Sacha Nejman

[ד״ר עינת וילף Dr. Einat Wilf @EinatWilf]

“The Whole Package Jabotinsky Government” (Or Why “The Iron Wall” Provides the Blueprint for Israel’s Next Government)

Jabotinsky is enjoying a renewed popularity these days among parties of Israel’s “Change Bloc,” which are drawing on his far-reaching vision of joint Jewish-Arab government to justify a Jewish-Arab coalition and government. Yet in doing so, they conveniently skip over the Iron Wall required to make that vision of equality and partnership possible.

After all, Jabotinsky made clear that such cooperation could not exist “as long as the Arabs have even a glimmer of hope of getting rid of us,” and that the only way to extinguish every last glimmer of such hope is through sustained strength, until “not a single crack is visible in the Iron Wall.” The purpose of the Iron Wall was to bring the enemies of Zionism to the point where they understand that there is no longer even the slightest chance of defeating it.

It turns out, then, that every side of Israeli politics has the part of Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall” that it likes, and the part it conveniently forgets.

The right clearly loves the Iron Wall itself, the insight that the Arabs will not willingly reconcile themselves to Jewish sovereignty, and that as long as they retain the hope of defeating Zionism, they will continue trying. But there is also a tendency, at times, on the right to stop there and retreat into a kind of fatalistic helplessness that says, “That’s just how it is” and “That’s just how they are,” turning the Iron Wall from a means into an end.

But the Iron Wall was indeed a means, not an end. On the other side of the Iron Wall, Jabotinsky envisioned a Jewish state in which every citizen enjoyed equal rights.

On the left and in the Change Bloc, there is a tendency, rightly so, to celebrate the Jabotinsky who championed individual rights, civic equality, and human dignity, and who imagined a government in which the prime minister would alternately be Jewish with an Arab deputy, and vice versa. But wrongly, they tend to skip over the fundamental condition Jabotinsky placed on all of this: the Iron Wall that would extinguish every Arab hope of ending Jewish sovereignty.

I am a great believer in Jewish-Arab cooperation, but like Jabotinsky, I believe that such cooperation can only be real after full and final recognition, without the slightest crack or glimmer of hope, that the Jewish state can ever be eliminated. In the book "Peace Not Now", I gave this the somewhat provocative name “Arab Zionism.” But it is simply another, and arguably more positive, way of saying that Arabs have finally come to terms with Zionism and no longer follow antizionism and its deceptive promises.

Indeed, precisely those who advocate political cooperation and shared government between Jews and Arabs, whether Jews or Arab themselves, should be ardent Zionists, uncompromising in their support for Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and for the fulfillment of the Zionist vision. This, for the simple reason that in every Arab country where Jews lived, once that country was no longer ruled by European powers and became sovereign, the prospect of Jewish citizens enjoying equal political standing was met with persecution, pogroms, confiscation of property, and ultimately the ethnic cleansing of Jews from those countries.

Therefore, Israel’s next government should be a Full Jabotinsky Government, the whole package. It should bring together all parties that insist on an Iron Wall against antizionism, including within the State of Israel itself.

The Arab parties should be required not merely to recognize Israel fully as the nation-state of the Jewish people, but to give that recognition concrete expression. When they present a vision of peace based on “two states,” they must make clear that one of those two states is the Jewish state, and that Arabs in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon have no “right of return” into Israel and are not “fifth-generation refugees.” This is the clearest indication that they have fully come to terms with Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and are willing to give that acceptance its full expression.

The Iron Wall, therefore, is not merely a security doctrine directed outward. It must also become the foundation of a renewed Zionist consensus within Israel itself: state-provided Zionist education in Hebrew for all Israeli citizens, including Arabic speakers and the ultra-Orthodox, and military service in support of national missions, equally required of everyone (without all the dishonest schemes of “community service” that would simply become another way of funneling billions into autonomous communities hostile to the state).

These are not merely mechanisms for sharing the burden. They are the means by which a common civic ethos is built, one in which every citizen knows that they belong to the state, enjoy its rights, and bear responsibility for its defense and continued existence.

Jabotinsky himself would have scorned the notion that, in the sovereign Jewish state in the Land of Israel, some would refuse to take part in the defense of the Jewish state in the name of preserving a diasporic way of life. Nor would he have excluded Arab citizens from this shared ethos.

The idea is that one can be ultra-Orthodox and Zionist, and one can be Arab and Zionist. There is no need to give up one's religion, language, culture, or identity in order to be a partner in the Jewish state. But there is a need to accept the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty and the shared responsibility to defend it.

What Israel needs now is a government that stops picking only the half of Jabotinsky’s doctrine that suits it. A broad, mainstream Zionist government that places Jewish sovereignty, civic equality, shared education, and universal service at the foundation of the Israeli social contract.

The time has come for Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall Government. The whole package.

[Michael Dell 🇺🇸 @MichaelDell]

Tikkun olam

Repairing the world, one child at a time. ❤️

[Hillel Neuer @HillelNeuer]

.@grok Did U.S. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. really post this?

[Dovi Safier @safier]

Three years ago this week, NYC's Jewish community was gripped by shock, grief, and fear. @ericadamsfornyc met that moment with the greatest speech of my adult life. He stood with us when it counted. His leadership and friendship are dearly missed.

[יאיר לפיד - Yair Lapid @yairlapid]

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “I have never seen killing and destruction like Gaza in all my years as Secretary-General.”

According to even the most critical reports, Guterres, 70,000 people were killed in the war in Gaza, a large proportion of them Hamas terrorists.

During your years as Secretary-General: more than 600,000 people were massacred or starved to death in Ethiopia.

