Jewish Memory and Israel’s Election

Benny Gantz, center, visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City in March. Credit Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
Benny Gantz, center, visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City in March. Credit Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Israel stood still for a moment this week so it could bring home the remains of Sgt. Zachary Baumel, a soldier who perished in battle in 1982. This was in the midst of the most bitterly contested election the country has had in decades, with important things at stake: the probity of government, relations with the Diaspora, the limits of the settlement enterprise, the possibility of peace.

There are things that matter more. Keeping faith with the fallen and bereaved is one of them.

Anyone who has lived in Israel gets this. It’s a young and improvising state resting atop an ancient and profound civilization. At the heart of the civilization is common memory. Elections come and go; memory accretes. It is to everyday life what geology is to flora and fauna: grounding, shaping, slow-moving, still-growing. Memory is the true land of Israel.

The Israeli government spent 37 years tracking Baumel’s remains to Syria and negotiating their recovery through Russia. The country will expend similar efforts to bring home other fallen soldiers held in enemy hands. It’s the core of the Jewish state’s social contract. It may not be able to keep its people safe, much less make them rich. But it will never forget or forsake them.

That’s something to consider when it comes to the election, too. In Washington last month I interviewed Benny Gantz, the former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces who now leads the Blue and White party, the principal challenger to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud.

Gantz doesn’t communicate a political agenda so much as he does a character and an attitude. He’s an Israeli of the old school: confident, to-the-point, unassuming — a man who tries, but doesn’t quite succeed, in hiding his warmth. In our interview he described himself as a security hawk and a “moderate capitalist,” but otherwise his ideology is mainly about not having one.

The interview itself was unremarkable. Gantz had a slight lead in the polls at the time (he’s now in a dead heat, though the outcome of the election will depend on how smaller, coalition-making parties fare), and he seemed to be taking care to say nothing that would get him into trouble. Here, condensed for clarity, is what stood out.

On Netanyahu: “Very smart, a good manager, a good politician. He’s what so many Israelis would like to see [in a prime minister]. In the last four or five years, something happened to this guy. I don’t know what happened. It’s unexplainable.”

On Palestinian statehood: “Israel needs to stay a Zionist country with a Jewish majority in a democratic system. Eventually, Palestinians should have some kind of independency.”

On egalitarian prayer spaces: “The Western Wall is long enough to accommodate everyone.”

On Israel’s security needs vis-à-vis Palestinians: “We should maintain security for a perimeter outside [Palestinian areas]. Conduct security inside. If we don’t, it will endanger Palestinians themselves. The economies should eventually be merged.”

On relations with the U.S.: “We share the same values and moral standards and we share the same interests. And it stands for both sides of the aisle.”

On whether he would serve in a coalition with Netanyahu, either over or under him: “No.”

On what distinguishes his party from Netanyahu’s: “We have left and right; religious and secular; Druse; ultra-Orthodox women. Unity is very important. We cannot agree on everything but we must agree on the framework. … Netanyahu currently lives off this separation [between various Israeli groups]. I’m talking about my priorities, but I’m talking to everyone. He’s appealing to his base.”

That last observation is the essential point. In many ways, Israel has defied expectations and done remarkably well over the past decade. Much of this has been Netanyahu’s doing.

But it has come at the cost of increasing divisions between Israeli and American Jews. And intense divisions between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews. And embittering divisions between Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis. And between the hard right and everyone it deems a sellout — an ever-growing group when one practices the politics of loyalists versus traitors, as opposed to the politics of friends and potential friends.

None of these quarrels are about Israel’s enemies, who are real, deadly and growing in number. But the quarrels have become enemies in themselves. Israel is powerful enough to defeat any of its regional adversaries, in almost any combination. It can survive the challenge of the Palestinians and binationalism, too. Whether it can survive its own descent into sectarian and ideological tribalism is another matter.

Which is why the return of Baumel’s remains seems so propitiously timed. Israeli pundits think it will help Netanyahu’s re-election chances, on the view that it makes him seem more capable and statesmanlike.

I wouldn’t be so sure. Baumel’s short life, tragic death and hard-fought homecoming are potent reminders of all the ties that still unite the Jewish state, for all the differences. They are what commends Gantz’s candidacy, whether he wins this time or not.

Bret L. Stephens has been an Opinion columnist with The Times since April 2017. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary at The Wall Street Journal in 2013 and was previously editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post.

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