Yom Kippur, the festival that marks the Day of Atonement in the Hebrew calendar, is a period of deep introspection and repentance and normally comes after the Jewish New Year, otherwise known as Rosh Hashanah. For that reason, it is considered the most important holiday by practitioners of the Jewish faith. But that is not the case with my friend Menachem whose name I am convinced is an Israeli corruption of the Igbo name, Munachim.
Menachem and I have a lot in common and often found ourselves comparing notes about our two nations. We talked about the fate of Igbos in Nigeria and the Jew of the recent past. We both agreed that Holocaust was one of the greatest human tragedies of the last century and that the killing of an estimated 3 million Igbos by the Nigerian troop during the Biafran war ranks close in that scale, even though no one calls it a Holocaust or refers to it as an act of genocide.
It turns out that Israel’s rightward shift started decades ago but the second Palestinian intifada, in the early 2000s gave oxygen to the raging inferno. A wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks at the time was able to convince many Israelis that Israel had no partner for peace. It made many moderates abandon their former positions and slide further right. Part of the gravitational pull to the right is also born out of a recent fear, mostly unfounded, about Israel losing its Jewish identity.
This new government planned for a renewal of the relationship with the Palestinian Authority rather than weaken it, chided the extreme right-wing forces, and attempted to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s unchecked drift toward authoritarianism. They were able to lead the country away from the polarization that was making Israel ungovernable. Unfortunately, going by the outcome of this election, many did not agree with them.
Before now, many had predicted the fate of Bibi Netanyahu to be like his predecessor and the 12th Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert. After serving as PM, Mr. Olmert was sentenced to serve a prison term over convictions for accepting bribes and for obstruction of justice during his terms as mayor of Jerusalem and as trade minister. But that was a different time in the world than today and Israel was not led by a Teflon don of a Prime Minister.
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