“Eisenkot and Bennett Have to Do What Rabin Did. This Is the Last Chance”
An interview with Ron Gerlitz, CEO of the aChord Institute. Interviewers: Guy Rolnik and Maya Ilani, CEO of the Brandeis Institute. The HaMarkerim podcast, TheMarker, October 29, 2026. Edited transcript of the broadcast. Translated from the Hebrew.
themarker.com/podcasts/2026-10-29
I don’t want to put anyone under pressure, but it seems to me I am not the only one saying this. Perhaps this is the last chance. Israeli society is in a grave condition, and societies, incidentally, deteriorate into places far graver than the one we are in. Gadi Eisenkot and the other leaders now face a decision on the scale of the one Yitzhak Rabin took, and he too formed a government of the kind we are talking about.
Guy Rolnik: And above all, about the ideas behind the news. Here in the studio with you, as every week, Guy Rolnik, and this time with me a surprise guest interviewer, Maya Ilani, CEO of the Brandeis Institute. We will have her with us in a moment. In the opening we heard Ron Gerlitz, CEO of the aChord Institute.
The Forty-Eight Hours We Have Just Been Through
Guy Rolnik: Hello, Maya.
Maya Ilani: Hi, Guy.
Guy Rolnik: How many hours did you sleep last night?
Maya Ilani: Five, maybe.
Guy Rolnik: That is a huge amount. That is a huge amount, isn’t it? My respects. What happened, Maya, is that I arrived at the studio full of self-pity after the last forty-eight hours. We began the morning in good spirits. The whole family went to vote. There was a kind of optimism in the air, and then…
Maya Ilani: Were there lines? Were there lines?
Guy Rolnik: There were lines, we were glad about the lines. In our small town up north, of course, there were party stands outside for the change bloc. Inside that bubble we thought everything was going splendidly. But what happened then is that I was invited to Kan 11’s election broadcast studio, and I spent most of the night there, until two in the morning, in Jerusalem. As time went on, the results came in. I got home, tried to sleep and failed, so I actually slept one hour last night. I was rather busy with my self-pity, and then I heard that you had spent this election day in very severe self-torture, and I said, wow, that is real dedication to the mission. Yesterday you spent the entire day watching Channel 14.
A Whole Day Watching Channel 14
Maya Ilani: Partly true. Now and then I varied it with i24, to rest my eyes a little, but essentially yes.
Guy Rolnik: Wow. So why watch those channels? Why do you do that to yourself?
Maya Ilani: I started watching Channel 14 in the morning, not with the thought of staying with it all day, but alongside all sorts of other things. At the institute we monitor violations of the election propaganda laws online, and I was getting that straight into the vein all day, and I said, let me have Channel 14 on in the background. From the morning on I understood that there was something here worth following, seeing how it develops and what is happening inside it, because we already know that this is not just another channel, and certainly not a news program, but it is not another media outlet either. Let us say that what was there was not a tango for two.
Guy Rolnik: So explain exactly what you saw there.
Maya Ilani: First of all, in the spirit of the saying that he who disqualifies does so with his own flaw, it was raised there all the time that the Arabs are coming to vote, that they are stealing the election. Pictures of crowds, some of them fabricated, some with artificial intelligence. It was said that the right is not turning out to vote at all, the “gevald” campaign we are familiar with, but seasoned up, and of course, that if the Netanyahu bloc does not win we will all die of an atom bomb.
Guy Rolnik: What was that? Let us hear it. I heard it for the first time on a podcast and could not believe what I was hearing.
If and when the Iranians have an atom bomb, with high probability they will not keep it in a warehouse. Let us take a medium bomb, on the order of one hundred kilotons. Within a radius of nearly a kilometer, thousands of people will burn to death. Anyone inside a building, and no building will withstand it, will be killed by the collapse of the building, and not only by being burned.
Guy Rolnik: So this is real? They really did begin talking there about an atom bomb? Who was it, their military correspondent or their diplomatic correspondent? What is his name, I have forgotten it.
Maya Ilani: I am not sure, it needs checking. I think it was the diplomatic analyst. Yes, they warned yesterday of an atom bomb, and went into detail, how many people would die and within what radius. It is real, it is what was broadcast on election day, and it is one of the things. We also saw, during the day, a reporter doing a kind of vox pop, interviewing residents in Kiryat Shmona. Something classic for Channel 14: he interviews a resident, and the moment the resident tells him that this bad government has to be replaced the microphone is taken away and the conversation is over, more or less, and the reporter immediately changed the subject to say that he hears that all of that interviewee’s friends are laughing at him, that he is the only one in Kiryat Shmona who does not vote for Netanyahu. There were children interviewed at the market who were asked what matters to them in this election, and they said that what matters to them is that there be no Arabs. I don’t think they even confined it to Israel, simply that there be no Arabs at all. I was exposed to two expressions I have not heard as often in my life as I heard them in a few hours of Channel 14. One is “the wills of Muhammad.” Did you know that everyone around us is the wills of Muhammad? Anyone who is not Jewish is a member of the wills of Muhammad. And the second, anusim. All those people who cannot say that they support Netanyahu and the right, and they are anusim, forced converts, and cannot express their opinion.
Guy Rolnik: Yes, I have been told about that already. I heard of that phenomenon.
Maya Ilani: The astonishing thing about this whole episode is that, apart from the Democrats, most of the change bloc still has no clear position on this phenomenon they call Channel 14, which is a propaganda channel of those in power.
Guy Rolnik: A few years ago an operation like that was flagrantly illegal.
Maya Ilani: True. It is what the communications scholar who was also interviewed here, Dr. Ayala Panievsky, calls anti-press. It is really a disguise, a sort of drag queens of journalists, who come to a studio that looks like this pleasant studio, wear suits perhaps nicer than the ones you and I are wearing right now, speak in a low voice, with an earpiece through which they are being fed, and we are led to believe we are dealing with news and with journalism, but we are dealing with messaging. And it has to be said that it makes no difference whether it is right-wing or left-wing messaging, what matters is the fact that it is not journalism. There is no cross-checking of data, no research, no investigative piece whatsoever published yesterday on Channel 14, and that is the problem. Treating it as though it were a media organization with legitimate journalists is simply wrong.
What Civil Society Should Do
Guy Rolnik: Clearly. But, Maya, we did not bring you here today to bring us down but precisely to lift us up. The real reason I asked you to join us, and we are recording this podcast on Wednesday evening, is that in one of the groups I belong to I saw an optimistic text of yours, and I said, all right, this is exactly what we need, it is optimistic and it is also a call to action. So explain what civil society, the journalists, the politicians are supposed to do in the situation we have reached.
