by Douglas Altabef
Ultimately it represents a willingness to denigrate and diminish Israel itself. Opinion.
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| Hi Bibi Flash 90 |
We are currently immersed in a season of heightened awareness. In the run up to Yom Kippur we focused on those aspects of ourselves that were in need of correction and represented our deviation from the path of goodness and righteousness.
Now as we prepare for Sukkot, our heightened awareness is increasingly focused on hakarat ha tov, an appreciation of the mIIany blessings in our individual lives.
I suggest that the two sides of awareness need to be invoked to look objectively at Israel’s homegrown phenomenon of BDS: not Boycott, Divest and Sanction, but Bibi Derangement Syndrome.
This form of BDS allows many Israelis to paint a monochromatic picture of dark grey, if not black, in looking at the leadership of our Prime Minister. In that picture, he is the cause of innumerable problems and mistakes. But for him, Israel’s prospects at home and certainly abroad would be rescued.
An important aspect of this syndrome is to focus on the longevity of the PM’s tenure, but not the content of that tenure. While there is certainly a case to be made for term limits, and the required limitation of a prime minister’s tenure, there is no such requirement in Israel.
The principled argument against indefinitely long tenure and the need to cultivate and to empower new faces and voices has been drowned in a fit of condemnation that says that continued service represents a continued downgrading and denigration of the State of Israel.
This is not only unwarranted, but also and perhaps more importantly self-destructive. One need not be a supporter of the Prime Minister to see and to appreciate the amazing progress the nation has made under his leadership.
Ascribing all the ills of humanity to Bibi is ultimately to say that Israel is a downtrodden and misguided nation that has wandered off the beaten path of what a society that purports to be a humane democracy should be.
This leads people like myself to wonder if many of my fellow Israelis are living in the same country, not to mention the same planet.
Over the past 25 years, and starting with very formidable efforts of then Finance Minister Netanyahu, Israel has shaken off much, perhaps most of the shackles of a socialist economy and has blossomed into not only the Start Up Nation, but also the nation that has been a consistent world leader in multiple forms of technology: military, cyber, computer, agricultural and medical, among others.
How is that a benighted and loathsome nation could have burst through the knee jerk refusal of Arab countries to engage with it, and to create the Abraham Accords?
How is that the Israeli economy has managed not just to muddle through three years of war, but to thrive? Look at the shekel’s value vis a vis the dollar.
Look at the astronomical percentage of Israel’s budget dedicated to defense and see how this burden has not crippled the economy. Yes, we have many stresses, challenges and problems. But the reaction of our neighborhood is very telling.
Israel has become the strong horse of the Middle East. So strong in fact that even the mighty United States is looking to it for regional protection of its forces.
Pound for pound, our military has become the gold standard, and yes, the envy of the world.
Lastly, and perhaps most tellingly, how does Israel consistently rank among the happiest nations in the world? How, in the midst of ongoing war multiple social fissures does Israel only trail countries that have no existential issues and no reasons not to be happy.
By the way, the criteria for the ranking do not include either birth or suicide rates. I suspect that if those seminal indicia of happiness were included, Israel might very well be ranked number one.
The great irony is that Bibi Derangement Syndrome is the product of Israel’s success, not its failure. As with those abroad who demonize Israel, domestic BDS victims resent that success, and seek to diminish it as the prooftext of the appropriateness of the condemnation of the Prime Minister.
The absurdity of BDS is beginning to become manifest. The golden dagger, the indictments against the Prime Minister, are unraveling under their own absurdity. The court trying the major case against the Prime Minister has twice now suggested to the prosecution that they drop it, for lack of a case.
This is the charge that then Attorney General said that but for it, he would never have brought the others because of their flimsiness and unimportance.
Whether the Prime Minister should ride gracefully into the sunset or not, he is unlikely to accept a plea bargain that drops losing cases in exchange for his departure.
It will annoy BDS acolytes beyond belief, but I believe that history will be very kind to Bibi Netanyahu. The emotions of the moment will dissipate leaving a record and a close involvement with the progress and advancement of Israeli society. The critical distance of history will focus on the accomplishments not the irritations. And the accomplishments have been many and manifest.
Whether we are encountering BiBi’s ride into the sunset or a “one mo’ time" moment, Israelis who care about the country and its perception abroad are well advised to turn the heat.
We need a measure of hakarat ha tov to counter all the condemnation. Bibi is not the root cause nor the ultimate source of Israel’s issues, real or imagined. We only help ourselves at home and abroad by not personifying him as the Problem.
After all, If Bibi is the problem, then what could success possibly look like?
Douglas Altabef is the Chairman of the Board of Im Tirtzu and a Director of the Israel Independence Fund
Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/433486
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