An open letter to our Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Does the fact that I don’t support the Likud, that I loved Yitzhak Rabin and admire David Ben-Gurion, turn me into a traitor?

By PAMELA PELED
CARRYING AN effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, labeling him a ‘ganav’ (thief), at the demonstration outside his Jerusalem residence on August 1. (photo credit: NOAM REVKIN FENTON/FLASH90)
CARRYING AN effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, labeling him a ‘ganav’ (thief), at the demonstration outside his Jerusalem residence on August 1.
(photo credit: NOAM REVKIN FENTON/FLASH90)
Dear Mr. Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
I have a question to ask you, Sir, which I hope you’ll consider thoughtfully. Although it’s unusual to receive replies to letters like this, in this particular case I would like to believe that you will actually find the time to pen an answer.
Before I pose my question, allow me to give you my credentials. I made aliyah at the age of 17, from South Africa. I came alone, leaving behind loving parents and a warm, embracing family; servants, a swimming pool in the backyard, lots of money. My friends went to Cape Town University, or London or the States, where they bought cars and had fun and traveled the world. I chose to leave all that behind and make Jerusalem my home, where I shared a dormitory room with a girl who smoked, was usually depressed, and stole my food.
I didn’t care. I was so Zionistic that nothing could faze me. I was home; I was happy; I was part of what I considered the biggest miracle of the millennium: the creation of a Jewish state.
I was a crazy Zionist: the sight of a kippah-wearing bus driver caused me to wax lyrical... ooh, a Jewish bus driver driving Jewish passengers in a Jewish town. I had “Hatikvah moments” all the time; the wine-red blush at sunset on the stones of a supermarket façade was enough to fill my soul with joy.
In time my parents joined me here, and my brothers: one became a paratrooper in the Nahal Brigade and fought in the First Lebanon War in Beirut, the other was an officer in the air force, where he served as a doctor. I married another gung ho Zionist; my late husband worked for the security of the State of Israel and in the course of his career actually had some meetings with you.
We have three daughters; all did a voluntary year of service to the country before serving in the army for the full period of time, and more. My brother’s children served in the army too, of course they did; one is an officer.
So that’s my family.
NOW I’LL tell you something else, and then I’ll ask my question.
None of us like you. In fact, that’s an understatement. We really, really don’t like you, and what we think you are doing to our country.
We think you are eroding democracy, pillar by pillar; we think you are making one half of the country hate the other half; we think you are corrupt and power-hungry, and care more about your political career than the country that you lead. We read your son’s astounding tweets and we don’t know whether to laugh or cry. We try to not even read items about your wife and her servants, her food and her rages.
We are upfront about it: We are tired of the Netanyahu Brigade and we’d like you all safely retired in your Caesarea home. Out of our faces, off our newspapers, far from sight and sound.
We’re prepared to do a whip-round to raise money to keep you and your lady wife in cigars and champagne for the rest of your hopefully long, healthy lives if you just leave us in peace.
Now here is my question: Does my opinion of you turn me into an anarchist? Does the fact that I don’t support the Likud, that I loved Yitzhak Rabin and admire David Ben-Gurion, turn me into a traitor? Are all people left of your leanings bad people, even pedophiles (as the latest tweets from the Balfour son-and-heir try to suggest)?
My kids go to the demonstrations against you, and I would, too, were I not a little worried about catching corona. But as I watch you on TV whipping up hatred for people like me, I think that a bout with COVID is a price worth paying, if it got through to you that good people in this country have had enough.
I WOULD like to tell you one last thing, as I know you are a busy man. You have your trial to attend to, and maybe you’d like another whopping tax rebate. Perhaps you are meeting with some officials right now about the annexation or closing the courts... anything, anything! to deflect attention away from your never-ending legal woes.
Still, despite your tight schedule, I hope you can read one final paragraph. When you first became our prime minister, an eternity ago, it was a scant six months after Rabin was assassinated. Half of the country felt you were almost complicit in that terrible, terrible crime – of course, we all knew you weren’t in any way implicated in the murder itself, but you had been on that infamous balcony on Zion Square, and you had never condemned the vicious incitement against the then-prime minister. I remember huddling in front of the TV with my husband, shaking, as you made your first in what would be a long line of victory speeches.
We are not anarchists, despite what you may think. I remember Martin saying to me, as you addressed us, “He’s our leader now, Pam. We have to give him a chance to lead.” So we waited for you to talk to us, too, as well as acknowledge the “Bibi, King of Israel” chants. We waited for you to say that you were the prime minister of everyone now; that you aimed to heal the chasms between the communities.
Most of all, we waited, we ached as we waited, for you to say that while you were happy to lead the people of Israel to a better day, you were really gutted that your victory came on the back of the assassination of the last elected leader. We waited for you to condemn violence in the strongest terms, to praise Rabin, to offer a word of condolence to the people who had loved him.
We are still waiting.
In your endless reign over us, things have gone from bad to worse. They are so bad now that people like me are branded traitors, and attacked for disliking you.
I will end by repeating my question: Do you truly believe that I and my family are anarchists? And if so, would you like us to leave? Do you truly believe that only your sycophants and servants deserve a Jewish state?
Maybe you should look out of your window tonight. You might see me standing there. I’ll be there, with the others, because we are tired of chaos and corruption. I’m not sure that makes us traitors or anarchists.
The writer lectures at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. peledpam@gmail.com