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1. Benjamin Netanyahu has passed Ben-Gurion to become the longest serving prime minister in Israel’s history. I’d like to make a brief note of one way the Israeli Right’s rise has reflected on the Jewish state’s politics: making Israel’s democracy whole.
2. Here’s how Yehuda Avner (an aide to different prime ministers but close with Begin) described the political system: 
3. It was a one party state led by socialists. But it was also—ironically? inevitably?—a class war masquerading as a govt. Mizrahi Jews were openly discriminated against and used as cheap labor. Here’s how election night looked when Begin finally won in 1977:
4. The result was a refusal to believe it would hold. Ever since anything Likud-led govts do is cast as a “culture war” because winning elections is fine but how dare they govern! Rabin’s aides after Begin won kept showing up to work. The concept of ‘transfer of power’ was alien.
5. And so, the economy would slowly be pried open, peace plans would stress democracy. Moshe Arens wanted to give Palestinians elections and automatic representation. Rabin quashed it. Thanks to Rabin & HW, it would be put into the hands of Yasser Arafat and never recover.
6. None of this is surprising. The path of the Right was set by Jabotinsky, who considered “every man a king.” But the best example of Jabotinsky’s prophecy is an essay from 1926 in which Jabo says all Jews who want to come should be helped, and let the market decide on ideology:
7. Jabotinsky didn’t try to build a rightwing state or a leftwing state. He just wanted a state for the Jews in their homeland. Let the people decide. The whole point was to give Jews control over their own destiny. So Jabo trusted them to. Today he is vindicated. /fin
And now you know the rest of the story.