Maya Ilani: I think that many of us, in the press, in civil society and also simply as citizens, were called to the colors over these past four years in a way that has no parallel in the democratic world, and sacrificed a great deal in order to defend Israeli democracy. Many of them also paid with their lives to defend the very existence of the country, and we pinned a great deal on what would be seen yesterday at ten in the evening. Yesterday at ten in the evening was supposed to be the gateway to paradise, and what we got yesterday were results that still, incidentally, are not final. The absolute final tally is not finished, but essentially, if there was an expectation of seventy against fifty, what we see is sixty-seven against fifty-three. The right-wing bloc, the current coalition, which it must be said plunged from sixty-eight to fifty-three, is celebrating as though it had won every gold medal at the Olympics in a single day, and on the other side there is an acceptance of failure and of a grave defeat.
Maya Ilani: In my view that is a mistaken way of seeing it. We now have more fingers that opposed the agenda for whose sake many Israeli men and women went out into the street and took skunk water in the face, lost many hours of sleep and gave everything they had in order to defend this place. That agenda has no majority at present, nor anything approaching a majority. And there is another part to this, the notion that yesterday was a kind of crescendo, a kind of single day in which everything was settled. But politics is not like that. That is to say, the leaders, and not only leaders in the political arena but also in the press, in civil society, anywhere with a public platform and people who have an audience and influence, will face a great many decisions very soon, and every day, already this morning. If we understand that we have the power to shape their choices and to pull them toward supporting and safeguarding liberal democracy, our information environment, the fact that we do not want a propaganda channel to go on operating here twenty-four seven and broadcasting propaganda straight into the vein of nearly half of all Israelis, then we also have to understand that this is bigger than that moment yesterday.
Maya Ilani: We now have a majority, something we did not have until now. We have an infrastructure the like of which did not exist. If we looked at Israel five years ago, there was a capacity to mount very impressive demonstrations with very large turnout, but we did not have organizations such as we now see in civil society and in the public arena generally, which know how to turn out voters, which know how to safeguard the integrity of the election, which know how to combine press work with legal work. It has turned from a sprint, or from those blitzes that would erupt from time to time as demonstrations, into infrastructure and long-term power building. We have further fruit we will be able to enjoy from that work, if we keep our eyes on the ball and our chin up and understand that we have something to work with. I think that one of the things that most brings this home is to think if the shoe was on the other foot, what they would do on the other side with the power, the means and the resources now at our disposal. I think the answer is very clear.
What Can Be Done in Three Weeks
Guy Rolnik: Yes. So the obvious has to be said. Since the change bloc has a clear majority in the Knesset, unless there is some unforeseen drama in the envelopes not yet counted, and the chance of that is low, then within three weeks the Speaker of the Knesset can be replaced. Then the committees can be changed, and then moves can begin.
Maya Ilani: A government can be sworn in, yes.
Guy Rolnik: Clearly. Swearing in a government with the support of the Arab parties. And what can be done without any difficulty is to replace the Speaker of the Knesset and the committee chairs and to begin making dramatic changes very fast, in a sprint. To repeal all the regime-coup laws and legislate new laws in order to entrench, the Defendant Law can be dealt with, a long list of things can be done, and that, I think, is what the party leaders’ agenda has to be now, besides negotiating, of course, with the Arab parties.
The American Midterms
Guy Rolnik: We also have to be optimistic about next week, because we have the midterms in the United States. I think that on the whole this government received a great deal of tailwind from the antidemocratic populist wave around the world. Donald Trump’s existence and strength over these two years gave a great deal of power to all of this government’s madness, because Donald Trump breaks every rule, so he effectively gave a green light and completely normalized the wildest behavior in most of the countries that have leaders like Netanyahu. We saw his attempt to do it in Brazil, we saw his interventions and his friends’ interventions in Europe. And I think that now we have to be very careful with polls, after the fiasco we had here with the polls, but there is an expectation that the Democrats will take the House of Representatives, and perhaps even the Senate, although that keeps changing. I think that Donald Trump without such large public backing is a different kind of Donald Trump. It could go in all sorts of directions. If Donald Trump decides that he wants to apply very heavy pressure for political settlements, with the Saudis or with others, because he is thinking about his legacy, there may be a significantly different dynamic here from the one of these past two years.
Maya Ilani: Guy, in Israel this conversation is always heard through the prism of whether they love us or do not love us, whether it is good for us or not good for us. What is the significance of such an upset, if the Democrats take the Senate and the House in November? What is the significance for America?
Guy Rolnik: I think it is dramatically significant. This period, in which American democracy is crumbling before our eyes, comes to a halt. Donald Trump, who was a sole ruler, took steps to break down all the democratic institutions, exactly as was done in Israel. Ignoring the courts, taking over the press. We see his friends buying up the press, giving the technology giants what they want, and they give him what he wants. All of that will come to a halt. And of course, if the Democrats also manage to win a majority in the Senate, that is already dramatic, because then investigations will be opened. We will then see an America that, after two years in which we simply watch the liberal democratic camp being beaten, makes perhaps something of a turn.
Maya Ilani: So they did not conclude that the people has turned entirely to the right and that politics must be given up?
Guy Rolnik: No, not at all. That sentiment really does not exist there, and there we see something else. One really does see a dramatic change inside the party as well. We see the dramatic fall in Trump’s approval rating. It is now among the lowest any American president has had in the past fifty years, approaching thirty percent. And Americans are simply saying, his own voters, the MAGA voters, are saying, you promised us such and such and you are doing the opposite, above all the cost of living. The second thing, of course, is that he is perceived as someone Netanyahu dragged into the war with Iran, and they are killing him over that nonstop. At the moment it looks as though he is doubling down on the matter, and there may be another strike on Iran in the coming days or weeks. But there is a chance, and again, I am being very careful, there is no knowing how it will look, there is a chance that the Donald Trump of the next two years will be substantially different from the Donald Trump of the past two.
Guy Rolnik: Right. So we have mentioned several times the exclusion of Arab society, and of course the surprise in the polls and the exit samples, and we will talk about that with our interviewee today. I can already see him behind the glass. So Ron, you are invited to join us in the studio.
Did the Polls Collapse?
Guy Rolnik: Welcome, Ron Gerlitz, CEO of the aChord Center.
Ron Gerlitz: Hello. Good afternoon.
Guy Rolnik: How was your night?
Ron Gerlitz: Wow. The night was very rough, and the morning too.
Guy Rolnik: Tell us the details.
Ron Gerlitz: Look, I think the exit samples at first resembled what we had all thought, and then it looked as though the change bloc, on the Jewish side, had a majority relative to the Netanyahu bloc. And then something interesting happened in the studios. Suddenly that whole discourse about not forming a government with the Arabs, suddenly there were two hours in which we did not hear it. All we heard, both in the studios and from Eisenkot and from Bennett, was talk of their going to form a government. And then in the morning we woke up to a more complicated reality of the results.
