The deceased entered while the mourners were grieving. “My eulogies were premature,” consensus remarked.
With Gazan border villages evacuated before of significant rocket assaults, most Israelis support the order to target three Islamic Jihad commanders.
The terror group that attacks citizens and declares it wants to destroy Israel deserves to be attacked any day, let alone after firing 100 missiles at us last week. After Hamas called the IDF attack “an abominable crime,” most Israelis shrugged and remarked, “wow.”
Before noting that one of the raid’s targets, Jihad al-Ghannam, masterminded the 2004 attack in which two shooters killed pregnant social worker Tali Hatuel and her four daughters, Hila (11), Hadar (nine), Roni (seven), and Merav (two), at close range.
Netanyahu’s home policy violates the majority that supported his Islamic Jihad assault.
How, argues the Israeli consensus, could executing such a mass killer constitute Hamas’ “abominable crime”? Yes, his relatives died with him, but that’s a moral issue for others. However, why would this man’s crimes against other families be less Islamist than his?
Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz supported the strike because of this unanimity. That’s why hotels and families across offered to house families on Gaza’s shooting range. The Israeli consensus includes such solidarity.Israel has various divisions. Which democracy isn’t? Despite recent attacks on the consensus, the great majority of Israelis agree on all significant topics.
Most Israelis think that when our neighbors want peace, we should negotiate, as with Egypt, and when they want conflict, we should fight, like Tuesday.
Most Israelis seek equal rights and obligations socially.
Most Israelis demand religious freedom and public Jewishness.
Most Israelis prefer open markets, minimal taxes, and kindness toward the poor, disabled, old, and ill.
Most Israelis support state-funded healthcare for competing charities.
Most Israelis desire free K-12 education and subsidized higher education.
The minority on the right and left of this consensus, typically fundamentalist and resistant to compromise, may find this wishy-washy. Most Israelis are in this center zone, regardless of their preferences.
Most Israeli administrations have been there, except for two instances when Labor and Likud abandoned the agreement, before returning for a third time this year with a proviso. Targeted, the consensus was abandoned.
Targeting Israeli consensus
Likud went to a contentious war in Lebanon in 1982, and Labor went to a controversial peace in Oslo in 1993, abandoning the consensus.
Despite their modest support, these initiatives did not aim to amend the rules. As Likud outsources domestic policy to fringe groups, there is such an attempt that goes beyond castrating the court.
Israel never gave the Treasury to a sectarian party in 75 years. Finance ministers like Yigal Hurvitz (Ometz) in 1980 and Moshe Kahlon (Kulanu) last decade led small parties, but they did not represent a communal constituency with its own towns, schools, cultural institutions, and sprawling empire of social charities and ideological nonprofits.
Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, represents ultra-nationalists and ultra-Orthodox voters. This week, it was revealed that the next bi-annual budget allocation for sectarian causes will increase nearly tenfold from NIS 1.4 billion to NIS 12.5 billion, due to this anomaly.
This treasurer’s misunderstanding of the world economy and sectarian bias hurt the majority. Smotrich claimed Moody’s downgrade of Israel’s credit outlook after the court mayhem, in which he is a prominent actor, “does not know Israeli resilience.”
Financial professionals know that when rating agencies criticize you, you get your act together. Smotrich does not reflect his civilization or the globe. He symbolizes a community, thus everything beyond it is a mystery or an adversary to him.
Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, who is focused on housing the ultra-Orthodox minority, has failed to propose a strategy for Israel’s housing issue.
This is before Likud outsourced internal security to Itamar Ben-Gvir, a criminal who never served in the army and is now trying to form his own militia through his agency.
The fringes’ assault on the Israeli center and Zionist consensus, the consensus that this winter set out to cease its mistreatment, the consensus that this week told its mourning that their eulogies were premature, is this.
