When it comes to Israeli politics, hate conquers all - Analysis

Hate can make a politician behave irrationally. Hate can make a politician do the opposite of what his constituents want.

By GIL HOFFMAN
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman on November 20, 2019. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman on November 20, 2019.
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Love is thought to be the strongest emotion in the world.
But when it comes to politics, the strongest emotion is hate.
Hate can make a politician behave irrationally. Hate can make a politician do the opposite of what his constituents want. Hate can cause the third election in less than a year.
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman quit his post as defense minister a year ago, leading to the first election, citing professional disputes with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding how to handle terrorism.
When Liberman caused the second election by refusing to enter Netanyahu’s government at the last minute, he cited disputes over matters of religion and state.
On Wednesday, when Liberman might have initiated a third election by ruling out joining both right and left-wing governments, he did not even bother claiming it was because of those government’s prospective policies.
Instead, Liberman spent much of his lengthy Knesset press conference expressing his hatred for both the haredim (ultra-Orthodox) and the Arabs. He said he would not join a narrow right-wing coalition because of the former, and never considered enabling the formation of a left-wing minority government because of the latter.
In fact, Liberman said the only reason he refused to answer the question posed to him hundreds of times about joining a minority government was that he wanted to use that option to pressure Netanyahu. After all, Liberman hates Netanyahu, too.
The Jerusalem Post asked Liberman at the press conference what was most dangerous for Israel’s future: Arabs, haredim, a third election or Netanyahu. At first he said he did not know, but then he appeared to answer the question by launching a long rant against the haredim and extremists like the Satmar Rebbe and the breakaway Jerusalem Faction.
So Liberman currently hates the haredim more than the Arabs, for whom he succeeded in hiding his hatred for nearly two months. He also hates them more than elections, because he would rather initiate a third race than sit with them. And he hates them more than Netanyahu, because he backs President Reuven Rivlin’s compromise that would give Netanyahu the premiership first in a rotation.
If Liberman were loyal to his right-wing ideology, he would have rationally permitted a right-wing coalition to be formed despite his hatred for the haredim. If he was merely out to help his constituency of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, he would have set aside his hatred for the Arabs and enabled the formation of a minority government that could have carried out extensive reforms on matters of religion and state.
But hate is a powerful emotion, so rationality, helping constituents and avoiding another election can be damned.