Guy Rolnik: Yes. So let us begin at the beginning. We are going to talk a great deal about your main field of activity over these past twenty years, which is the subject of Arab society and of the exclusion of Arab society. But before that we can begin with the polls. It is a total bankruptcy, this business of the polls. All the pollsters showed Netanyahu at around twenty seats for the past half year, perhaps longer, and suddenly he finishes with twenty-six to twenty-eight.
Ron Gerlitz: No, I do not think there is a general bankruptcy of the polls. First of all, we saw yesterday in the exit samples, though we went through a very dramatic night, that we began the night with fifty seats for the Netanyahu bloc and it ended with fifty-three. That is not a collapse of the polls. And as for Netanyahu, there is apparently a transfer of seats from Smotrich’s and Ben Gvir’s parties to him, so that really is different from what the polls showed, but I do not think we are facing a collapse of the polls at all. I think that both emotionally and politically there is a large difference in a movement of a few seats, and the ratio between the change bloc on the Jewish side and the Netanyahu bloc is highly significant politically and in other respects as well. But I do not think the polls collapsed.
Maya Ilani: I will add to that, as someone who watched Channel 14 yesterday from morning till night, that if we are talking about turning out voters and about a gevald campaign, which was not there when the public cried out before the election, it probably also had a decisive influence.
Ron Gerlitz: True. It has to be said that on the whole the mainstream channels’ polls are much closer to the true results, the ones we at least know about now, with all the ballot boxes counted before the double envelopes. That is what we heard on Channel 14 all the time, that the Netanyahu bloc would have sixty-one seats. That is not the reality.
Guy Rolnik: Yes. So what is this talk of the past few hours? I remind our listeners that we are recording the podcast on Wednesday evening, so of course one has to be extremely careful on the networks, but there is all sorts of it, there is talk now that Filber was right. Filber was right.
Ron Gerlitz: Well. Filber said all along that the Netanyahu bloc would have sixty-one to sixty-two seats. Shortly before I came into the studio it was announced that all the ballot boxes had been counted, apart from the double envelopes, and that the Netanyahu bloc has fifty-three seats. So even if it ends with fifty-four seats for the Netanyahu bloc, Filber was not right.
Guy Rolnik: How did we not see this, that Netanyahu might finish so strong? It seemed as though everyone was moving away from Netanyahu.
Ron Gerlitz: That I cannot explain. I think yesterday’s dynamic, first of all his own dynamic, once again, with “the Arabs are flocking to the polls,” but yesterday it was on steroids. It was not just once. And the Arabs really did flock. The last time he had to do this, in 2015, he had to carry out what was allegedly bribery or breach of trust, with Shaul Elovitch and billions, and then everything that followed. Now it is all out in the open, with an entire channel. There is no need for one flattering article on the Walla site; instead you have an entire channel watched by hundreds of thousands of Israelis.
Guy Rolnik: Most coalition voters.
Ron Gerlitz: Yes. The second most watched channel in Israel. And the big party’s campaign probably worked as well.
A Victory for Channel 14?
Guy Rolnik: So one could say, since there is enormous uncertainty about Bennett’s and Lieberman’s willingness to form a government together with the Arabs or with the Arabs’ support, so until we see that outcome, can one say that the headline of this election is a victory for Channel 14?
Ron Gerlitz: No, not at all. I think an election, in many senses, is a referendum on the government. In a democratic country an election is one central question: does the public want the government to continue. And yesterday the public gave a very clear answer. We are probably looking at an election that ends with sixty-seven for the bloc opposed to Netanyahu and fifty-three for the Netanyahu bloc, and even if it turns out to be fifty-four, and even if it turns out to be fifty-five, there is a defeat for Netanyahu here. He came in with a coalition of sixty-eight seats. Subtract the four seats of Gideon Saar, which went over to him, and subtract the four seats of Meretz and Balad, which back then did not pass the electoral threshold, and we get to sixty seats. This election he is finishing with between fifty-three and fifty-five. The people have spoken. If democracy encompassed all citizens on an equal footing, then it is clear that Netanyahu lost. Now the question is whether the leaders of the change bloc will take this defeat and build, on the basis of this defeat, a different government.
The People Have Spoken
Guy Rolnik: Now, again, it is true that Netanyahu lost many seats, but after October 7 there was a certain expectation that the loss would be far greater. Because in the end, in the weeks after October 7 there was even a feeling that Netanyahu would have to resign at once, and not even wait for an election. So all the same, when you take October 7 into account and everything that has happened here over these three years, and the fact that in many areas this country feels as though it is falling apart, you still see the power of Netanyahu’s propaganda machine. Can that be ignored?
Ron Gerlitz: You are entirely right. I think many of us expected that in light of all of Netanyahu’s failures, truly colossal ones, in every field, and more than failures, what we had here was a deliberate destruction of a great many democratic and other institutions, the support he would receive would be far lower. And yes, I think it is certainly connected to the machine that also spreads fake news and conspiracies. It is certainly connected. For if we look only at the security conception, in any dimension I would cautiously call rational, Netanyahu both brought the disaster of October 7 upon us and failed to win a single war. But if one believes that October 7 is not because of Netanyahu but because of the head of the Shin Bet, the air force commander and all the theories of betrayal, then there is an explanation, and then Netanyahu is a hero. So it certainly has an influence. And I think that in this matter Channel 14 and the poison machine managed to achieve significant results, and that only says how important it is that it should not go on working.
Where the Sense of Enmity Comes From
Guy Rolnik: This racist sentiment against Arabs, which we see clearly, Maya read me some tweets before you came into the studio, tweets by very well-known journalists, supposedly liberals, but who immediately explain that one cannot form a government in partnership with Arab parties. Has that sentiment been growing worse since October 7, or does someone like you, who works on the integration of Arabs into Israeli society, tell us, friends, this has been here for many years, you have simply taken it full in the face just now, last night, but understand, this is the sentiment of the voter and of the Israeli public?
Ron Gerlitz: I would like permission to take you back a little, to 2019. In fact in the election campaigns from 2019 on, we know that the second campaign, in September 2019, was in fact the first time there was a public negotiation between Blue and White, headed by Gantz, and Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi. There was a famous photograph that was highly significant politically, but that looked a little shrunken in its visual terms. And after the third election, in March 2020, we know there was a very serious negotiation between Blue and White and the entire Joint List, which Ofer Shelah led. There was an afternoon on which all the generals, the heads of Blue and White, came out and said they were prepared to take such a step with the Joint List. And this was a different Joint List, not Mansour Abbas. A Joint List that included Balad, and with it that made sixty-one. Together with it that made sixty-one, and it was not pushed out. And Ashkenazi, and of course Lapid and Gantz. It was a very dramatic moment. In the end we remember that it fell through because of Yoaz Hendel and Zvi Hauser. And we at the aChord Center have been examining the public’s positions throughout these years, and back then there was very broad support for this among Blue and White voters. In the months after that too, ahead of the 2021 election, Yair Lapid was asked in an interview whether he had any problem forming a government with the Joint List. He said, no, of course not, there is no problem. It was a very dramatic moment.
