BENNETT & BIBI

As usual, Pam Peled has hit the nail on the head with her piece about Naftali Bennett (Oct. 21).

My political leanings are very far removed from his but when he left office, I was very sorry to see him go. I even wrote to the Prime Minister’s Office to say just that and to express my appreciation for his service.

How refreshing not to have abusive, divisive muckraking in our leadership, which we have, unfortunately, been subjected to in previous administrations.

It made a huge difference, for the better.

D. RUBINSTEIN Jerusalem

For me, the highlight of this Friday’s Jerusalem Post was reading Jonathan Feldstein’s and Pamela Peled’s side-by-side articles. I see them as being totally connected, and I’ll explain.

In “The Likud’s latest stinking maneuver,” Feldstein explained many of the reasons why voting Likud would be a bad idea for the State of Israel. I was also horrified and even traumatized by the disgraceful anti-democratic display that Benjamin Netanyahu and his mafia held in the Knesset during Bennett’s inaugural speech, mentioned by Peled in her article. For me, personally, I can’t imagine voting for any of those politicians, even if their parties claim policies I support. I expect derech eretz, proper respectful behavior, in my government, whether part of the ruling coalition or in the opposition.

Neither Feldstein nor Peled mentioned another problem with Bibi and his mafia, which I see as the reason we’ve been having a series of useless elections – which didn’t end in a coalition, sort of like serial stillbirths. Bibi discovered a patent, as they call it in Hebrew. The most powerful prime minister is not the leader of a coalition, it’s being the interim/caretaker prime minister. There’s only one way to lose office; a different party leader must form a coalition.

Since the Likud has been getting the most number of votes, in elections and polls it had seemed totally impossible for any other party leader to put together a working coalition. And then the unthinkable happened. The leader of one of the smallest parties in the Knesset, Bennett, managed to craft a rather unlikely coalition, which I’ve been calling the “Ketoret Coalition,” referring to the Temple’s incense offering.

It was wonderful and miraculous. It lasted a year and was destroyed by the Likud’s dirty tricks.

I’ve been living in Israel for more than half a century and have been following the politics even longer. I see us as being in a period of transition, like post-1973 Yom Kippur War. Mapai/Labor had made terrible mistakes, almost losing us the country, but even though we had elections soon after, it was only in 1977 that Likud received more votes and could form a coalition, making Menachem Begin prime minister.

Patience, things will get better, God willing.

BATYA MEDAD

Shiloh

In a side remark, Peled perpetuates the myth that in 1996 Netanyahu was “elected due to assassination.”

Israel isn’t some Shakespearean kingdom where the forces that kill the leader get to assume control. Netanyahu won the election against Yitzhak Rabin’s successor the same as he would have won against Rabin. Polls before the assassination were showing that Rabin, unable to successfully explain away the terrorism that followed the Oslo Accords, was heading for defeat.

I don’t recall that anyone went to the polls saying, “Rabin was murdered, so let’s vote for the side that the murderer supported.” On the contrary, there was a swing of horrified voters against the opponents of the Oslo Accords. But it didn’t prove strong enough to override the violent evidence of Oslo’s failure.

MARK L. LEVINSON Herzliya

I expect ‘derech eretz’ in my government