Elections in Israel: The View from Athens

Although my Greek never really got good enough to read the great tragedians in the original without a dictionary by my side, I nevertheless grew through my studies to love their work and to understand why Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, all of whom lived and worked in the fifth century BCE, eventually became pillars of Western culture. Even today I retain a real fondness for their work and an appreciation of its value and its artistry. But the part I always liked the best was their common use of an on-stage chorus—known to history because of them as a “Greek” chorus—to act sometimes as a kind of intermediary between the playwright and the audience, but other times as a kind of fictive corporate personality in its own right that interacts not with the audience but with the various characters in the play. In either case, however, the idea is almost always the same—to remind viewers that things are never as they seem, that behind even the most banal off-hand remark can hide a universe of emotion and meaning, and that we are, all of us, bit players in a huge drama that none of us has read and that no one therefore fully understands. It is that specific concept of an all-knowing Greek chorus that I would like to bring to bear in my attempt to analyze the results of last Tuesday’s elections in Israel.

As has so often been the case in these last years, the results at best equivocal—somehow both clear and unclear with respect to their potential impact on the future. As I write these words on Wednesday afternoon, it feels as though Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party will probably end up with a slight edge—something like 32 or 33 seats to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party’s possible 31 or 32. With 95% of the votes tallied, it feels likely that those numbers will hold, but even if the numbers were reversed the outcome will be exactly the same because no one party will have won enough seats—sixty-one— in the Knesset to govern all by itself without the need to form any sort of coalition. (Indeed, no party in the history of the state has ever won a majority of seats, the closest being the 56 seats that the Alignment coalition won in 1969.) And with that thought in place, let’s bring the chorus out onto the stage.

In classic Greek plays, the chorus is often depicted as a chorus of elderly persons possessed specifically of the kind of wisdom that, if it comes at all, comes to most in old age and it is precisely that kind of chorus of wise oldsters that in my mind’s eye I see stepping onto the stage. In my mind’s eye, I see them dressed in shapeless robes, their demeanor suggestive not of creeping senescence but of burgeoning insight as they turn first to face the audience and then, one by one, to the players in the drama unfolding on stage to offer them the benefit of their perceptive acumen, of their deep awareness of how things really are. The strange masks they are wearing are part of this as well: by denying them specific in-play identities, the members of the chorus appear instead as symbols of wisdom itself. And, indeed, the characters in the play are generally depicted either as being entirely deaf to the insight being offered them by the chorus or, in some ways even more tragically, as being vaguely aware that it is being offered but, at the same time, being far too distracted or otherwise occupied by their own egos to take the information being offered to them to heart.

The whole parliamentary system of government is theoretically designed to make elections more about ideas and policies than specific individuals. And that is how things are, at least theoretically, in Israel: voters don’t actually vote for anyone at all, just for the party they wish to see form the next government. Of course, the personalities involved are well known to all: as part of its campaign, each party publishes a list of the specific individuals who will serve in the Knesset if the party gets enough votes to seat people that far down the list. So everybody knows who will be Prime Minister if any specific party gets enough votes to form the next government because that individual appears as number 1 on that party’s list. The only problem is that the system doesn’t work quite as well as intended and, even though Israelis technically aren’t voting for any individuals at all, it somehow feels entirely as though people are voting for the person who will serve as Prime Minister if his party gets to form the government.

And now the curtain goes up to reveal our opening tableau. At the back of the stage on a kind of platform is the chorus, their wise presence as reassuring as their masks are unsettling. Upstage in the center is Reuven Rivlin, the President of Israel, wearing a dark suit and looking as though he knows his lines well enough but can’t quite remember to whom he is supposed to deliver them. To his right is a nattily-dressed but still clearly dejected Bibi Netanyahu. To the left, looking slightly surprised to be on stage at all and not at all ready to be off-book, is a rumpled-looking Benny Gantz, leader of the Blue and White Party. And hovering overhead, held in place by a hoist similar to the one that holds the Angel aloft in Angels in America, is Avigdor Lieberman, outfitted with a set of outsized white wings like Emma Thompson’s in the mini-series.

