All Good Things.

By MICHAEL BENJAMIN
Threes obsess Israelis.
The holy trinity: the father, son and the holy ghost, influence Christians. Mention them to any Israeli, and they will continue the conversation as if unsaid or shrug, say, ‘Whatever,' and ignore the comment. However, we love threes. Probably, our service in the army-IDF is of some significance. The Israeli Defense Force is infatuated with threes. Everything is arranged in threes. It doesn't matter what your equipment is; the training manual divides itself into three sections and three subsections if need be three sub-sub- sections. No matter what you are doing it will be explained to you in a series of any three combinations of three. Irrespective of any consideration; the explanation comes packed in threes. Is it the army seeping into our mentality? Are we becoming neo-Prussian? Most definitely not- we pride ourselves, with great justification as the anti-thesis of Prussian-like orderliness. However, we do have three patriarchs. Our holy trinity inherited the army’s love of dogma. They are ascribed, like the threes, with an uncontested acceptability. They are not to be questioned. The three are the most influential people in Israel today.
We are discussing three men with an aura, a tradition and significance transcending their names. One of them spoke no evil; one of them heard no evil, and one of them saw no evil.
Moses couldn't speak. In today's media epoch, he would have been a nonstarter. Back then it seems it didn't matter too much. This inveterate stutterer started a revolt, got his tribe thrown into the desert and tried to lead them out of the desert. He knew full well that he was incapacitated. We also knew that the tribe was the most argumentative and possessed a complete inability to listen to anything. Jews established and institutionalized attention deficit disorder. A flaw, now upgraded to a national trait, haunts us to this day. The whole Ritalin industry owes Moses a great debt. At the end of the journey, which took 40 years instead of two months. Moses disappeared. He had a temper tantrum. It was one of many; he cursed the people and wandered off into the desert. The more skeptical among us claim that it was another of the world’s worst travel guide’s many navigational errors; this time there were fatal consequences. He was never to be seen again. Moses institutionalized more than ADHD. He set a precedent as the archetypal politician. All politicians, ever since, claim a clarity of vision and the innate belief they alone can lead. Moses, the true politician, was the wrong man, at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing. Moses nurtured a very irritable and arrogant nation that believed God had chosen them, and in private they had defined God’s job definition.
Another, heard no evil. Israel has been blessed with many people bearing the name of Barack. Two of them are particularly well known. The Prime Minister Barack managed to lead us out of Lebanon as Moses lead us out of Egypt. The exodus from Lebanon was as poorly thought out and executed as the original one. We established the Hezbollah, which certainly wasn't anybody’s intention. I digress. Our second member of the holy trinity is not this Barack. I am referring to Aharon Barack. In every normal democracy, there are two governing bodies acting as checks and balances. Israel’s moribund political system spawns only a pallid weakling Knesset from the loins of which springs an ineffective government. Many tried to fill the abhorrent void; the moneyed classes; journalists; the clergy; the underworld and various combinations of them all. Only one succeeded- Aharon Barack and the legal profession. Like Cromwell before him, he claimed to defend a faith. The faith based on simple concepts: basic human rights. No one knows what they are. Not to worry; you can make them up as you go along. But Barack added his master strokes: he decided what human rights are; he decided everything was judgeable; he decided who would be the judges, immediately initializing and sanctifying rampant cronyism. The Cult of Barack, with no one’s by your leave, metastasized into ever Israeli organ and institution. The cult decides what and who is suitable. The people did not have to choose. They had to bless; the people had to let Barack decide and perpetuate his ideas and own feelings without asking anybody. The cult allied with a large smattering of the like-minded, closed shop, media gurus are amid a cultural crusade. In this crusade, they can proclaim and defame whatever and whoever they like. The inquisition is of the just and good, as was all the ones before. We witness daily witch hunts, public immolations, and character assassinations. The name of the greater good justifies the vicious rampages. The Barack inquisition will not hear evil. They decide evil; they judge evil; they strike down evil. Barack and his ilk will not hear the evil they have done. They are above evil. They have hi-jacked the ballot box. They have insulted the native intelligence of the Israeli voter. Possibly the greatest of evils, the one their hearing is most impervious to, is their hankering for a constitution. We have one constitution, which we mostly manage to ignore - the Torah. The cult’s act of self-aggrandizement legitimizes the establishment of religious laws. Like Moses, Barack is no orator. Like Moses, he has the occasional temper tantrum where he reminds us of his and his cult’s innate infallibility. Like Moses, he has left the scene. Unlike Moses, he still returns.