Lapid: I am the one who led the move, the one who said there is no problem at all in forming a government with the support of the Joint List.
Interviewer: Does that mean you would be willing to form a government with the Joint List?
Lapid: Yes, certainly. What a question. Look, one day I may have good relations with them of the sort Netanyahu has. I hope we reach a situation in which there are good relations with the Joint List.
Interviewer: Until he did not do it.
Lapid: Not true.
Interviewer: Nobody paid any attention to you.
Lapid: Not true. I said publicly that a government should be formed with the support of the Joint List, as early as the third round.
Interviewer: And do you know what is a pity did not happen?
Lapid: What we need in this, all of Israeli society has to undergo a change, and changes do not happen overnight.
Ron Gerlitz: Again, this is 2021.
Guy Rolnik: True. Yair Lapid, 2020, 2021.
Ron Gerlitz: Yes, yes. He said, I have no problem at all forming a government with the Joint List. He was a candidate for prime minister at the time.
Maya Ilani: Hold on, I have a question about that. Because very often we see, especially, I have to say, in the camp of the parties of change, of repair, the liberal democratic ones, a sort of conviction that one looks at polls and we have to act according to the picture they paint for us. But at the institute, at aChord, you can see public opinion over time, and you really do have evidence of how the actions of leadership, things that come from above, shape public opinion. We all know the famous example of the peace treaty with Egypt and Sadat’s speech in the Knesset.
Ron Gerlitz: That is exactly how it is. In the period when the leadership of the political center spoke, and took it into account, and spoke of the possibility of forming a government with the Arabs’ support as legitimate, we really did measure far higher support figures. And we will come shortly to this day we are in, in which this thing is truly very dramatic and will decide the next government. I will say, in reply to the previous question, that after October 7 we really did see a significant fall in support for forming a government in partnership with the Arab parties or with their support. That is also naturally connected to the massacre of October 7, which aroused negative feelings toward Arabs. It is an entirely natural thing that happened in the wake of the massacre of October 7. But it is also connected to something else. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s central political project is to delegitimize Arab politicians. This is not only something that has happened in recent weeks, it is something that has been going on for thirty years. Thirty full years in which he has been delegitimizing Arab politicians, and that has brought us to the difficult moment we are in now.
Ron Gerlitz: I will say that over these past months we examined the positions of the liberal democratic camp, of the change bloc, and we saw that change bloc voters, broadly speaking, prefer a government that is not supported by the Arabs. But when their options are either a government with the Arabs’ support, or new elections, or a government with Netanyahu, a significant majority of change bloc voters prefer a government with the support of the Arab parties.
Guy Rolnik: Incidentally, what exactly is the fear? When you conduct in-depth interviews, what is it that change bloc voters fear about a partnership with the Arab parties?
Ron Gerlitz: What we see in the in-depth studies is that, unfortunately, a perception, truly a perception of enmity, of the Arab citizens, is strong. I say this with pain, including among change bloc voters. Not all of them, of course. The change bloc is made up of the right, of the center and of the left, and if it did not have that right wing, there is no chance it would have reached the achievement it reached in this election. And in the more right-wing wing of the change bloc we see harsh perceptions of the Arabs. And you know, if you perceive the Arab citizens in so harsh a way, to the degree of enmity, you do not want them to be part of the government.
The Incitement Against Arab Professionals
Guy Rolnik: It has to be said that there is a whole machine here, which you talk about a great deal, that reinforces those perceptions. Describe what has happened here over these past months, the incitement against Arab doctors, against Arab teachers, against Arab bus drivers. There has been incitement here on a scale we have not seen at all in recent decades, incitement against Arab professionals.
Ron Gerlitz: I think, and I also published an article about this in your paper in recent days, that this incitement has intensified greatly over these past months. You know, on Channel 14 they said that Arab doctors poison Jewish patients. It really, really was said. That Arab bus drivers stop deliberately in the middle of an intersection, and that they are a ticking bomb, because fifty people’s lives depend on them. The passengers’ lives do indeed depend on Arab bus drivers, but they are not ticking bombs. And even on the mainstream channels there was already a debate about whether someone without a gun license may be allowed to give an injection. It really did happen on one of the mainstream channels.
Guy Rolnik: Say the name of the channel, don’t be afraid, Ron.
Ron Gerlitz: It was on Channel 13. But in a debate, I think, a very serious one, and they did not make life easy there for the person who raised that claim. It was one of the interviewees who said it, not one of the panelists. There is a very large attempt to remove Arab teachers and Arab kindergarten teachers. And I think that what happened here over these past months, in this campaign, was an attempt to produce more and more of a perception of enmity toward the Arabs, precisely in order to prevent the question that is now on the table, as you said, the day after the election, whether a government can be formed with the Arabs. The great campaign against the Arabs was meant precisely to prevent this moment.
Maya Ilani: In connection with what you said about the injection, a relative of mine whom I love very much told me, last week, this story. She had to go, she is being treated for something in the palm of her hand, to physiotherapy. And she was sitting in the waiting room of the Maccabi health fund, outside, and there were five men there talking among themselves about politics, with all sorts of opinions, but they united around one thing, that Yair Golan is dangerous, because he goes with the Arabs. After they finished that conversation, each in turn went in to see the doctor and the physiotherapist, who are all Arabs, who give them wonderful service, and whom they love. It is as though they were two separate worlds. Everywhere we are surrounded by Arab society and we experience it every day in a wonderful way, and then there is a kind of separate world afterward. So I am trying to understand where this enmity comes from. Because it is not some abstract thing, because they are among us, they are twenty percent of the population, some of us meet them every day, and not only in certain places. How is it produced? Does it all come from above?
Ron Gerlitz: No. I think there are two things here. There really is a process that, as I said, is a natural social process, in the wake of October 7 and of the conflict. There is a violent conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Land of Israel, in the shared homeland there is a violent conflict, and within a violent conflict there is a very homogeneous perception of the other side, and then all Arabs look the same. All Palestinians in Gaza look like supporters of terror and supporters of Hamas. All Arabs in Israel look like people who support things that are against Jews. It is a perspective that occurs in a time of conflict between two nations, and there really is a conflict here in Israel as well, there is a national conflict. Many of us hoped that the great interaction between Jews and Arabs would manage to soften the positions of Jews and Arabs significantly. In our studies at aChord we see that interaction, exactly as you say, in the hospitals, in workplaces, in the universities, students studying together as well, does manage to produce more positive positions between the groups. But it is not enough against the situation of conflict, and it is not enough, and this is very very important to stress, against an orchestrated campaign that comes from above. For that perception, that Mansour Abbas supports terror, where does it come from? Do people wake up with it in the morning? No, people hear it all the time. People hear all the time that not only Mansour Abbas, but all Arab politicians support terror. They hear it on Channel 14.