The audience quiets down and waits for the play to begin. All eyes, naturally, are on Rivlin, whose job it is to invite someone to attempt to hobble together a coalition large enough to govern effectively…or at all. Clearly, the opening soliloquy, ideally in the form of an invitation to get to work forming a government, is his to deliver. But as he produces some sort of computer print-out from his inside jacket pocket and begins to scan the numbers yet again, the chorus quickly intercedes and sternly instructs him to remember that he is above the system and not bound to the tyranny of its numbers, that he can—that he must—guide the nation forward by selecting the individual whom he deems the most likely to be able to govern wisely and well, not slavishly to turn to the guy whose party got the most votes. That makes his job both simpler and infinitely harder: simpler, because he can act as he wishes; but far more daunting because his decision will almost undoubtedly affect the nation’s future in a profound, perhaps even irreversible way…and he is far too savvy to pretend that he doesn’t understand that fully. As the chorus sings out their warning, his face grows pale, almost ashen. He seems weighed down with responsibility. He himself belongs to Netanyahu’s party. But he knows that his job is not to support Bibi, but to keep the Angel overhead aloft and the ensemble below from being crushed if he descends too quickly or too roughly.

And now Bibi steps forward and delivers his own opening soliloquy. Yes, he admits, his party got fewer votes than Benny Gantz’s. But why should that matter? Is Mrs. Clinton President of the United States? What should matter, he declaims in his weirdly American English, is that he can form a coalition, that he can govern, that he can and will lead the nation forward. He clearly has more to say, but again the Chorus intercedes. Looking not at Bibi but at Benny, they sing out a warning. “Remind him that he won’t be able to lead the nation that effectively from a prison cell…and that even you have lost track of the numerous indictments pending against him.” Then they look to Lieberman, still hanging there in mid-air and looking as smug as ever. “And you there,” they continue, looking up at the kingmaker, “remind him, again, that the way to bring you into the government is to form a grand coalition with Benny and yourself…and specifically to leave the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox, out of the mix. Tell him, again, that it’s you or the black-hats…but not both. Not until they agree to serve in the IDF like every other Israeli citizen. He knows all that, to be sure. (You have told him that a few dozen times in the last few days alone.) But can you be sure Bibi always knows where his own best interests lie? Why not tell him again anyway? What can it hurt?”

And then, clearly on a roll, the Chorus of the Elderly, turns to Benny Gantz. He is a tall man, and wearing his newly pressed IDF uniform—he was, after all, the Chief of the General Staff, the Ramatkal, from 2011 to 2015—he looks even taller. He somehow seems sure and unsure of himself at the same time, confident and ill at ease. He wanted this, obviously. He personally founded the Hosen L’yisrael (“Israel Resilience”) party just last year and guided it into the coalition first with Telem, the party of Moshe Yaalon (also a former Chief of Staff of the IDF) and then with Yesh Atid (“There Is a Future”), Yair Lapid’s centrist party. The resulting Blue and White party is therefore his baby, something he himself created, something in the remarkable victory of which he can take personal pride. And yet he looks uncertain. He looks at Bibi and feels untried and inexperienced in the ways of government. He looks up at Lieberman, still menacingly hovering overhead, and wonders what price he will have to pay to bring Yisrael Beiteinu (“Israel Our Home”), Lieberman’s party, into a coalition. And then he looks at Rivlin and wonders what it’s going to take to get him to stop staring at Bibi with that unsettling mixture of awe and frustration.

I would tell you more, but the play is still in rehearsal and only opens in a few weeks when President Rivlin formally asks someone to form a coalition that could conceivably govern effectively. As also on Broadway, things in Israel can (and probably will) change dramatically before opening night. But the Chorus is already in place, already positioning itself to remind the players that what they see is not all there is, that acquiring power and exercising it wisely are not at all the same thing, and that the fate of the nation—and, by extension, the course of Jewish history—depends not slightly or tangentially, but fully and really on what the show actually looks like when the curtain goes up and the show actually opens.