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Moshe Feiglin is head of the Jewish Leadership faction in the Likud and can be reached via the web site.
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By Moshe Feiglin
December 10, 2004
About five years ago I announced my intention of bringing the Jewish Leadership movement, which I chair, into the Likud Party.
When I shared my plans with past and present Likud members who were honest, ideologically committed people, I got the same reaction from most of them: "They'll eat you for breakfast."
I was told that Likud today is only about jobs, patronage and special interests. "Either you will become like them, or find yourselves outside within a short time."
Fortunately, I did not heed the warnings and, lo and behold, the Jewish Leadership movement did not turn into job seekers. And we certainly have no intention of leaving the party.
Instead, the opposite happened.
The ideologically committed elements in the party raised their heads. The national party of government turned from being a body that had abandoned its values, and whose internal discussion mostly revolved around the distribution of patronage, into a body whose internal discussion has gone back to being substantive.
It is hard to overstate the significance of the ideological impetus caused by a serious and determined body the Jewish Leadership faction which joined the Likud with no "price tag."
Of course, interests and ambitions are still prevalent, as in any party. But it is substantive discussions that have now taken center stage.
Today Israel is privileged to have a ruling party that repeatedly examines itself in light of the values with which it set out. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who thought his party was devoid of ideology, did not appreciate the change we had wrought when he turned in a direction that contradicted the Likud's original values.
Today Sharon finds himself fighting for hegemony in his own party. Sometimes he loses, sometimes he wins, but the misunderstanding he displays about the true undercurrents in the Likud will ultimately lead to him being thrown out of the party in disgrace.
In the Knesset vote on the disengagement plan, the Likud split. Half voted an ideologically committed vote and against its leader's plan. The other half ignored ideology and went with Sharon.
It looks as if the national ruling party is crashing. But those who eulogize it do not understand the secret of its power.
The Likud is the last party in Israel that is not sectarian.
It is not the party of the Orthodox, nor of those who hate religion. It is not the party of the rightists, Sephardis, leftists or Arabs.
It is the party of "the Israelis," of the middle class, of all the ethnic groups. Mainly it is a party where Jewish (not religious) identity serves as the basic ethos and starting point.
It was not Sharon who handed victory to the Likud, but vice versa. The Likud, as a microcosm of Israeli society, handed victory to Sharon.
Anyone who quits the party will disappear into the political desert, and those who stay will lead by setting the national agenda.
Those who are turning their backs on the national camp's ideology as Sharon's supporters in the Likud are doing will not retain their positions in the movement indefinitely.
Their bloc will gradually weaken until it is ultimately ejected from the Likud; and that process can be expected to bring the national movement back to itself.
The crumbling of the NRP will at the same time lead a majority of Orthodox Zionists to integrate into the national ruling party.
The national-religious combination will allow the Likud to offer an accurate ideological alternative to the Left. Armed with this alternative, the Right can not only win an election, but rule in a direction that takes us away from Oslo.
The Left, understanding the meaning of the process I am describing, has aimed many of its arrows at our Jewish Leadership faction. The all-out effort to delegitimize the movement includes charges that we intend to turn Israel into a theocracy, and that we support violence.
The truth is that we object to the very existence of religious parties and support a significant reduction of religious legislation.
We trust the basic Jewish ethos within the vast majority of the population and wish to break down the walls of fear and hatred that the mixture of religion and politics has created.
Speaking of political parties, I believe that bringing Labor into the government will actually quicken the process of the Likud returning to itself.
But that's something that can only happen with Sharon's departure from the party.
Accusing us of "violence" is slander. We have always spoken out against it. Had the Left listened to us before it forced the Oslo process on Israel, nearly 2,000 Jews would be alive today, as well as tenfold that number of Arabs who lost their lives because of a madness whose end is nowhere in sight.
We believe the Oslo process is fundamentally a process of escape from collective Jewish identity. Israel cannot be a state of all its citizens. It has to be a Jewish state; or else it cannot continue to exist.
The process taking place inside the ruling party of the national camp the Likud is painful but necessary. It will guarantee that, at the end of the day, the Jewish state will have a leadership that understands our destiny as a people, what we are doing on this tormented piece of land; a leadership that will lead the people according to their values, one that is genuinely capable of confronting the challenges we face.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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