It was sometime back in the ‘90s, in Tel Aviv’s Yad Eliyahu sports arena, during a heated basketball derby between Maccabi and Hapoel Tel Aviv. Gur Shelef, if memory serves, was replaced by Derrick Sharp, and suddenly the announcer realized that all ten players on the court were foreign-born Americans—not a single native Israeli, certainly not from Tel Aviv—in a game supposed to embody the emotional battle for dominance in Israel’s first Hebrew city.
I have a similar feeling today when witnessing the rising chorus on the Israeli right, urging the President of the United States to impose “crippling sanctions” on protest leaders, the attorney general, and architects of the so-called “deep state.” Leading this charge—perhaps even its architect—is Professor Moshe Cohen-Eliya, the former leftist turned commentator on the right-wing Channel 14.
He discarded his old political positions but brought the left’s tactics to the right. His logic, echoed by many allies, seems straightforward: don’t overthink it. After all, international sanctions against settlements, settlers, and figures like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir were initiated by Israelis who used the Biden administration to influence domestic debates. “As a former leftist, I believe when someone punches you, you punch back twice,” Cohen-Eliya wrote recently, adding cynically, “their American visa means everything to them.”
Cohen-Eliya is remarkably articulate. Elon Musk has already echoed his points, and senior Israeli officials have entertained the idea, even leaking shocking statements attributed to Trump about Netanyahu’s bureaucratic and legal troubles. It wouldn’t even be unprecedented: Just last week, the Trump administration imposed harsh personal sanctions on former Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner. Blocking Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s bank account would hardly be a stretch.
In life, as in basketball, relying on imported talent reflects a lack of trust in local capabilities, an absence of faith in one’s own majority. It seeks to enforce political will on citizens by outsourcing authority. It was pathetic and embarrassing to see banners proclaiming “Biden, save us” at Kaplanist demonstrations, and it’s equally pathetic and embarrassing to hear the Israeli right now cry “Trump, save us.” Opposition factions’ addiction to foreign money and influence can at least be understood, given their consistent failure to win over the Israeli public. But what’s the right-wing’s excuse for cowardly threats akin to “Just wait until my dad beats you up”?
Morally, it’s even worse. Just as Hyrcanus and Aristobulus once fought over primacy in Jerusalem, inviting Pompey of Rome to intervene, today’s very Jewish act of reporting each other to the “landlord” undermines Israeli sovereignty—all ironically in the name of the people’s sovereignty. Want to fight the deep state? Go ahead. But don’t do it through foreign intervention.
The above is an excerpt from my Shabbat column in Yedioth Ahronoth.
