Shelly Yachimovich: A collective society

The other day I was sitting on a train heading south, half nodding off and staring out the window, when a young girl with a large mess of dreadlocks dropped a flyer in my lap. Slightly startled, I pulled myself up and took a look around the train. Everyone was muttering. Some looked angry, others pleased, and most disinterested. Almost everyone made some kind of comment to those sitting next to them. One man, raising his voice above the chorus of side-comments and murmuring, began to shout.

“What a disgrace! What an idiot! What, she thinks Shelly Yachimovich can be prime minister? And what happens in the next war? Who will lead us in the next war! Shelly Yachimovich will lead us in the next war? What an idiot! Are we not in Israel?! Don’t these people understand they are in Israel! What a nightmare! Shelly in a war…”

The girl, having quickly fled the area, had been handing out flyers produced by activists from the social protests two summers ago. The campaign, mostly known for producing the yellow and black “Bibi is only good for the rich” posters that cover Israel’s bus stops, highways, and urban centers, is a non-partisan attempt to stop the re-election of Benjamin Netenyahu. Having myself handed out a few flyers and put up a few stickers advocating similar things, I didn’t bother even trying to read the flyer. I was, instead, much more interested in what the man across from me had said. They are comments that those of us working for Avodah are used to. They express a common sentiment that no matter what one thinks about Shelly’s policies, she cannot be trusted to lead the country. She is, for so many people, a weak woman who only cares about funding for kindergartens, roads, and hospitals. Her interests are narrow when it comes to what really defines this country: the next war.

I won’t go into why I believe this is wrong here. To understand the party’s stance on security, you can check out the platform here or read various other articles that lay out just how Avodah plans to deal with the issue of defense. What I am more concerned about at the moment, and what I wish I had said to the man on the train, is that Israel’s security and wellbeing cannot be divorced from the internal makeup of its society. Just as a society that cannot promise a worthwhile future to so many of its citizens cannot make a deal for peace, so it will also eventually not be able to go to war. Because the Israeli Army, a citizens’ army made up of ordinary people who give so much of their young lives to the state, cannot function in an unequal society.

While those in the Likud, and throughout the right, try to paint Avodah as a single-issue party that only cares about socio-economic issues, I urge you to watch the video below. Complete with English subtitles, the video is an address to the Academic Centre of Law and Business that Shelly gave last year. In it, she describes why we cannot talk about defence without also asking questions that reach far outside the defense budget. As she explains:

“[The OECD released a report that] says that Israel is high on the list in terms of gaps between the rich and the poor. Not only is it high on the list, the gaps and inequality between us are increasing all the time. Of the 33 OECD countries, there are 4 leading countries: America, Mexico, Israel, and…Turkey. I don't want to be a member of this club. Not when I'm a citizen of a country that is still fighting for its security, in which solidary is not a commodity...but a type of urgency, a supreme value, to ensure we can keep living here and be safe. Because the son of the cleaning woman who makes 22 shekels an hour, who is exploited and abused and has no rights...the son of that cleaning woman goes to the army with the son of the CEO who makes 1.5 million shekels a month, and it won't work!”

So, I ask you: How can we expect the child of the cleaning woman to give the same as the child of the CEO? How can we expect ordinary citizens to give to a country that does not give them anything in return? How do we expect to defend ourselves using an army based on social solidarity and mutual responsibility when those values are not seen in our healthcare or education system? How can a child who must study in a class with 42 other students be expected to serve as a responsible soldier? How can a teenager raised in a family that can barely pay their bills at the end of each month be expected to give three years of their life to the security of the country? How can such a new country, in such a dangerous and difficult situation, buy into Bibi’s claims that there is no connection between a strong internal society and a strong military?

While the right run around the country masquerading as patriots who care for the country, but do nothing to help its people, I will continue to stand with the party that knows that you cannot have a society based on the interest of “I” with an army that demands that we function as “we.”

-Adam