There's a video that is very telling of him marching through East Jerusalem, which is one of the disputed territories in the bigger Palestinian-Israeli debate. And if there's one thing that Ben-Vir seems to love is to parade with his entourage through those streets, as if Lane claimed them.

In fact, they even provocatively relocated his office to, to East Jerusalem earlier this year. As a member of parliament, he can locate his office anywhere he wants and the police and army also have to protect it, right? That's the idea. So he created an outpost. That's right.

In the middle of a disputed neighborhood. And it's worth remembering that his presence in East Jerusalem figured into the violence last summer. Depending on where you were in the political spectrum, you saw Benfier as either a provocateur trying to incite a new bout of riots or as the hero who won't back down because of violence. Exactly.

But recently he's been, there's a video of him ahead of the elections, I think, walking in those areas and his supporters bursting in cries of death to the Arabs. And he quiets them down and says, no, we're not doing that. No, no, he says, no, no, no, not death to Arabs, death to terrorists. Right. In Hebrew, it maintains the cadence, so it works out. What this was was him explaining. Yes, it's him explaining. to a follower of his

that it's a dog whistle for a reason. You know, you have to use the dog whistle. You can't say it out loud. Even without exploring the depths of his heart and understanding what he really meant, it's enough to say that when the definition of who counts as a terrorist or who counts as a traitor is elastic enough,

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That's eth-h-o-s dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. Okay, really we're talking about Netanyahu's comeback. And yet, so far, we only focused on the judicial question and the charisma of Ben Gvier and the hypernationalist right. But there is also a lot of power to Netanyahu himself that we just didn't address. Not only is he, I mean, he's sure we know it for a fact that he's divisive for a lot of people, but also he is, it's not, not for nothing, he was able to keep power for 12 years.

Not for nothing is associated for many Israelis as the person who stabilized the sense of security in Israel. And most recently, he facilitated the Abraham Accords, which was an absolute coup in terms of Israeli foreign relations, normalizing ties with the Emirates in Bahrain and Morocco, and setting the stage for potentially open relations with Saudi Arabia. That's right. I know that obviously fits into his grand design of creating a strong coalition against Iran. So when we talk about the Netanyahu triumph, there's a lot that he can take credit for.

No, definitely. Netanyahu is, first of all, a brilliant man, a very talented politician, and he knows how to navigate both the political arena and, you know, in the state, he knows, he, he, he brought Israel exactly where he wanted to bring it, economically flourishing and politically or statewide, geopolitically, not in any situation of a coming peace agreement that will divide the country into two states. This is exactly what Netanyahu wants. It's exactly the situation now. It did this. And, you know, if you are for those political, agendas, you should be very satisfied with him.

And it should be clarified because a lot of people refer to an Nisinao as a far-right politician, and that's not entirely true. No, it's not true. It's not true. His long reign has been marked by maintaining a very delicate balance between not wanting to get any progress on the Palestinian side and keeping things as they are. But at the same time, curbing in a very sophisticated way, the more extreme members of his block from going too far.

That's right. If anything, the BB doctrine can be seen as radical status quoism. That's right. And this basically is the great irony of this elections in which Netanyahu now finds himself in the hands of the most extreme right wing with the power to manifest, to do what he vowed to do, but doesn't really want to do because he is not that right wing. He wants to keep the status quo. He wants to keep Israel as acceptable in the wider, you know, democratic family of nations.

He doesn't really want to get to, to, he, of course, he has no problem with LGBT, et cetera. This whole very right, very religious, even I would say fundamentalist in a way, agenda is foreign to him. So now he has a problem that he has all the power to do what he said he would do but never really wanted to do. And by the way, this is why I think there is a chance that Netanyahu will go for a joint government with either Gunz or Lapid, with either Kahol-Avan or Yesatid.

So to be clear, guns and Lapid are the heads of two centrist parties that belong to the anti-BBB bloc. and they have vowed not to join Netanyahu Lid government. Now, you proffered an interesting theory back in July that even though the centrists have vowed not to join Bibi, if Otsmaio UDit and the nationalist religious right is ascendant, Bibi might be able to leverage that and say, you know what, I know that you don't want to join me,

but either you swallow your pride centrists and join a unity government under my leadership, which will probably include reforming the courts, or I'm going all the way and forming a government with the extreme right. That's right. But let's quantify that. I thought this was feasible and even a good chance of happening.

If Netanyahu would have won by 61, 62 majority, meaning a very small majority that makes him captive in the hands of any one or two members of parliament that, you know, wake up one morning and want to go nuts. Right, and that's the problem with Israeli parliamentary system is when you have narrow majorities, it takes one rogue member of parliament to bring down a government. And that's what happened to the outgoing Lapid government, in fact.

Yeah. It only took one or two members of parliament to defect, and that was it. That's it. So you're saying that it, if Netanyahu's margin was more narrow, he would have had more incentive to join the center. But right now he has a 64 majority.

That places him in a much more comfortable zone. He would anyway have a 61 majority to keep his government even if three members of parliament would, you know, tell him you have to right now annex the whole West Bank or we're

out. So now is in a more comfortable position. So now I think the chances are smaller, though again, I think that what Netanyahu really wants is not this extreme right coalition that he has, but a sort of unified government, as we say in Israel, between the left and the right. With him on top, of course, but with a major partner which is not the extreme right. Okay, so we've done our punditry. Before I let you go, I want to ask you about your book.

You, as I mentioned in the beginning, are a religion scholar. in addition to being a social commentator. Your book, which is phenomenal, and unfortunately is not in English yet, but hopefully soon, is about the centrality of this idea that man was created in the image of God to the history of Western culture

and the Judeo-Christian philosophical, moral tradition. It's an amazing read, thought-provoking, and profound. I had the privilege of talking to you about it before the publication, and for the past 30 minutes we were talking about some of the worst mixing of politics and religious extremism. So cleanse us of that, edify us, with some pointers from your book. I mean, what I went with to write the book is the question,

what, among other questions, what makes privileged, powerful groups lay down their privilege, forfeit their power. What, I mean, they don't have to, right? What makes men become convinced that women should have the right to vote, right? It's not because women had a great army and they, you know, forced it on them. It's liberal thought, basically. It's the thought that each one of us has a deep dimensions of worth and even sacredness

that need to be recognized and engage. and protected even by the state, right? And this is the discourse of rights that we know. And what I try to show in the book that the idea that every person was created in the image of God played a seminal role in the development of that discourse, in the development of modern individualism, of modern liberalism, of our conception of the conscience

as an authority in our lives. That's what I try to show in the book. And I, you know, I follow, your wish that it would it will be soon translated and out in english we're working on it i hope it won't be too long amen thank you tomel persico that was awesome thank you too adam thank you very much During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, lease a 2026 X-E-90 plug-in hybrid

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