JEWISH SENTINEL

JEWISH SENTINEL • JUNE 18 - 24, 2021 9 restraint and humility that is the heart of coalition-building. The implicit question driving this coalition is: What holds us together? That question has become in- creasingly urgent in recent years, continued on page 21 the Israel of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, speaking with passion and reason and self-control as they presented their coalition of healing. A fter years of officially inspired campaigns of hatred and di- visiveness, contrived to serve one man’s political needs, we have the most diverse government in the country’s history. After the worst violence between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews since 1948, we have the nation’s first Jewish-Arab coalition. If the new coalition achieves noth- ing more than liberating Israel from those who have tried to unravel the delicate balance between national- ism and democracy, decency and power – dayenu, it is sufficient. If the new coalition achieves nothing more than offering a counter-vision of an Israel that strives to respect and manage its essential differences and place the country above sectari- an needs – dayenu . Can this coalition last? Given its bare majority and inner contra- dictions, the odds aren’t brilliant. And yet even if it doesn’t survive its term, it has already won. This government will be in a con- stant struggle for balance among its radically disparate components. There will be frustration on all sides as cherished agendas are stalemated and thwarted. Critics will accuse it of being a government not of na- tional unity but of paralysis. Yet the search for balance needs to be the heart of the Israeli proj- ect. Paradox is the inevitable re- sult of the ingathering of the Jews home from a hundred exiles, with By YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI I srael’s 36th government is a coalition of the courageous. Each leader who has led his or her party into this strange and unwieldy government has taken a risk. The hard-left Meretz has em- powered the hard-right Yamina, and Yamina has enraged much of its base by partnering with Meretz. Yisrael Beitenu, which not long ago accused Arab Israelis of trea- son, has embraced the Islamist party, Ra’am, as a coalition part- ner; and Ra’am, whose founding charter calls Zionism racism, has joined a Zionist government. Among the leaders of this coali- tion, none has been more self-sac- rificing than Yair Lapid. Though Lapid was the senior politician within the anti-Netanyahu coali- tion and head of its largest party, he deferred to Benny Gantz, who seemed the more likely to defeat Netanyahu. And now he has de- ferred to Naftali Bennett, leader of one of the coalition’s smallest fac- tions. In so doing, Lapid has em- bodied the meaning of leadership and love for Israel, restoring to our politics its lost nobility. Two Israels were on display at the Knesset swearing-in ceremo- ny for the new government. There was the Israel of desecration, MKs shouting, faces contorted with hate, trampling on the dignity of the state as they refused to allow the prime minister-designate to speak at his own inauguration. And there was all our contradictory visions and fears and notions of the meaning of Jewishness and a Jewish state. And then factor into this mix Isra- el’s Arab citizens, who are not part of our national mythos of ingather- ing, whose Israeli identity is at best tenuous, and the search for equilib- rium becomes nearly impossible. We are by necessity a coalition system. Only a coalition can at- tempt to hold the paradoxes of Is- raeliness. This government will be our most radical experiment in the A Government Of The Brave Why Israel’s new coalition gives me hope PERSPECTIVE It liberates Israel from those who have tried to unravel the balance between nationalism and democracy. The newly sworn in Israeli government (Prime Minister Bennett is bottom left) pose for a group photo at the president’s residence in Jerusalem on June 14. VOTE ERIC ADAMS | ROBERT CORNEGY | FARAH LOUIS VOTE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 2021 EARLY VOTING: JUNE 12-20 ENDORSED BY: ASSEMBLYWOMAN HELENE E. WEINSTEIN RABBI ARYEH RALBAG RABBI AARON RASKIN RABBI ELIMELECH LEBOWITZ RABBI YANKEL RASKIN AND MANY OTHER RABBIS AND JEWISH LEADERS IN THE BROOKLYN COMMUNITY Paid for by A Better NY for All, LLC; Gil Cygler, Treasurer; Top Three Donors: Peter Fine, Mark Holliday, 2741 Fulton, LLC; Not expressly or otherwise authorized or requested by any candidate or the candidate’s committee or agent. More information at nyc.gov/FollowTheMoney.