Our final subject saw no evil. In the six-day war, Rabin the commander-in-chief saw no evil. He went home and saw nothing. Rabin saw no evil when Peres was scuttling around Europe making agreements and arrangements with the Palestinians. He saw nothing. Peres was quite free to do as, what and when he wanted. They led us into a catastrophic agreement, known as the Oslo accord. Rabin eventually saw the faults, but could not change them. Peres changed the whole of Israeli concepts. Previously Israel aimed at peace with the ‘local Palestinians.' Without consulting the electorate about the major policy change, Peres blindsided Rabin. Rabin saw no evil when listening to some strange siren sounds coming out of the Sea of Galilee. Music which enticed him to let his suitor, the treacherous Assad, approach the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Rabin saw neither of the evils. As with Barack and Moses, we are blessed by a concept, evoked on mentioning his name- the Rabin tradition. Nobody seems to know what it is. The banal, meaningless and contradictory, ‘we will fight terror as if there is no Oslo accord and we will honor the Oslo accord as if there were no terror,' epitomizes the Rabin tradition. Till this day, I haven’t a clue what it meant. I am not alone. People who evoke the Rabin tradition are often prone to temper tantrums. They seem to share a strange bonding with the followers of the Cult of Barack. Between them, they neither hear nor see evil and blunder from catastrophe to another. Israeli leaders neither hear nor see. They certainly do not say anything meaningful. They blunder on, they say meaningless things, speaking a lot, meaning little, not listening and not seeing what's going on. They speak to themselves; they do not hear the people, and they do not see the dangers. We must not end here.
There is a caveat, after all, this is Israel, and we are Jews.
There is no doubt in my mind that Moses was unique. Moses led the first recorded workers’ revolt. Moses cried out against inhumane treatment. Moses initiated national liberation movements. We are who we are and where we are because of Moses. We are the only dispersed people to maintain their identity and return home. Moses showed us, even with frailties, you can achieve everything. Moses showed a leader is human; he has his recognized blemishes and shortcomings and can still lead. The idea, the ideal and movement surpass the leader. In Moses’s death, Moses refused to be anything but a humble, mortal man. Begin, who is not one of the trinity, was blessed with similar humility. Barack has established a judicial and legal system which is second to none. Our legal system pursues evil and badness in our society. It is unwavering and non-corruptible. It is not in the pocket of anybody. It managed to send to prison a president and a prime minister. We are not especially corrupt; every country is corrupt. Thanks to Barack, we are the only country to deal with it unwaveringly. Rabin was the first Israeli to recognize how deeply the Holocaust affects us. Rabin clearly exhibited we are not living in it. We are post-Holocaust. That does not mean the Holocaust didn’t exist nor does it deny our neighbors would gladly initiate and celebrate another version. Rabin was the first leader to say we are strong enough and able enough to shape our destinies. Rabin clearly embodied an Israel molded by its history but living in the present. He realized where and with whom we are living. He never lost hope to make peace. He insisted, but was not heard; we made peace of the strong and not of the brave. Peace is not a gamble, peace comes from strength and maintained only by remaining strong. Rabin was the new generation Israeli, one who no longer lived in the existential fear of the galut, but as a nation responsible to and for itself. I respect Rabin.
Three deeply flawed men are three men who achieved a greatness which shapes us and indelibly influences the people and state of Israel- and long may they do so.


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