Shalom Pollack – What Happened??

 We are living in extremely dramatic historic times and as usual, that is especially so for the Jewish people and thus the Jewish country.

What has just happened in Israel?

The democratically elected government was declared illegitimate by the side that lost, the dwindling  Jewish minority. They are generally secular or anti-religious, upper-income, and demographically a shrinking minority. They are not reproducing. The Jewish majority is and they read the writing on the wall. They will never again rule this country through the honest democratic process, even with their new anti-Israel  Arab allies.
Expressions of ideological certitude and contempt, even hate, are not a problem as long as they remain in the realm of the freedoms granted by the democratic system.
Without reviewing the accusations and the political polemic on both sides,  the bottom line is that the voice of the people as reflected in the ballot box was made null and void by what ultimately was a political coup highly organized and well-funded ( Senator Cotton revealed, on the Senate floor how the US government is one of the financiers of the coup).
For the first time in Israel's history, certain members of the military stated that they would not defend the country if the government did not submit to their demands. Other vital branches of the economy including the head of the labor unions ( who did execute a  political national strike) followed suit with threats to use their powers in order to weaken and even destroy the country if their demands were not followed.
The media, academia, and judicial justified and abetted the coup.
All of the above, who found themselves the losers in the election, used their deeply entrenched unelected powers to threaten the majority and its elected government with total chaos and worse if they did not get their way. The Left has used violence and threats of violence from the beginning, most famously the sinking of the "Altalena" and Begin's passive response. "Oslo" and the mass expulsions of Jews in 2005 are further examples.
The Left employed violence as the injured Right refused to shed their brother's blood and so they submitted time and again.
And what is the root of this view of internecine violence on both sides?
Most Jews are rooted in the Jewish tradition. For them,  the love of fellow Jews is ingrained because the Torah is ingrained.
Their norm is that a Jew will not harm another Jew. It has become an identifying Jewish cultural value.
When the "Jewish" is neglected or challenged, then the accompanying identifying values are too.
That is why one side, in their rage and hate, can threaten bloodshed and destruction and mean it.
The others will not respond in kind and surrender as they did just now.
I believe that eventually the  sheer numbers of the growing Jewish majority and
a growing awareness of exactly what has just happened will win.
In 1977 when Menachem Begin's Likud party won an election for the first time, the Left did not accept the results but were satisfied that true rule was still theirs through the levers of power that they inherited and jealously guarded.
The recent putsch was about the hysteria amongst the Left minority as their most important lever, the extreme Left-wing high court was threatened with its monopoly.
They were going to hang on to their levers of power at all costs.
At all costs.
The Jewish majority,  finally given hope for a greater expression of their majority voice, was shocked and crushed by the unexpected, ferocious reaction of the losers.
A crushed majority does not stay down forever.
Numbers eventually have their impact

We have crossed an important crossroads in the history of the Jewish country.

The final chapters are yet to come.

How do I know?
I read our prophets.
They have been correct until today.

shalompollack613@gmail.com
Shalom Pollack is  a tour guide and author
"Jews, Israelis and Arabs"