On Saturday night, an assorted group of right-wingers, settlers and religious folk will gather in Jerusalem’s Zion Square for a rally in support of the rule of law and against corruption. It is intended as a riposte to the now weekly anti-corruption Saturday rallies in Tel Aviv, which are largely dominated by left-wingers and open calls for the removal (and imprisonment) of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. [...]
Their comments echoed similar recent sentiments written by other leading right-wing journalists, including Kalman Liebskind and Yoaz Hendel, who is one of the organizers of the Jerusalem rally and also served as Netanyahu’s communications director from 2011 to 2012. Without necessarily targeting Netanyahu, they have served as a counterpoint to the regular right-wing rhetoric that attacks the police, the prosecutors, the left and the media for unfairly persecuting the prime minister.
The most powerful voice so far has been that of Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, who’s one of the more mainstream rabbis on the religious right. Defying his own public, he appeared at the Tel Aviv rally last Saturday, where he said “corruption is a strategic threat to Israeli society. The meaning of corruption is abuse of power by those who have been given it – power that is used for the wrong reasons. Power is essential, but it is dangerous and can topple the state into the depths.” [...]
The trauma of 1992 is still deeply felt within the Israeli right. Yitzhak Rabin won that election, even though the religious and right bloc received more votes than the center-left parties. Fragmentation on the right led to the ultranationalist Tehiya party not crossing the electoral threshold, with its votes rendered useless.
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