Maya Ilani: Exactly. On Channel 14 yesterday they said that all Ra’am voters are supporters of terror, naturally.
Ron Gerlitz: True.
Maya Ilani: Yesterday Feiglin explained that the Arab citizens’ vote is a vote against the state.
Ron Gerlitz: God help us. They are doing an October 7 to us at the ballot box, and it is precisely the reverse. I think that if we look at the Arab citizens’ vote yesterday, what happened is an extraordinary event. Turnout rose by more than twenty-five percent over the previous election. It is close to eighty percent now.
The Vote in Arab Society
Guy Rolnik: Now, of course. When you attribute it mainly to crime in Arab society, to their feeling that they are owed a repair.
Ron Gerlitz: Look, we at the aChord Center have worked a great deal on this matter of encouraging voting in Arab society. It is one of the things we have worked on, mainly in research and in message development. There were a great many other players in the field who did truly wonderful work. And what we see is that this vote had several components. First the truth has to be told: Ben Gvir made his significant contribution. The degrading attitude toward Arab society and the abuse of Arab society certainly drove people to the polls. This vote was the desire, of course, to deal with the matter of rampant crime in the Arab towns, and it came largely from a place of protest, of rage, of anger, which was translated into a vote. But I want to offer one more perspective, one I am not sure some of my friends in Arab society would agree with. That vote yesterday, which really was at very high rates, is also an expression of trust, at least of a certain trust, in the democratic system. That someone goes to the ballot box bearing the emblem of the state and puts in the slip means he believes something good can come of it for him.
Maya Ilani: And what do you attribute that to? If there is a rise in trust in democratic institutions and in the state of Israel, what do you attribute it to?
Ron Gerlitz: I did not say there is a rise. I said there is still trust. Perhaps it is even a desperate trust, but there is still trust, which made them not only vote but go and bring out the aunts and the grandmothers. We heard stories of people being brought out of buildings with no elevator, people who do not go out, stories of heroism, in order to bring them to the polls yesterday evening in Arab society. And I attribute that to the fact that the condition of Arab society is so bad that they are therefore still prepared to place trust in the state and in its institutions and in its democratic systems, and they flocked to the polls. And I think that in the face of that there is now a large question: where do the leaders of the change bloc stand. Will they take Arab society’s trust and the Arab political leadership, which said before the election and again this morning, including Professor Jabareen, who heads the Joint List, that they are prepared to do what is needed in order to replace Netanyahu’s rule. Will the leaders of the change bloc take the Arab leadership’s positions and the trust they received, the trust the Arab citizens placed yesterday in the country’s democratic system, and form a government capable of taking us onto the path of repair.
Bennett and Lieberman
Guy Rolnik: Here the two problematic players are, of course, Bennett and Lieberman.
Ron Gerlitz: Certainly. In fact Lieberman’s electorate hates Arabs and hates the ultra-Orthodox, but Lieberman’s electorate holds more democratic and liberal positions in every field than Lieberman himself. We see it in all our studies. I am also sure Lieberman knows it. Even on the question of attitudes toward a political settlement, Lieberman’s electorate holds positions far more favorable to a political settlement than Lieberman does.
Guy Rolnik: So why do they vote for him?
Ron Gerlitz: I think there are matters of identity here. I think he is perceived as a very very strong leader. There are matters connected to the community from the former Soviet Union.
Guy Rolnik: So essentially because of his delivery, you are saying. Decisive.
Ron Gerlitz: He sounds decisive. There is the claim that a word is a word.
Guy Rolnik: In your paper they have also written some far less good things about him over the years, especially Gidi Weitz, and others too.
Ron Gerlitz: A vote is also a very identity-driven act, a very emotional one. In our studies we look at the positions of four parties of the change bloc. Among the Democrats there is truly full support for forming such a government. We see it in these past weeks and also in the survey we ran last night. Among Eisenkot and Bennett there is a small majority for such a government, though, and perhaps we will discuss this shortly, now in light of the election results the Joint List is needed as well, and that is more complicated. Among Lieberman the figures are lower, but they too are in the region of forty to fifty percent. Look, yesterday Lieberman, in his speech, did not say even once that he will not form a government with the Arabs. It is the first time this subject is on the table and he did not refer to it.
Guy Rolnik: Yes, but it may be that in his case it is somewhat tactical, that he wants to keep all his options open, that he is trying to raise the price with everyone, to raise the price on this side, he tells himself. So do you think that Bennett and Eisenkot, if they took a clear position of including Arab society, have the ability to change their electorate’s sentiment?
Ron Gerlitz: I am convinced of it. First of all, studies show, a study conducted by Professor Noam Gidron, that people have more sympathy for parties when they sit in a coalition with the party those people chose. And we saw in the change government, among the Jewish voters of the parties in the change government, that over the course of the government there was more sympathy toward Ra’am, because it sat in a coalition with the party they had voted for.
Three Alternatives
Ron Gerlitz: But I want to say something much much deeper. There are now two alternatives here, that is how it looks from the results. There is the alternative of another election. I do not think one needs to elaborate on how bad and how catastrophic that is.
Guy Rolnik: One does need to elaborate. Because perhaps it also has to be said that the significance of another election, beyond the economic and political and security cost, is that in another election there is a chance the Netanyahu bloc would grow stronger, the further we move away from October 7.
Ron Gerlitz: True. And it is also doubtful whether all the Israelis who came out to protest would come out again in a few months. It is doubtful whether the Arab citizens, who yesterday really did fill the polling stations, would come again. I think Netanyahu has a clear interest in going to another election.
Guy Rolnik: From a small sample of all the people who were with me on the plane three days ago, in the United States, there were a lot of people. I think most people would not do it again.
Ron Gerlitz: I agree with you. So it is a very bad option. We are left with two other options, and I am speaking from the perspective of people who want to bring about change in Israel. It is either a unity government or a government with the support of the Arab parties. I think a unity government that included the Likud leaves inside the government a party and people and politicians who over these past years have been engaged in destroying democracy in Israel and in other very very grave matters. And I think that the change bloc, if it wants to bring about real change, its path is to form a government with the support of the Arab parties. I want to say clearly that this will be very difficult, and if you like we can talk about the difficulties that will certainly be there. But if one wants to bring about repair and healing of Israeli society on so many levels, and if one wants to defend democracy, God help us, democracy here is really in danger, do you want to take the people who rose up against democracy and put them inside the government once again, or would you rather take the partners from Arab society, who are a minority that naturally has an interest in strengthening democracy? And I think that the repair of relations within Israeli society, and the repair of the public service, and so very many things that can be done here, can be done, not without difficulties, but far more easily in partnership together with the Arab parties.
