The Leadership is Now in Place

In The Jewish War, Josephus’ account of the war of the Jews against the Romans between the years 66 to 70, the first sentence has an eerie echo nearly two thousand years later, as the leaders of four major Israeli parties struggled to form a coalition government, in the face of still another impending war:

 

At the time when Antiochus Epiphanes was disputing the control of Palestine with Ptolemy VI, dissension broke out among the leading Jews, who competed for supremacy because no prominent person could bear to be subject to his equals.

 

This time, however, the most prominent of the leading Jews – Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak – succeeded in forming a right-left coalition:  two former prime ministers, two veterans of the failed “peace process,” two persons articulate in English, two persons with extensive experience with Israel’s principal ally, the United States. 

 

The always insightful Ari Shavit of Haaretz, writing about the two most hated men in Israeli politics – on why they are hated and why they are the best men for Israel’s current existential moment:

 

The Israeli mainstream elite still cannot forgive Netanyahu for being the most eloquent, powerful speaker of the sane right wing. In the absence of peace and the absence of real faith in peace, hating Netanyahu remains the left-wing tribe's emotional campfire.

But the hatred toward Ehud Barak is no less intense. It stems from Barak's failure to fulfill the messianic expectations people had of him after ousting Netanyahu. It continued with Barak's smashing the illusion of peace in our time at Camp David. But even after Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni proved in Annapolis that it was no more than an illusion, the hatred toward Barak has not diminished. . . .

Netanyahu and Barak's immediate mission is Iran. The designated prime minister and defense minister do not have much time. Within a few months they must do what hasn't been done for years - recruit the international community to impose an economic-diplomatic siege on Tehran's ayatollahs. . . . [I]f it happens that the United States is not ready to take the chestnuts out of the fire, Netanyahu and Barak will have to prepare Israel for harsh scenarios. Nobody in Israel's leadership is more suited or capable than these two. . . .

In this time and place, Netanyahu and Barak are the only responsible adults.

 

It is worth reading in its entirety.  The leadership that has been missing since Ariel Sharon’s stroke is now in place.