Sinat Chinam 2.0: Zionist Self-Destruction in Modern Israeli Politics

Peloni

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In the first half of the video, Rabbi Pesach Wolicki contends that the real divide between Israeli political factions lies in their support for or against Netanyahu, but that the anti Zionist faction in Israel has been dwarfed, leaving only a debate over which policy decisions are wise or foolish among the Zionist parties.

I would add to this that political parties which act like anti Zionists, even to achieve the isolation of the current premiere, as was true of the Yamina and Yisrael Beiteinu parties when they supported policies pursuing Leftist agendas, such as paying Arab Mafia groups to reduce Arab crime, ceding lands in the Negev to Bedouin squatters, and ceding critical energy deposits to a terrorist regime, it hardly mattered if they are Zionist parties, because they specifically and knowingly worked to achieve critical and material anti Zionist outcomes simply to achieve the political outcome of isolating Bibi Netanyahu so as to satisfy motives which are poorly described as being Zionist.

Of course, Wolicki is obviously correct that the issue of supporting or opposing Netanyahu has been the dividing line on the Right, but I would argue that if a Right wing party makes the isolation of Netanyahu the primary aspect of its political ambitions, to the cost of all other Zionist issues, it qualifies and diminishes the honesty of characterizing such parties as being honestly Zionists.  In other words, if Lieberman, for example, defines the defeat of Bibi Netanyahu as the ultimate point of contention in the election, by what basis might this afford Yisrael Beiteinu the ability to describe itself as being a Zionist party. Additionally, this is not to endorse Netanyahu over all others, but the line of division is being drawn by Netanyahu’s detractors, having led them to choose to sit with the local Muslim Brotherhood party or to refuse to form any governing body at all as a preference to breaking with this single defining issue of forming a Zionist govt with Netanyahu.  Unfortunately, this is not the first time we have seen such irrational hostility forming the basis of political choices in our history, and it is a further unfortunate development that Gadi Eisencott has come to be the latest ‘Zionist’ party to adopt the defeat of Netanyahu as the basis of its greatest political ambitions.  

Indeed, the commitment of these reportedly Zionist parties to refuse to join with Bibi in any govt is in fact the modern equivalent to “Sinat Chinam ,” baseless hatred, which was the cause of the destruction of the Second Temple, the loss of the Altalena, arguably the loss of Judea and Samaria, and nearly caused the loss of the entire reconstitution of the Jewish state in 1948 [see my comments HERE].  While it is unfortunately true that Sinat Chinam remains a Jewish characteristic, it can hardly be qualified as being a Zionist characteristic.  So those political parties which prioritize the defeat of Bibi Netanyahu over all other matters are in fact working towards the enhancement of the primacy of the principle of baseless hatred over what truly remains Zionism’s true credo:  the unity of the Jewish people in our ancestral homelands providing good governance towards the security and economy over the Jewish people. This failed to be realized by the last Sinat Chinam govt under Naftali Bennett, and it will fail to be realized under the next Sinat Chinam govt, be it led by either Eisencott or Lieberman, because their real motivation is to weaponize the most destructive aspect of the Jewish character to amplify personality debates over Zionist ambitions, regardless of the resulting instability which accompanies such insanity.  

This has happened before, more than once, as noted above, and it will happen again if we can not guard against reliving the lessons of our own history.  In 1948, Ben Gurion and Yitzak Rabin rekindled Sinat Chinam and the entire Zionist project nearly collapsed in the very hours it was being realized, demonstrating that if we can not learn from history, we will simply see it rewritten in our current age.  Preventing such a terrible reality from being realized should be the true calling of all Zionists regardless of their political affiliations and regardless of their dislike of any single person.

In the latter portion of Rabbi Wolicki’s video, he raises a very important point regarding political polling: follow the cross-tabs.  This is a fundamental basis upon which polling data can be both understood and compared in a granular and meaningful manner.  Of course, when no such data is available, it leaves us with only the outcomes of the polls to consider.  I noted previously that polling bias is a real and significant aspect of polling , and managing this bias is an absolute requirement to providing accurate polling results.  As I have noted before, and which is further noted by Wolicki below, the Legacy polling groups have performed quite poorly in predicting past election outcomes.  Without having the means by which to compare apples to apples, as it were, in the polling of Israeli voters, we are simply left with the realization that there is no accountability or transparency in the polling, which provides cover for any scrutiny of what is causing this recurrently predictable polling aberration to occur.  Wolicki discusses this and more in the final ten minutes of the video.