Reconciliation with Right-Wing Voters
Ron Gerlitz: Such a government will of course also have to see to extending a hand and making a significant move of reconciliation with those who voted against it. And that will be rough, the attack on it will be very very harsh.
Guy Rolnik: Explain, reconciliation with whom?
Ron Gerlitz: I am talking about Likud voters and right-wing voters who did not vote for it, the ones who voted for the Netanyahu bloc. And not only will there be great anger at the formation of a government with the Arabs, think too what the poison machine will do with such a thing, certainly in light of the results of this election. Incidentally, we are already seeing it. We see the videos that have come out since yesterday and also this morning: every statement by Arab members of Knesset from these past years, or from yesterday’s speeches after the results were published, or from recent years, everything comes out in order to show the enmity of all Arab politicians. It will be very very rough. I think a very very very large act of leadership will be needed here from Eisenkot and from others. I think it is a move on the scale of the move Yitzhak Rabin made. And incidentally, exactly in this context, I think that such a change government, in partnership with the Arabs, as it appears from the results, will need Ra’am’s support in the government and the Joint List’s abstention. And the Joint List’s abstention will be there, if we listen to what the chairman of the Joint List says. This is the way to take Israel toward repair, and with all the difficulties, this is in fact the opportunity contained in the election results, which are far less good than what we wanted, but it is possible to form such a government.
Maya Ilani: I want to ask you about the reconciliation. The reconciliation of right-wing voters who did not vote for the right-wing parties of the change bloc, and who will have to be reconciled if a government is formed with the support and the participation of Arab parties. The assumption here is in fact that they, you spoke of the poison machine and of all sorts of quotations springing up, taken out of context, presented in a threatening way and so forth. Is there a way to satisfy that monster? That is, to go out toward those stories and the people who bought them, who truly believe that all, for instance, Ra’am voters are supporters of terror and of Hamas and so forth. We saw part of that in those parties’ own campaigns, which said, we will not sit, that is, the thought that if they say they will not sit with Arabs, then more right-wing voters, the soft right, that elusive bloc, will come over to them. It did not happen. How do you see that reconciliation? Can one show that going to a clear place and saying that this partnership does not lead to destruction and perdition and the end of Jewish existence is perhaps a better way of dealing with it?
Ron Gerlitz: We know from social psychology, and we at the aChord Center work on social psychology, that norms that occur in the public, and also leaders’ statements, have a very very large influence, a significant influence, on people’s perceptions. It is not in one day, it is not a button that can be pressed. And it also has to be said that it is highly desirable to press the button that would weaken or shut down the poison machine, right? People need to stop hearing on television that Arab doctors poison Jewish patients. It is very much worth shutting that button off.
Guy Rolnik: I think on that the three of us are in complete agreement.
Maya Ilani: And that is not an infringement of freedom of speech.
Ron Gerlitz: No, that is saving freedom of speech.
Maya Ilani: That, and also the regulation of the social networks, which dismantled freedom of speech and replaced it with the freedom to sic the dogs.
Ron Gerlitz: Alongside that, we have now prepared a program, a program for the next government, a large one, for the struggle against racism and against Kahanism. And one of the things in it, beyond the fact that, of course, a government with the Arabs transmits a norm. The Arabs are part of the coalition, so they are not enemies, because they are part of the coalition, and it is a coalition that Eisenkot will form, right? And Bennett and Lieberman. And also statements from the leadership. That is, the next time an Arab bus driver is violently attacked. For it is unbelievable that Miri Regev, the transport minister, did not go the next day to the hospital to show solidarity with the bus drivers who were beaten only because they are Arabs. If the next transport minister, all right, if he is from Eisenkot’s party, or Bennett’s, or the Democrats’, shows up at the bus driver’s bedside, that transmits a message. If the next time someone says they cannot be treated by Arab doctors the health minister does not ignore it but comes to the hospital and says that Arab doctors are flesh of Israeli society’s flesh, that is how norms are changed.
Guy Rolnik: Yes. Societies have managed to recover in far worse cases, and you can understand what I am referring to.
Ron Gerlitz: Societies can recover, but that depends on their leadership and on what norms it transmits.
De-Kahanization
Guy Rolnik: But since you have referred to what you referred to, then really, after the Second World War there was a very clear and sharp effort by the Allies. What is the Israeli equivalent of what was done there? Zehava Galon wrote an article about this today, de-Kahanization. In 1945 it was de-Nazification, and we need a de-Kahanization of Israeli society. We do not have much time. We have Iran over our heads, and we have the networks, there is a populist wave across the world. What sharp and swift steps do we have to take? Let us suppose that in a first stage we have the Knesset, and after that perhaps a narrow government. What steps of de-Kahanization of Israeli society have to be taken?
Ron Gerlitz: Of the two things, I of course prefer to talk about de-Kahanization. First of all, a party that has Kahanist people in it: not to work toward its being part of the next government. And in the Likud there are Kahanist elements, let us tell the truth. Listen to the statements of some of the twenty in the Likud.
Guy Rolnik: About half, no?
Ron Gerlitz: Yes, something like that. Half the members of Knesset. Very harsh statements, explicit calls that were heard from the mouths of people in the Likud, and very very grave things. So first of all they have to be kept away from the centers of power, in order to carry out a de-Kahanization of Israel. And it is worth it, it is desirable, it is important, that they not be in the next government, and that is one more reason to form a government on the other alternative, with the support of the Arab parties. Besides that, a very very large educational move has to be made. That saying that it begins with education is not a cliché. Education for democracy and education for shared life have to be a truly significant part of the Israeli education system. And incidentally, in the eighties and the nineties it was that way. There was education, education for peace was part of the education system. In Rabin’s time these are the things that happened in the education system, and they had an effect. And the fact that in the education system there is no education whose purpose is to strengthen the foundations of faith in democratic systems, here we see the result. We really, really see the result.
Ron Gerlitz: And of course, together with a great many other moves I spoke of earlier, those of norms. What does the employment minister, or the labor minister, do when there are calls to remove Arab workers from workplaces? That sets society’s perception. If he keeps silent, it is legitimate. If Miri Regev kept silent about the attacks on Arab bus drivers, it is no wonder that among kids there was the TikTok challenge. Did you hear about that? The TikTok challenge, to upload to TikTok an attack on an Arab driver. But if the next transport minister comes out against it with full force, and in the education system it is taught and explained in which places people were attacked only because they were Jews, and TikTok does not promote such content, and this you understand better than I do, that can influence the norms. That is how a de-Kahanization is done.
