Their elections and ours

I’m struck by the ways in which two major upcoming elections – the United States’ congressional midterms, which already have started, and the balloting for Israel’s Knesset, coming shortly — seem to be revolving around the same issues: Commitment to or skepticism of forever wars. It also seems to me that the proponents of the forever-wars approach most often are the politicians who have somehow retained power for way too long, while the skeptics often are the ones who have borne the costs of the wars.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu infamously articulated his stark vision for Israel’s future against a present in which the country is increasingly diplomatically and economically isolated, as a need to become a “super-Sparta.” He was of course referring to the short-lived ancient Greek city-state that, unlike Athens, the birthplace of Western notions of democracy, was known only for militarization.

Netanyahu has served as Israel’s prime minister on and off for almost 20 years over the last three decades, and so far has survived several attempts to unseat him. But the current opposition seems to be his most serious challenge ever. Notably, it includes several leaders with extremely strong reputations as committed to Israel’s security and a history of sacrifice for the common good. Gadi Eisenkot, the head of the Yashar party and the overall leader of the opposition, was an IDF chief of staff for four years. His son Gal was killed in action in the first month of the Gaza war. On October 7, Yair Golan, a major general in the IDF reserve who now is leading the Democrat party slate, got in his Toyota and rushed directly to the Gaza envelope, where he rescued one person after another at the music festival site during the Hamas massacres.

Notably, the New York Times columnist Bret Stephens called this a profound choice between those he referred to as the “service Israelis” in the opposition and the “entitled Israelis,” led by Netanyahu, “the most entitled.”

I would add that the opposition party election candidates aren’t the only “service Israelis” saying that Israel needs to go in a new direction. In July, as reported by the Times of Israel, hundreds of retired IDF generals and colonels wrote in a letter organized by the Commanders for Israel’s Security about the urgent need to crack down on the violence by West Bank settlers against Palestinians. “Unless arrested swiftly and decisively, escalating violence in the West Bank is poised to ignite the region and carries severe ramifications for both Israeli security and U.S. regional interests.”

In the U.S., this kind of choice is brought home in the contest in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional district, which pits moderate Democrat Rebecca Bennett, whose formative years were spent as a U.S. Navy helicopter pilot, against the incumbent Republican Representative Thomas Kean, Jr., the heir to a well-known political dynasty, who made headlines earlier this year over his 117-day-plus absence from Congress.

In their debate late last month, Kean desperately tried to show some space between himself and the unpopular President Trump on a couple of local issues, but utterly failed to address key questions from the debate moderators about the root causes of the affordability crisis in Trump’s failed Iran war.

Republican Kean voted in the House three times against requiring Trump to bring the Iran war to a close. In the debate, he claimed, implausibly, that Mr. Trump’s military crusade “is getting real positive results, and within the next couple of months, I assume it will be over.” Ms. Bennett, who has flown missions over the Strait of Hormuz during her Navy pilot years, said responsible people should “not put American service members in harm’s way without having a clear plan, clear objectives, and a clear exit strategy.”

Watching the debate and Kean’s responses to the key question of war and peace in the Middle East left me wondering if Kean was speaking mainly from his loyalty to Trump, who has praised him as a “tremendous advocate for our America First agenda.” Or perhaps it was a clumsy attempt to pander to some distorted and grossly outdated stereotype of Jewish voters and our views.

If Kean wants to wake up to reality about us, he can read the relevant opinion surveys. A GBAO poll of Jewish American voters in late March commissioned by J Street found that while we overwhelmingly oppose the Iranian regime, 60 percent of us are against Trump’s military action, 77 percent of us think Trump doesn’t have a clear plan, and 58 percent of us say the war weakens the United States.

I don’t have a vote in the Israeli elections, but I hope that Israelis do what looks to me as the right thing and trust their country’s future to the leaders who represent the “service Israelis.” 

We do have a say in the U.S. Congress, and those of us who live in the swing NJ 7th District have a very particular say. I suggest that trusting the Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett over the Trump-friendly pol Thomas Kean, Jr. is a slam dunk.

Mark Lurinsky of Montclair recently retired from a career in public accounting. He is an activist in local politics and a member of the steering committee of J Street’s New Jersey chapter.