After significantly reducing the external existential threat facing Israel, the time has come to remove the internal existential threat. Given the exponential pace of demographic changes within Israel, the current government has provided us with a glimpse of the future that our demography is quickly leading toward. In doing so, it has generated not only unprecedented public awareness that Israel must fundamentally change course, but also the best – and likely the last – opportunity that we’ll have to reshape the national agenda.

We’ve seen this movie before. After the Yom Kippur War, the Democratic Movement for Change (Dash) emerged, featuring superstars from military, business, and legal spheres. However, the slogan “Enough with the Crooks” did not constitute an actual plan, just as their personal integrity and success in other fields was not a replacement for an indispensable deep understanding of the core issues, nor a substitute for the ability to distinguish between superficial and core solutions. The naivety and arrogance of Dash’s leadership did indeed end up contributing to a massive national shift – the 1977 elections (referred to in Hebrew as the Mahapach, or “the upheaval”) led by the predecessors of those currently in power, which flipped Israel’s national agenda and led directly to our current reality.

Likewise, “Just not Bibi” is not an action plan. It’s a necessary condition for achieving the goal, but it is not the goal itself. We need leaders who understand the gravity of the moment, who rise above the usual political games of who allies with whom, and who can expand their share of the opposition at the expense of the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)