Maya Ilani: Yes. I am only trying to imagine that the situation deteriorates so far, and then I imagine that in some cases, in the education system, an attempt to do this could meet resistance today, for instance because of what has happened in Israeli society over these past years, because of the violence of pupils toward the teaching staff.
Ron Gerlitz: Clearly. Anyone who has gone into the schools lately and tried to speak even in favor of the change bloc certainly got verbal abuse. But it is certainly dangerous. Look at the teachers too: as though the problem were not only the pupils’ positions, as though the problem were also the teachers’ positions. I think Israel is in a very very grave crisis because of many things, but also because of the normalization of Kahanism in part of Israeli society. It will be a process of years, and it is not certain to succeed. It obliges the next government to decide that it is making moves of that kind. And we come back once again to the same direction. If there is a unity government that only wants to get through its days somehow, and will not make such moves of de-Kahanization, these things only deteriorate, they do not stay where they are. The opportunity for repair is now.
Ron Gerlitz: Perhaps, and I do not want to put anyone under pressure, but it seems to me I am not the only one saying this, perhaps this is the last chance. Israeli society is in a grave condition, and societies, incidentally, deteriorate into places far graver than the one we are in. But I think that in that sense Gadi Eisenkot and the other leaders face a decision of a truly dramatic magnitude, and of a magnitude, I think, of the kind Yitzhak Rabin took, and he too formed a government of the kind we are talking about here.
Guy Rolnik: I assume you know some of them, some of them and their staffs, and that you have dealings with them. Can they, as they say in English, step up? Are these people built for this challenge?
Ron Gerlitz: Wow, that is an enormous question. It is an enormous question. We will really see in the coming weeks. In 1991 people thought Yitzhak Rabin was making so dramatic a move toward the Palestinians, recognizing Palestinian nationhood, bringing the Palestinian leader from Tunis to Israel, and doing it with the help of the political power of the Arab citizens. I think very few people thought he would do it.
Guy Rolnik: I do not want to take anything away from that, but I have a feeling, and again, I remember 1991 and 1992, I have a feeling that if there had been TikTok, Instagram and Channel 14 in 1992, Rabin would not have been able to swim against that current. That is my sense of it.
Ron Gerlitz: It may be. But let me recall what there was in 1992. The man who was leader of the opposition, and I tell this to the young folks who think I am pulling their leg, but the man who was leader of the opposition, the one whose own government in September 1993 began to lean on the Arab parties, was Benjamin Netanyahu. But we are thirty years on, thirty-three years on, and it is the same Netanyahu, and facing him now are Eisenkot and Bennett and Lieberman. The question is whether they will have the strength to stand against him, and to understand that ever since those years he has grasped that his hold on power is in danger, above all if the Arab citizens become legitimate within the Israeli political system.
Guy Rolnik: Incidentally, over these past seventeen years he has been prime minister continuously, apart from one year, the year in which his political project of delegitimization collapsed, in June 2021.
Ron Gerlitz: True, but his project collapsed, and then his hold on power collapsed too for a year. And you ask me about them: I do not know. I made a few phone calls, and it seems to me I can say, cautiously, I understand that they are wavering. I hear that many people, and many fine people, are calling on them to do it. There are certainly many people in the change bloc who are determined to put pressure on the leaders of the change bloc to make use of Netanyahu’s defeat in order to form a government without the Likud, a government of change and repair that relies on cooperation with the Arabs as well. So there is their pressure, and there are the opponents within their own public, and it depends very much on how far they will be prepared to take that step, which from their point of view is a dangerous step. It is clear that there will also be violence from the other side. I think that in a great many senses the fate of the country depends on a decision that will be taken in the very next few days.
Maya Ilani: I am curious, and I do not want to put you on the spot, but in the period when Netanyahu and the whole Likud apparatus did the work of making him kosher and prepared that public for there being some agreement with Ra’am, before it all blew up because of Smotrich, did we see any change in the public opinion of Netanyahu bloc voters regarding a partnership with Ra’am?
Ron Gerlitz: Certainly we did. It is connected to what I said earlier. I will use the word signal. Suddenly the institutional signal from Netanyahu arrived. Incidentally, today the videos were put up again, so they are easy to recall, the ones in which Netanyahu declares the Arabs kosher and says they are an important part of Israeli society, and declares Mansour Abbas kosher. If he is the prime minister, and all the more so if he is a man of the right, the signal is significant. And after that, incidentally, we saw it when Bennett was prime minister, because Bennett too was a man of the right, and in this matter Bennett deserves credit: it was Bennett who in fact brought Mansour Abbas into the coalition. He suddenly said, Mansour Abbas does not support terror, because he is part of his coalition. And then we saw among Bennett’s voters, who are people of the right, more positive perceptions of the Arabs. Certainly. That signal worked when Netanyahu made that move, in his attempt to join up with Ra’am, and also during the period of the change government. That signal will work, and here I want to say something positive, in the hope that it comes about. If there is now such a government, in partnership with the Arabs, that signal will work at least on part of the public, and that signal will fight the signals coming from the poison machine.
Maya Ilani: So a combination of sending a certain signal and also contending with that machine which spreads lies and antidemocratic narratives, which enter squarely into the realms of incitement and of calls to violence. It is a combined action that you see as capable of influencing public opinion significantly in Israel.
Ron Gerlitz: Exactly so. The combination of the two is needed. If those two things happen, perhaps we will manage to come out of the crisis. If those two things do not happen, we will not manage to come out of the crisis, and the crisis will deepen.
Guy Rolnik: As for the sentiment against Arab society, does what is happening in Europe, and above all what is happening on the social networks, the sentiment there, the tensions there, around what we see mainly on the networks, around the immigrants and so on? And I see that in Israeli discourse people keep saying, look, look at what the Europeans did, we must not repeat the Europeans’ mistakes. We see very great racism from those directions. Does that have a significant influence on the sentiment in Israel?
Ron Gerlitz: It certainly has an influence. I do not know whether a significant one or not, but part of the perception of all Arabs and all Muslims as negative is fed by all sorts of things. There are also real things in reality, like the conflict and terror and so forth, and there are things happening in Europe, and there is also a great deal of fake material about what is happening in Europe. Right? The Muslims are taking over London and Paris and Hamburg and everywhere. And those things are heard. And again, you are the last people in the world I need to talk to about the influence of the fake. And yes, it has an influence. And again, alongside it there are forces in Israel that try to amplify it. For what is it that the inciting forces are trying to say? They are trying to say that Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, any combination in that chain, or any part of those combinations, are by definition against the state. And so they look at the Palestinians in Gaza and in the territories, they look at the Arabs in Europe, and then they look also at the Arabs who are citizens of the State of Israel, and it reaches the Arab doctor and the Arab student sitting next to them. So it certainly has an influence. And against that there are other experiences. There is the experience of being treated by an Arab doctor. There is the experience of being a student at university and having an Arab lecturer who helps you, and that comes out as a positive experience. There is the experience of a mother who comes to the kindergarten to pick up her daughter, in the towns of the Sharon, and the caregiver there, in most cases she is an Arab caregiver who looks after her daughter very nicely. So in society both the one and the other happen, and over all of them what decides is what we said earlier, what the system transmits about this matter.
