The Prostitution of the Likud

Betraying the Country to Anti-Zionists

I’ve written a lot about the appalling nature of the charedi refusal to assist with national defense while insisting upon financial support. But what’s perhaps even worse is how the government (including Smotrich’s Religious Zionism and Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit, but most of all Bibi’s Likud) plays along with it.

Like many others, I used to be a stalwart Likud supporter. With emphasis on “used to be.” The behavior of much of the Likud over the past several years, and especially the past two years, has left me horrified.

I can understand the charedi wholesale opposition to civic duties towards the State of Israel and their desire to take financial advantage of it - after all, they don’t consider themselves to be part of the same people as us. But how on earth can non-charedi, supposedly Zionist Likudniks endorse it?! Several Likud MKs declared their support of yesterday’s charedi anti-enlistment rally, one even claiming that the charedi approach to Torah is “the source of our existence.” Yinon Magel, Bibi devotee and host of the television show “The Patriots,” also declared that he would love to attend; his “patriotism” appears to be towards Bibi rather than towards Israel.

Miri Regev, Likud Minister of Transport, even put on extra public transportation to help the charedim make the rally more effective. Needless to say, she did not do any such thing for secular anti-government protests. Minister of Education Yoav Kisch took action against schools whose principals opposed government decisions regarding Gaza, but not against charedi schools that brought their students to engage in demonstrations against the imprisonment of draft-dodgers. Information Minister Galit Distal-Atbaryan described charedi Torah scholars as the “spiritual iron dome of Israel… the crown on our head.”

This follows a long pattern of Likud MKs trying to help chareidim avoid army enlistment. Likud Minister of Culture Miki Zohar told his charedi Knesset colleagues that he will “turn the world over” to ensure that a law is passed to exempt the vast majority of charedim from army service and grant them financial support. Yisrael Katz, in a bizarre understanding of his role as Minister of Defense, assured the charedi community that he will defend them from being called up.

This attitude comes straight from the top. Earlier this year, in a leaked recording, Bibi boasted to R. Moshe Hillel Hirsch that he got rid of the previous Minister of Defense and the IDF Chief of Staff, during a war, in order to make it easier for charedim to avoid being enlisted. He subsequently got rid of Yuli Edelstein from the Knesset Defense Committee for the same reason.

Likud have been abandoning their values for a while. They have already shown that they don’t want any checks and balances on governmental power. Likud are also now showing that they don’t even care about democracy - they are engaged in lawfare to try to prevent Bennett from running in the next election. They have long shown that they are not Jewish purists - as is widely known (and as Smotrich attested), Bibi wanted Mansour Abbas’ Muslim brotherhood party to support his government (which I think is acceptable - except that Likud then viciously attacked Bennett for doing precisely that!).

But now Likud, by actively endorsing the anti-Zionism of charedim, have also shown that they don’t care about Zionism at all. It’s not just reluctantly making a temporary alliance for the sake of national interests. It’s setting the country on a course that will become ever more difficult to change as charedi political power grows. And with these MK’s statements of sympathy and ideological support for charedim, they have been publicly abandoning the idea of civic responsibility and selling out Zionism. The only thing they value is Likud power, and their desperation to hold onto this has warped their value system and priorities.

Bibi, genius that he is, has successfully brainwashed many people into believing that this is all important and good, because any leadership other than his is a “Leftist” threat to Israel that will create a Palestinian state. This ignores the fact that there is basically no Left left, and nobody is going to make a Palestinian state, while a genuine existential threat to Israel is a fast-growing population of over a million people that refuses to help with national defense and drains the economy.

A growing number of former Likud loyalists have now seen through Likud’s shtick. We will see the results at the next election.