After Trump assassination attempt, I say: Americans and Israelis, do better.
The political hypocrisy is pungent and completely unproductive to building a better country, both in the United States and Israel.
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Following the assassination attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump yesterday, government ministers in Israel have been quick to compare incitement against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to threats against Trump, claiming that the Israeli premier too could face an assassination attempt if certain discourse is left unchecked.
Israel’s governmental cabinet screened a compilation of video clips showing critics of the government engaging in “incitement against the prime minister” during the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday. It was not on the cabinet’s original agenda but was added after the attempt on Trump’s life during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
In the short video aired at the start of the cabinet meeting, various people, including anti-government protesters, can be heard deriding Netanyahu as a “traitor,” “Satan,” and an “enemy of the people.” In another clip, Ayala Metzger, the daughter-in-law of Hamas hostage Yoram Metzger, can be heard saying: “We are waiting with a noose.” In the full quote, Metzger was referring to Netanyahu and his wife Sara.
The rhetoric from some in Israel’s anti-Netanyahu Left has become so out-of-hand (and that leash is pretty damn long in Israeli society) that our president, Isaac Herzog (a former Left-leaning politician), had to come out and make a statement two weeks ago, urging Israelis to temper inflammatory statements and accusations of treason between political opponents, warning that verbal abuse can lead to physical violence if left unchecked.
In his remarks, President Herzog said, “When groups incite and accuse each other of trying to undermine and destroy the country, it is clear to all of us that something terrible is happening here — something that begins with verbal violence, but that I suspect really won’t end there.”
He decried violent statements “against families of hostages and bereaved families, against the chief and commanders of the IDF and the security agencies, against women and members of the media, against the judiciary and judges, against ministers and Knesset members and against the incumbent prime minister” — which, he said, have become “commonplace.”
“Have we learned nothing from our history?” Herzog asked, seemingly alluding to the political environment in Israel in the months before a religious extremist assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
Back in America, I have been visiting New York and Los Angeles for the past few weeks after not being in the U.S. for some two years. Even as I have been living in Israel, I knew that many Americans do not like Biden or Trump — to say the least — but being here and having conversations firsthand with Americans about both presidents has been an eye-opening experience for me. And not in a good way.
The amount of vitriol that people have for either Biden or Trump is absurd, and the reasons for it are even more so. People on both sides think the other is the devil’s gift to the world, and as someone who has a pretty objective lens through which I have been watching this unfold from Israel, I can tell you that people on both sides have valid arguments.
The idea that only people on one side “know better” than their fellow Americans is nothing short of elitism, condescending, and disrespectful. Furthermore, virtually every argument that people make against Biden or Trump can also be leveled at the other. Here are just two of many examples.
First, people claim that Trump will destroy American democracy, yet Biden’s camp deliberately conspired against other Democrats (e.g. Dean Phillips, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) from running against him in Democratic primaries, knowing there would be at least a decent chance that the 81-year-old Biden could lose to one of them had Democratic voters been given a fair chance to vote for who they want their candidate to be in the upcoming election.
That constitutes a serious subversion of democracy by Biden’s camp.
I know this because two billionaire mega-donors to the Democratic Party — Chamath Palihapitiya and Bill Ackman — said so publicly recently. And, frankly, I trust their viewpoints far more than others who simply read headlines and jump to media-induced, sheep-herd-like conclusions predominantly based on absolute hatred for Trump.
Now, the second example: People claim that Trump, as a convicted felon, is unfit to be president. That’s fair, if you are only focused on Trump. But do you know the difference between a convicted felon and a professional politician? One got caught and the other didn’t. Professional politicians, like Biden and Netanyahu, are some of the most corrupt, law-breaking people on this planet. They are just very adept at covering it up; hence the word professional in “professional politician.”
These two examples do not mean that Trump is a better candidate than Biden, or that I am head-over-heels for Trump. All it means is that the vast majority of politicians, Trump and Biden notwithstanding, are virtually the same. They all have the so-called good, bad, and ugly. They are all self-interested, populist schmucks. And they all don’t know your names and don’t really care about you, even if you really care about them.
In my opinion, the most knowledgeable, sophisticated voters start from this baseline and then decide for themselves who they think will be the best candidate for themselves, their circumstances, and their surroundings. After all, we are all self-interested (some more than others), and there is nothing wrong with that.
Yet so many people who are otherwise smart, rational actors lose all their bearings when it comes to Trump, Biden, Netanyahu, and other politicians. And then we have assassination attempts which have no place in a true democracy. No less that so many people this weekend were quietly, deep down, upset that the assassin did not successfully land his bullets on Trump’s skull and kill him.
I don’t know about you, but I actually love democracy. And, at least for me, this does not mean that I love democracy only when my preferred candidates win. After Netanyahu’s Likud party won the 2022 Israeli election and went on to form a very Right-wing coalition, I was not in the least upset — even though I did not vote for Likud or any other parties in Netanyahu’s coalition.
However, so many Israelis were beside themselves that Netanyahu and his Likud party won again. There are reasons beneath the service that triggered many of these Israelis, some of which I can understand, but the bottom line is that democracy is the best form of government, even when candidates we do not desire win elections, and Netanyahu’s Likud party democratically won the election.
If we only appreciate democracy when our candidate wins, and if we only want to surround ourselves with people who think like us politically and socioeconomically, and if we are unwilling to respectfully listen to and contemplate others who have different opinions and viewpoints than ours, that is not democracy. That is a form fascism, notably suppression of opposition.
Just two days ago, at a Shabbat dinner with my Dad and his wife’s friends, a woman asked me who I am voting for in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. I told them what I wrote above — that all candidates are the same sh*t even if they brand themselves differently — and that, therefore, each American citizen should (1) vote according to whatever their top one or two priorities are, and (2) be respected for whomever they give their vote to, according to their top one or two priorities.
I then proceeded to explain that, for me, my number-one priority by far in this upcoming election is the United States’ relationship with Israel, and I want the party (the Republicans) that I feel is most aligned with making good on America’s support for Israel — and not just in a military aid package that is not so much “aid” when you really look at the details of it.
I also told her that I respect the priorities of everyone else at the table and, thus, it does not bother me who everyone else votes for, and I have no problem living with the results, however they shake out.
This woman then looked at me and said, “You don’t have your priorities straight.”
Luckily I don’t have anger management issues or else I would have broken my glass cup over her head. Ironically, it is this kind of elitist, condescending virtue-signaling that has been pushing historically Democratic voters (like myself) away from the party.
She then said to me, “How could Israel be your top priority if you live in America? Shouldn’t you vote based on what is best for America, not Israel?”
Forget the fact that I am a dual American-Israeli citizen. The bigger issue is that, in places like the United States and Israel, people claim to be doing what’s in the “best interest of this country” while despising half the people who live in it because they disagree politically.
As far as I am concerned, the hypocrisy is pungent and completely unproductive to building a better country, both in the United States and Israel.
To this I implore: Americans and Israelis, please try to do better.
The rhetoric must be lowered but especially on the left which has pushed the edge of the envelope as to what tactics can be used against an opponent
Joshua, you are so level headed that most of the emotionally driven electorate can't relate to you. I say that as a compliment! Here is a story about choosing your priorities. When Ed Koch was running for re-election for mayor if NYC in the 80's, he famously said, "if you agree with me on 8 out of 10 issues , you should vote for me. If you agree with me on 10 out of 10 issues, you should see a psychiatrist"