Jewish Identity and Israeli Identity
Maya Ilani: Wearing the hat of political interpretation, there are the famous stories about the advice Arthur Finkelstein gave Netanyahu back in the day, when he said that in fact the question has to be whether you are Israeli or Jewish. Whether you are a globalist and mobile, or whether you are Jewish and settled and rooted, in favor of the people of Israel, the land of Israel and the Torah of Israel. And it seems that the change bloc faces that same dilemma, and has to decide whether it goes with the Jewish story, which is the same story that Netanyahu and his bloc are pushing, that this is the one true, authentic identity, or whether they choose the Israeli identity, which has more components besides ethnicity and religion.
Ron Gerlitz: Yes. Look, I also want to, God help us, how did they manage to catch…
Maya Ilani: You have already started with “God help us,” we already know where this is going.
Ron Gerlitz: It is a question for Jews, so I answer. So I will say: God help us, they managed to paint the change bloc as a bloc estranged from Judaism. Now, who are the leaders of the change bloc? Bennett, Eisenkot. Are these people estranged from Judaism? Absolutely not. But on the right there really is a very great desire to do it. I think the solution lies in the joining of Jewish identity to Israeli identity. I think Jewish identity is important, incidentally to me personally as well. But I will say more than that, and this is also connected to what you asked me earlier. If the change government is formed, if it wants to reconcile with the people who chose the Netanyahu bloc, it also has to respect their Jewish identity and the state’s, even if that clashes with liberal values. I think that will be important and very significant. And together with that, in the context of Israeli identity, that is exactly the place of recognition: to look at the citizens who are not Jewish and to say that they have a very very very significant place here. And the struggle is in fact about that. Will political power here be only in Jewish hands? And the concept of a Jewish majority, which has become so commonplace a concept, a Jewish majority and a Zionist majority, and I will say it honestly, it is even a concept, as though nobody were listening to me, that I too began to use in these past weeks, in an attempt to advance a change government. For what did Yair Golan write on Facebook this morning? Here, I even shared it. He wrote that in light of the election results there is a Zionist majority for a change government. Because he took from the Netanyahu bloc and subtracted the ultra-Orthodox, who are not Zionists. So yes, these concepts are very important to Israeli society, they cannot be ignored. The line that we are global, it does not matter to us who is Jewish, it does not matter who is a Zionist: that simply will not work in Israeli society, certainly not in the place it is in.
Ron Gerlitz: But on the other hand, and this too is not really on the table, that is, there is no party promoting it, the change bloc and the leadership of the change bloc are certainly not in that place, the question is whether we are prepared, in addition to the Jewish identity of the state and of the political leadership and of a large majority of the Jewish public, also to recognize the Israeli identity, and, in a deep sense of democracy, to recognize it as one man one vote. That is what we are talking about.
Maya Ilani: True.
Ron Gerlitz: That is not joining up with terrorist forces, it is going to the most basic place in democracy.
Guy Rolnik: Because we are speaking in hours when the whole camp is in mourning. It has to be said that in the sitting government, first of all it is a minority government, as of now, and that it has members, including cabinet members, who have been convicted of terrorism.
Ron Gerlitz: Absolutely.
Guy Rolnik: I had to explain to my children that Ben Gvir was convicted of terrorism. They thought I was a boomer and that I was pulling their leg, so we opened Wikipedia and saw it.
Ron Gerlitz: Whatever you say, you will come off a boomer.
Guy Rolnik: On that I agree. But I will say that in these past hours everyone is depressed, right? That anywhere else sixty-seven against fifty-three, wow, they would have taken to the streets. In Brazil they took to the streets, and in Hungary they took to the streets, and in Serbia. Now, why does nobody take to the streets here? Because the sixty-seven is made up of non-Jews. In the United States, where they have an election in a week, nobody discounts the Jewish voters. Does anyone say he cannot be a senator because he is Jewish? That is, one can no longer say that anything will not happen in America, because in America everything happens, but that is not happening yet. It is still not happening in America. Nobody challenges the right of Jews in Israeli politics, nor in part of American politics and part of American government. We did not say that the goal the footballer scores in the match will not count because the player is an Arab.
Ron Gerlitz: True. But this is the opportunity for change. This is the opportunity for change. If the change camp wants to bring about change, it will not do it without the Arabs, and that is not an extreme step. It is not an extreme step to go with the choice of the majority of citizens. I think that is the line which, if the leaders of the change bloc follow it, can take us to a far better place.
What He Would Say to Naftali Bennett
Guy Rolnik: All right. For a great many years I have not spoken with Naftali Bennett; we used to talk. Suppose I send him this podcast, I do not know whether he will listen to it. What is your pitch, in two sentences, for why he has to form a government with the Arabs and not start making enormous efforts now toward a unity government with Netanyahu?
Ron Gerlitz: Oh, that is a challenge. I would tell Naftali Bennett that he once took a very large step of leadership, one that broke new ground in the history of Israel, and that from our vantage point we know it influenced positions and perceptions, both of the Arab citizens, some of whose representatives were part of the coalition, and of the Jewish citizens. Now he stands at a more dramatic crossroads, because Israeli society is in a far far worse place, and the repair of Israeli society is more than a repair, it is almost an act of rescue. If he wants to perform an act of rescue, and I think he does, then his path is to rebuild once again the alliance with the one he had an alliance with, that same Mansour Abbas. Mansour Abbas has not changed, and Naftali Bennett knows it. I spoke today with someone from his campaign, and he said to me, listen, if he goes with the Arabs, it is the end of his political career. I do not know. I think that if he does not go with the Arabs, and they went to another election or to a unity government, perhaps it is the end of the State of Israel as we know it. That seems to me the worse possibility, for him and for his children too. One can look at it: we have almost laboratory conditions. We have Benny Gantz, who refused the Joint List’s recommendation, and who does not pass the electoral threshold, and who is not running at present. And we have Naftali Bennett, who broke an election promise, was prime minister of a change government that Ra’am was a member of, and has now come back with more seats.
Guy Rolnik: True.
Ron Gerlitz: And may be a senior minister in the coming government.
Guy Rolnik: Well, that is optimistic, isn’t it? We can end this interview there. It is exactly the moment, right, Maya?
Maya Ilani: Yes.
Guy Rolnik: Ron Gerlitz, thank you very much for coming to our studio.
Ron Gerlitz: Thank you very much.