377,000 died in Yemen — that figure appears in reports issued by your own organization.

150,000 were killed in Sudan and 12 million were displaced.

Hundreds of thousands have been buried in Ukraine.

You didn’t see it? They died before your eyes. You simply looked the other way, because the Jews couldn’t be blamed.

[Naftali Bennett נפתלי בנט @naftalibennett]

Yesterday, a film accusing Israel of genocide premiered.

It’s a horrific blood libel against our sons and daughters. What makes it especially painful and infuriating is that this lie comes from Israeli filmmakers and is now being spread around the world.

Let’s get the facts straight:

On October 7th, Hamas invaded Israel to murder Jews. Hamas terrorists slaughtered children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. They burned homes, raped women, and kidnapped babies, children and elderly people.

Then Hamas fled back to Gaza and deliberately hid behind its own civilians, using them as human shields in homes, schools, and hospitals.

And when Israel fights back, and civilians are tragically killed in this terrible war, Israel is accused of “genocide.”

There is no magic button that can destroy Hamas, or any terrorist organization hiding behind civilians, without harming a single civilian. It simply does not exist.

In interviews with the international media, I always ask: “What would you do?”

They never have an answer.

If Israel wanted to hurt the people of Gaza, we would not send our sons and daughters to fight house to house, through alleyways and tunnels, at the terrible cost of our own soldiers being killed and wounded.

We would not warn civilians before strikes and evacuate them from combat zones.

We would not help vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza against polio.

The war in Gaza is terrible. The death of every child is a tragedy.

But a terrible war is not genocide.

Even now, Hamas doesn’t regret October 7th. It’s rearming and waiting for another opportunity to carry out a massacre.

The people standing between us and that next massacre are our soldiers and reservists. Our sons and daughters who put their lives at risk so that we can live here safely.

I love them.
I am proud of them.
And I am deeply grateful to them.

To portray them as perpetrators of “genocide” is not courageous art.

It is a cowardly blood libel.

And I will not remain silent.

[Rabbi Poupko @RabbiPoupko]

PLEASE HELP MAKE THIS YOUNG MAN FAMOUS

Yotam Budnik is a 12th-grade student from Rehovot 🇮🇱 just won a gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics in Uzbekistan but was not allowed to compete under the Israeli flag.

When Yotam was awarded his medal 🏅 stepped onto the podium, pulled an Israeli flag out of his pocket and wore it in defiance of the Anti-Semitic discrimination.

While the medal 🏅 was revoked from him for his courage, he has no regrets

"The law that prevents me from waving the flag is based only on politics, and I thought there was no place for that in a scientific competition", he said.

The organizers demanded that he return his medal.

Yotam said no.

Organizers took away his certificate and removed his ranking from the website.

Please help make sure the world knows the name Yotam Budnik and that he is not only a world class computer science genius, but also a man of courage and pride of the Jewish people 💙

[Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن @elicalebon]

Mamdani refused to attend Israel’s independence day parade.

He said he will not support any state that privileges one religion over another.

In Israel, Jews and Muslims have equal rights.

Today, he attended Pakistan’s Independence day parade. A state that privileges one religion over another.

In Pakistan, Muslims and non-Muslims do not have equal rights.

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

The only thing that stops violent men from raping you and your society are other men who are equally willing to be violent in stopping the rapists. The West has decided that the highest virtue is to quietly comply with the destruction of your civilization because to do otherwise is bigoted toward the rapists. It really is that simple.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

Powerful and true. You should always listen to people you respect, but you have to make your own decisions.

My parents often told me that I never listened. I told them that was not true. I always listened very carefully, but I always made my own decisions.

You have to live your own life.

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

Israel has more Muslims, than the entire Muslim world has Jews combined.

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

I’m increasingly convinced you can tell everything you need to know about a person by observing how they treat service workers.

[Jack @j4ppleby]

Cheesy, but for Jews to go from the Holocaust to hunting antisemites with fighter jets in 80 years is awe inspiring.

I refuse to be shamed into not celebrating this achievement.

[Amit Segal @AmitSegal]

Pete Hegseth praises Israel: an ally with capabilities is a true ally, unlike the traditional allies who whine and call for an end to the war.

[Nuseir Yassin @nasdaily]

Today, I am proud to be Israeli.

Despite all the shaming.
Despite all the UN "resolutions".
Despite all the academics.
Despite all the online pressure.

Israel is cleaning the Middle East from radical religious terrorists. One by one.

They will not thank us for it.
But someone had to do the job.

[Yossi Farro @FarroYossi]

Gad Saad asks Joe Rogan: “How many Jews in the world?”

Joe: “A billion… uh, half a billion conservatively.”

Reality: ~15.8 million. That’s 0.2% of humanity.

Still FEWER than pre-Holocaust (16.6M in 1939).

[Secretary Marco Rubio @SecRubio]

The United States cares greatly about the people of Europe and the bonds we share as a civilization. But we want strong allies, not seriously weakened ones. Europe must depart from the culture they've created over the last ten years. Otherwise, they will destroy themselves.

[Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו @netanyahu]

Israel is closely monitoring the events unfolding in Iran. The protests for freedom have spread throughout the country.

The people of Israel, and the entire world, stand in awe of the immense bravery of Iran's citizens.

Israel supports their struggle for freedom and strongly condemns the mass killings of innocent civilians.

We all hope that the Persian nation will soon be liberated from the yoke of tyranny, and when that day comes, Israel and Iran will once again be faithful partners in building a future of prosperity and peace for both nations.

[Mike Alfred @mikealfred]

WHERE ARE THE LEFTIST BLUE HAIRED FREE IRAN PROTESTERS?