We have spent two acts watching the Phantom sing.
First, Herzog delayed. Then, Herzog decided. He gave the mandate to Eisenkot. 67 to 46. The mask was lifted, and beneath it was another mask.
And now the world is asked to applaud, as if the opera were over.
It is not over. It has not even begun.
For what we are watching in Jerusalem is not a change of government. It is a rearrangement of chairs on the deck of the Titanic — while the ship is sinking.
Netanyahu or Eisenkot. Likud or Yashar. 48 plus 19, or 61 without the 19. Liberman or the rabbis. These are chairs. They are not the ship.
The ship is the paradigm itself. And the paradigm is sinking.
_The Compromise That Became a Cage_
For 70 years the world has told us there is only one respectable solution: the two-state solution.
We must ask, with all earnestness: why?
Why must we cling to a compromise that has become a cage? A compromise that has allowed one side to build settlements while talking peace, to build walls while talking security, to build outposts while talking about a future state that gets smaller every year?
The two-state solution was born as a compromise. It has died as an alibi. It allows the world to say it believes in Palestine, while doing nothing to stop the erasure of Palestine. It allows leaders to speak of peace in New York, in London, in Brussels, while the bulldozer moves in the West Bank in the morning.
If we truly, earnestly wish for a genuine democratic state in Palestine/Israel, why do we fear to say the word that frightens the powerful?
One person, one vote. Equal rights. Equal citizenship. From the River to the Sea, not as a slogan of elimination, but as a promise of inclusion.
Why is that radical, when apartheid was radical to defend and democracy was radical to demand?
_Judaism Is Not Zionism_
Here we must be precise, for precision is an act of moral courage.
Judaism and Zionism are two distinct constructs. They must be understood as such.
Judaism is a faith. Ancient. Beautiful. Rooted in Torah, in prophecy, in the cry for justice — _Tzedek, tzedek tirdof_ — justice, justice shall you pursue. Judaism gave the world the prophets who condemned kings for stealing vineyards. Judaism gave the world rabbis who taught that to save one life is to save the whole world.
Zionism is a political project. Born in 19th-century Europe. Secular in its founders, political in its aims. Many of its leaders, including Netanyahu and a host of leaders in Israel today, are secular, except that they are Zionist.
To conflate the two is to do a grave injustice to Judaism. It is to turn a religion of conscience into a flag for conquest. It is to say that to criticise a state is to hate a faith. That is a lie, and the world knows it is a lie.
The Zionist dream of a Greater Israel cannot be realised at the expense of the Palestinian. It cannot. For if it is, then it is not a dream. It is a nightmare, built on dispossession, on demolitions, on the slow erasure of a people who were there before the dream, and who will be there after it.
A Jewish state by name, sustained in its form for reasons devoid of efforts for world peace and prosperity, is not a refuge. It is a fortress. And a fortress is not a home.
_What Was the United Nations For?_
After the Second World War, after the world had seen what Nazi Germany did — the camps, the gas, the systematic dehumanisation of a people — humanity said: Never Again.
And we built an institution to mean it. The United Nations. Not to be a debating club. Not to be a place for vetoes. But to create a conflict-resolution architecture, a security and socio-political architecture, that would guarantee the world would not regress to that level again.
Never Again was meant to be universal. Never Again for anyone. Never Again for Jews. Never Again for Palestinians. Never Again for Rwandans. Never Again for Bosnians. Never Again for Congolese.
But what have we done? We have made Never Again into a licence. A licence for one victim to become a victor over another victim. A licence for the world to watch Gaza in plain sight and call it self-defence. A licence for Britain, for America, for Europe, to supply the weapons, to supply the intelligence, to supply the diplomatic cover, and then to wash their hands.
If the UN cannot stop this, what is it for? If international law applies to everyone except Israel, then it applies to no one.
This is not anti-Semitism. This is the defence of the very lesson the world claimed to have learned from anti-Semitism: that no people is chosen to dominate another people.
_The Paradigm Shift: Flip the Script_
The world is changing. The drive for genuine multilateralism is getting entrenched. The Global South is no longer asking for a seat at the table. It is building its own table.
BRICS. The African Union. The Arab League. The voices from Pretoria to Jakarta to Brasilia to Ankara are no longer whispers. They are a chorus.
Why, then, can we not have a paradigm shift on the Middle East? Why can we not flip the script on the Palestinian Question and give peace a chance — a real chance, not a performance?
The shift is simple, and therefore terrifying to those who profit from the old script:
1. From Partition to Democracy.
Stop dividing the land to divide the people. Start sharing the land to share the future. One democratic state, with equal rights for Jew, Muslim, Christian, Druze, secular, atheist — all citizens, all equal before the law.
2. From Security by Domination to Security by Justice.
No people can be secure by making another people insecure. The bullies and hegemons who roar like a lion seeking whom they may devour — whether they roar in Jerusalem, in Washington, in Brussels, or in any capital — must learn what every child learns: you do not become safe by making your neighbour afraid.
True security architecture is not walls and drones and checkpoints. It is courts that are fair. Schools that teach both histories. Land that is returned or compensated. Prisoners who are released. Refugees who can return.
3. From a Jewish State to a State for All Its People.
Let Judaism flourish in full glory. Let Islam flourish in full glory. Let Christianity flourish in full glory. Let any other faith, religion, or denomination flourish in full glory.
In Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Western Wall stand within minutes of each other. That is not an accident of geography. That is a prophecy of coexistence. Why should the state belong to one faith, when the city belongs to all faiths?
A state that privileges one religion cannot be democratic. A state that privileges one ethnicity cannot be just. A state that calls itself democratic while ruling over millions without a vote cannot be believed.
_The Titanic and the Lifeboat_
The world deserves better than the Phantom’s opera.
It deserves better than watching Eisenkot try to form a government that will manage the occupation more politely than Netanyahu managed it. It deserves better than watching America change Congress but not change policy. It deserves better than watching Britain write books about complicity while continuing complicity.
The Titanic is sinking because the paradigm is sinking. The two-state compromise, the endless negotiations, the endless elections, the endless mandates — they are the chairs.
We need a lifeboat. And the lifeboat is democracy.
Not a democracy for some. A democracy for all.
Not peace as the absence of bombing for a week. Peace as the presence of justice for a generation.
Not a Greater Israel. Not a Greater Palestine. A Greater Humanity, in one small land that has taught the world both its worst cruelty and its highest faith.
If we can imagine that, we can build it.
If we cannot imagine it, then we will sit on the deck, rearranging the chairs, listening to the Phantom sing, until the water covers us all.
The opera is over when we say it is over.
Let us say it is over. And let us begin, at last, to build peace.
KNESSET: Israeli parliament
