Perhaps the General Has Begun Asking the Right Question

Gadi Eisenkot has spent most of his adult life inside Israel’s security apparatus. He commanded the army, assessed threats, and worked within a system capable of translating almost every political problem into a security problem. That is precisely why his recent language deserves attention: not because he has abandoned the security paradigm, but because he has begun speaking about something the security apparatus itself cannot guarantee.

Netanyahu has long organized politics around one question: Who can protect Israel? Eisenkot increasingly seems to be asking another: What must Israel be if it is to remain a state?

The distinction is fundamental.

Eisenkot speaks of the “soul of Israel,” accountability, personal example, reciprocal obligation, and social repair. He has also attacked what he calls the “curse of the right and the left.” This should not be reduced to another complaint about polarization. The deeper problem begins when right and left cease to name positions and begin to name types of people. At that point argument becomes secondary because classification arrives first.

Right. Left. Arab. Haredi. Settler. Secular. Elite. Periphery.

Israel has become remarkably efficient at identifying the category before encountering the person. That is the pathology: before someone speaks, the political meaning of what they are about to say has already been partially assigned.

This is why Eisenkot is more interesting than the usual language of the political center suggests. The center is often little more than empty geometry: stand between two camps and call the position moderation. A more serious move is to question the axis itself.

The decisive distinctions may no longer run between right and left. They may run between responsibility and exemption, reciprocity and extraction, institution and faction, citizenship and clientele, political disagreement and political classification.

A state can survive profound disagreement.........

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