With the Oct. 27 Knesset elections a little more than two months away—and following the ruling Likud Party primary on Aug. 17—the campaign jingles are beginning to multiply. As has always been the case, most of them are cringe-inducing.
Perhaps that’s because they’re directed at the TikTok generation, whose attention span is about as expansive as that of a flea. But today’s content creators really ought to factor in the nationwide acknowledgement that Israel is at a critical juncture, and that the makeup of the next government will determine not merely the political path of the country, but its very identity.
One sector that grasps the above is the radical left and the Arab politicians its representatives are trying to court. This group is led by former deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. (Res.) Yair Golan. It’s comprised of what Israelis refer to as the hard-core “Kaplanists.”
These were the most vocal of the anti-judicial-reform protesters who pounded the pavements before the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, to declare that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition were signing democracy’s death warrant.
Their nickname derived from the main street in Tel Aviv where the demonstrations took place. But it came to be an inclusive code word for the “Crime Minister” crowd—the intersectional “anybody but Bibi” contingent battling against the sentiments of more than half of the public. So much so that swaths of Israeli Air Force pilots and IDF officers threatened not to perform their duties in the event of a call-up.
Little did they realize that a major war was actually around the corner. Nor did they take into account that the monsters in Gaza perceived the internecine strife to be a disintegration of Israeli society and military apparatus—a notion that accelerated their carefully laid plans to invade southern Israel and perpetrate the atrocities that we all witnessed on that deadly Shabbat/Simchat Torah holiday nearly three years ago.
The horrific nature of the attack—the torture, rape, mutilation and mass murder of 1,200 innocent men, women and children, in addition to the abduction of 250 others—caused the “refusniks” to do an about-face where their army service was concerned. For a brief period, solidarity in the face of external enemies took precedence over domestic debate.
The national cohesion didn’t last long. Shifting their anti-government focus to the plight of the hostages and the execution of the war against Hamas, the Kaplanists resumed turning out in droves, megaphones in hand. Calls for Netanyahu’s ouster and “elections now” drowned out any appeals for support of the powers-that-be during such a precarious situation and demands for victory.
Golan featured prominently at the protest podium.
This, in itself, doesn’t distinguish him from the many other figures who were actively involved not only in trying to topple the government, but in capitulating to Hamas and the Biden administration by ceasing the war.
No, the 64-year-old head of HaDemokratim (“The Democrats” party, a merger between Labor and Meretz) is notable for his illustrious military credentials, spanning more than four decades, and his increasingly post-Zionist ideology. Given the former, the latter is especially jarring, not to mention harmful.
Two examples suffice to drive home this point. One is a speech he delivered on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2016, while serving as then-IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot’s second-in-command.
As problematic as Eisenkot’s pronouncements were at the time—making the army he led sound as though it was on a slippery slope to warranting the slurs it incurred from Palestinians and their Western apologists—Golan’s went above and beyond the call of duty, so to speak.
Metaphorically cocking his weapon and firing, he said, “If there’s something that frightens me … it’s the recognition of the revolting processes that occurred in Europe in general, and particularly in Germany, back then … and finding signs of them here among us today.”
What a vile way to address the troops on such an anniversary. But it was almost mild compared to his last year during an interview with Kan public radio.
“A sane country does not kill babies as a hobby,” he said, warning that Israel was running the risk of becoming an international “pariah state” if it didn’t change its actions in Gaza. Naturally, IDF soldiers in the field were outraged at the false and immoral accusation, which Al Jazeera and others gleefully quoted.
Rather than attempting to moderate his positions to garner votes from the mainstream, however, Golan seems to be doubling down. Take his latest campaign commercial, for instance.
In a short clip shared on social media, he’s seen with HaDemokratim Knesset member Rabbi Gilad Kariv, former CEO of the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism. Nothing striking about the two extreme leftists promoting their party’s ticket.
What’s conspicuous about the video is that it has no audible dialogue, and is set to a loud Arabic-language soundtrack. Its target audience is thus as clear as Golan’s coalition goals: to sit in a government headed by his erstwhile commander, Eisenkot, with the inclusion of and/or backing by Mansour Abbas’s Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Ra’am Party.
Anyone who doesn’t consider this objective as exceptionally earth-shattering—since Israel already had such a government, headed by a rotation premiership of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid—needs to think again.
According to Channel 14’s Yinon Magal, the score accompanying Golan’s campaign clip “is from a Syrian TV series with an anti-Israel, anti-Zionist agenda and elements involving the transfer of weapons and ammunition to Palestinians.”
Magal pointed this out on X after receiving a message from freed hostage Rom Braslavski, who wrote that the music in question was the “same melody heard by the terrorists who held me in Gaza and tortured me every day. … It’s surreal to see an Israeli Knesset member listening to the same music as my terrorists in Gaza.”
Indeed. But it’s far worse that he’s broadcasting it for electoral bait.
Let this be a lesson to his rivals on the right not to squander talent on “cute” and “catchy” skits that don’t reflect the seriousness—and urgency—of the hour.
