The New Buzz in Israel

If you want to know the populist sentiment in Israelis about the country’s politics, talk to cab drivers. Since the mid 1990s, when I traveled in Israel with a Fulbright scholarship working on my post doctorate, my conversations with taxi drivers have been a useful tool in determining the prevailing attitude about the “situation,” a key term Israelis use to refer to the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.

I have just returned from a two-week stay in Israel. I had arrived there only hours before two Palestinian terrorists murdered four Israelis in a popular Tel Aviv café. I learned about the vicious attack while sitting in an outdoor beach restaurant, enjoying a crisp, sweet watermelon when concerned relatives called to ask where I was. Naturally, there was sadness and anger in the city that never sleeps, but not fear. Life went on and cab drivers continued to echo the country’s mood.

So when a day or two later, one of the drivers expressed to me his dissatisfaction with the country’s leadership, I wondered whether he preferred a far-right government, more extreme than the one currently headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is the most right wing government Israel has ever had in its history, reflecting the radicalization the country has been undergoing. But when the driver told me that the recent designating of Avigdor Lieberman as Defense Minister was a too dangerous threshold, and that he did not want his son in the army under the leadership of the new defense minister, I sensed that the political atmosphere of the State may be shifting. Incrementally perhaps, but a change may be possible.

Soon after, when I entered a taxi in which the radio was tuned to a talk show about the danger Israel’s democracy is facing when the freedom of the State’s civil society is curbed and the Supreme Court is unreasonably under attack, I smiled with satisfaction. No because I knew the driver agreed with what he heard, but because he was listening intensely.

Yet again, when another driver told me that the time for a two state solution with the Palestinians is now, I felt a sliver of hope, even though I didn’t get into a discussion with him about what kind of a Palestinian state he had in mind. Was it a state with a meaningful sovereign status, or a mini dependent state that can hardly exist on its own, the one PM Netanyahu has had in mind since his first round in office in 1996.

Then, on June 17, Ehud Barak, former prime minster and defense minster, and Moshe Yaalon, the defense minister who Netanyahu had just replaced with Libernman, attacked the sitting prime minster in a way no other politicians has had. And the buzz began.

“There’s change in the air,” you hear people saying wherever you go. Most sound hopeful.

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2. Select from the menu under the box how you want to sign. If you have an account with one of the names on the list use it, or use name/URL to just sign your name, with or without your website address in the URL. Use anonymous if you want anonymity.

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