May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable before You, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
The decision to enter political life in Israel is probably the worst decision I can make strategically, personally, financially and mentally.
Who needs this? Who wants this?
And this is even before the cynicism and the venom that are destined to be poured out, and long before the propaganda machines begin to grind my name into tiny gravel.
To be honest, I am also exhausted. For many years I fought windmills so that we would be better prepared for this war, and then for another two years (against those same windmills) so that we would achieve a true victory and not end up exactly as we did. (Anyone interested in learning more is welcome to read the two books: “awakning the lion" & "like a lion he shell rise"— everything is there.)
In any case, none of that helped; I drove inside that failure on October 7. And that day lives and burns in my soul every time I close my eyes. So there is no rejoicing or exultation in me now. Nor any illusions. I am not material for politics. I do not bring flashy promises and I am not able to lie efficiently or be a sophisticated super-manipulator. All I have is a big Jewish heart — and it too is broken.
Even the association of the word “politics” gives me a stomachache; in my mind it connects to running around among people, smiling, shaking hands, answering phones, begging for favors, closing deals. And that is the essence of everything I do not want.
I want only to fly far away. To escape from here. From all the poison, the fear, the pain, all the external threats that we neglect (threats that ought to have kept us awake at night) and to curl up deep in a lie. And to flee also from the more terrible pain — the one that stems from knives repeatedly driven mercilessly into our backs. To flee the lie that here has already become a way of life — the lie of the right and the left. Only a madman will deal with all of this. Whoever values his life should stay away.
So here we are, here and now, and if you are still reading the worst announcement speech about joining the political life ever written in human history — you are probably asking, what does he want from us? he should realy go take care of himself.
I would do that, but I can’t. Do you understand? My parents were born here in this Land, their parents came from the Diaspora as Holocaust survivors, and all of them together taught me everything except how to be a Diaspora Jew — except to surrender and give up when they want to take us again as sheep to the slaughter.
And truly… God is my witness that I tried everything so we would win this war. So if you have followed me or encountered me here and there and did not understand what the reasoning behind it all was —
it is very simple: in short, I fought with all my might and tried to do everything I could at every given moment so that Israel would win and come out victorious from the war of its life in which it still finds itself. This included countless different and strange actions and deeds on various fronts, such as pushing or applying pressure on others and decision-makers, writing articles or position papers, producing alternatives, demonstrating, explaining, warning, cursing and shouting, comforting, encouraging and praising — and this happened everywhere I thought I might be able bring benefit, in Israel and abroad.
All of this, in sum, was meant to return to me the possibility of sleeping in peace and the color and taste of life, the confidence that there is someone to rely on, and the possibility of leaving Israel in a more-or-less normal condition for my children.
With the government’s decision to end the war two things are clear to me: first, that the war is not over and therefore in practice we are in a strategically more dangerous situation than the one in which we started;
and second, that personally I have nowhere to run and nothing to lose.
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