Symbols and ceremonies have always been the forte of the Israeli right. Members of the so-called national camp scrutinize the lips of Arab judges and non-Jewish football players lest they avoid singing the national anthem, which includes the words “a Jewish soul still yearns.” You won’t catch Culture Minister Miri Regev without a pile of blue and white flags in the trunk of her car, ready to be unfurled in the face of Israelis on the wrong side of the political map. Two years ago, she wondered aloud about the point of having a public broadcasting corporation if “we,” meaning the Likud, “don’t control it.” Now she doesn’t understand the point of having a ministerial committee of symbols and ceremonies, which she heads, if the Netanyahu camp cannot control the central event of the country’s 70th Independence Day on April 18. 

Regev recently delivered a highly publicized broadside at Yuli Edelstein for refusing to be the first Knesset speaker to let a prime minister address the official annual Independence Day ceremony traditionally organized and run by the country’s parliament as a representative body of all the people. The media are in a frenzy while Netanyahu looks on from the wings, as though none of this concerns him. Not a word on his Facebook page, nor a tweet on his Twitter account. This latest scandal might seem like yet another creation by Regev, who never misses an opportunity to serve her master. But what appears to be a battle of egos between two senior politicians over a coveted honor replete with live media coverage is only the tip of the iceberg. The larger threat to one of the pillars of Israeli democracy can be found in Regev's explanations for her actions, as the former spokesperson of the Israel Defense Forces has undergone retraining to serve as the mouthpiece of the Netanyahu family.

At a news conference convened to present the plans for the upcoming festivities, the minister repeatedly used the term “statesmanlike.” “Who does it bother that once in 70 years, the president, prime minister and Knesset speaker will speak at the torch-lighting ceremony?” Regev asked. “For God’s sake, how does that make it less statesmanlike? Why am I getting so much incitement and criticism?" Regev blamed Edelstein of ruining the dignity of the Knesset and the government, asking if there is anything more dignified than a speech by the prime minister. She went on to rebuke those “who incite against the prime minister for being unstatesmanlike.” Thus, perhaps unintentionally, she exposed the plot to elevate Netanyahu — a politician elected only by a fourth of the voters, who gave the Likud its 30 Knesset seats — to the level of a statesman. The Likud got less than a million votes for a country of over 8 million citizens, a large majority of whom opted for another party.

The most apt response to this attempt to turn Netanyahu into a respected and unifying national leader is perhaps the tirade by the Prophet Elijah to Naboth: “Shall you both murder and inherit?” Israel has never had a more divisive government than Netanyahu’s in its 70-year history. In his new book “A Place for Us All, Social Cohesion and Israel’s Future,” published in Hebrew, Arabic and English, Mike Prashker notes that Israel is a highly functioning state in terms of international indexes like gross national product, technological innovation, life span and even happiness, but lags far behind in terms of social cohesion. Prashker, head of the Merchavim Institute for Shared Citizenship, which is dedicated to fostering understanding between citizens of varying backgrounds in Israeli society, bases his conclusion on an extensive comparative study of social cohesion published in 2013.