As we were cooking for Shabbat today, we were blaring one of those American music streaming services on all the speakers, playing the music we grew up with. Crosby, Still and Nash (and Young), Simon and Garfunkel, Cat Stevens (yes, I know…), the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac … if you know the genre, you know.

Why in the world begin this post with that? Because the question of whether to stream an American music service became a uniquely Israeli question during this war. Since the service isn’t available in Israel, to get it, you have to use a VPN on your phone. But … if you use a VPN on your phone, does the Home Front Command know where you are? Will you still get warnings of sirens? No one I know knows the answer to that with any certainty, and no one I know had the presence of mind to test it during those weeks when we were running to safe rooms. So the war(s) have ended (for now) without us knowing.

But as of midnight last night, Donald has promised us All Quiet on the Northern, North Eastern, distant Eastern and Southern Fronts, so voilà VPN. And back to music to cook by.

“Donald has promised us?” Yes, indeed. And that has many Israelis very, very worried. Here are a few of today’s front pages:

YEDI’OT ACHRONOT

HEADLINE: Trump Decided: Cease Fire.

That’s pretty clear. I put the Hebrew for “Trump” in yellow, so you can see it in the papers below, too.

Below that story, the photo of the soldier and young children is in preparation for the agonizing day of Yom HaZikaron, Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers, much more on which next week.

HA’ARETZ

HEADLINE: Trump decreed a cease fire in Lebanon for ten days.

MAKOR RISHON

HEADLINE: Trump decrees: cease fire in Lebanon for ten days.

When the hard-left Haaretz and the right-of-center, religious Makor Rishon post practically verbatim headlines, you know you’re seeing a national consensus. And what is that consensus?

“This isn’t our doing. Bibi’s not running this. This is only Trump.”

That this cease fire is bad for Israel (desperate though we all are for the quiet) is beyond question. The US brought the fighting in Gaza to an end, so Hamas, which never planned to disarm, and didn’t, is now rebuilding. The fighting in the north ended with Hezbollah showering us with rockets … they’re far from finished. (Trump is telling Hezbollah this is an opportunity for peace. He must have missed “Islamism 101” in his briefing papers. “Peace”?)

And how about Iran? Now, DJT is saying (as of yesterday, at least) that they’re going to give up the enriched uranium.

That’s almost funny.

We have endured months of war with not terribly much to show for it. To be sure, we have some to show for it, but definitely not enough. What we have now is nothing at all like what Bibi has been promising for months:

* Iranian regime change

* Removal of the enriched uranium from Iran

* Destruction of all the ballistic missiles

* Utter destruction of Hezbollah’s fighting capacity

How many of those came to pass?

Exactly zero, of course.

Which is why all the papers are making the point that the person determining Israel’s foreign policy is not Netanyahu, but Donald Trump.

Maariv is a bit different. THE ROAD TO PEACE it says in YELLOW, which is about as ironic as one can get. 25,644 soldiers, in the GREEN rectangle, have died defending the state. And in the PURPLE, the latest Maariv poll, which is also not good for Bibi.

Here’s the Maariv poll in greater detail—we’ve just replaced the Hebrew bloc names with English (I got the image in a text message from the Bennett campaign):

What does this show?

* The opposition, which Maariv is calling the Bennett bloc (though Eisenkot is closing the gap, according to other polls), has 61 seats. That’s enough to make a coalition without the Arab parties.

* Many people in Israel are OK with Arab parties being part of the coalition as long as the coalition isn’t DEPENDENT on them for the majority. The 61 opposition bloc seats would satisfy that, so the Arab parties with their ten seats could join, which would bring the coalition to 71 seats.

* The “Bibi bloc” has 33 and the Haredim get 16. Together, they’re only 49 seats.

Unless something dramatic changes, and that could very well happen, Bibi is in very big trouble.

HOWEVER, HERE’S A LITTLE WARNING for all those people in the US whose sermons I listen to — because people send me links urging me to hear — who are dying for “regime change” (after almost twenty years, that’s not an entirely incorrect appellation) because they think that Israel’s foreign policy will shift directions with a new government. They are in for a very big disappointment. Bennett or Eisenkot or Lieberman (very unlikely) might (and absolutely should) curb the violence in the West Bank. They will almost certainly be less corrupt, more honest, and appoint more professional people to important positions.

But … nothing will change with Gaza, Lebanon, Iran or the settlements. Nothing.

This election is not about Gaza. The percentage of Israelis troubled by what happened there is not high. Most Israelis know that there was terrible suffering in Gaza. Very few believe that what happened was genocide. Most think that after October 7, any sane country would do what it had to in order to defend its citizens. And if the terrorists choose to base themselves in civilian centers and under hospitals and schools and in UNWRA offices, that’s tragic, but at the end of the day, not a reason to have our grandchildren live cowering in fear and danger.

A reminder to the virtue signalers: Tragic and immoral are not the same thing.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

So, if the foreign policy isn’t going to change, why is Bibi slipping in the polls? If they’re not seeking a changed foreign policy, why do Israelis seem to want change at all?

There are many factors, and we’ll look at them in coming weeks. But a litany of the reasons are in the video at the very top of this post, the work of a well known (and excellent—you should check her out) Israeli standup comic, Noga Dangeli. You can find the original post of her video (to which we added AI-generated subtitles) here.

A lot of the references would take a bit of time to explain, so we won’t do that here. Many of them, though, are obvious, as she explains the “10 reasons to break up with your Prime Minister.”

The relationship “reasons to break up” analogies, at least, are obvious.

There’s tons of that sort of stuff online, but here’s another angle that we haven’t shown before. Here’s a Facebook group called PEOPLE ON THE RIGHT AGAINST THIS GOVERNMENT’S CONDUCT. There’s a lot posted on their FB page — the translation function of your browser should cover at least some of it …

This video (originally here, we’ve added AI generated subtitles) is a cry from the right that the right can be replaced with … an “honest right.” And how do they know it’s possible? Hungary. Orban didn’t fall to the left; he fell to someone who was once firmly in his camp. That’s giving the anti-Bibi-right hope.

There are many reasons that Bibi is not happy about Orban’s fate. They’re obvious. The audio on this video goes super fast, so the subtitles have trouble keeping up, but you’ll get the idea, and can watch twice if need be.

Once we’re on the subject of this anti-Bibi Facebook group, and the way in which the right is feeling abandoned, check out this long but very articulate post from a well known right wing personality who’s decided to call the judicial business like she now sees it: Not Judicial Reform, but a Judicial Coup.

The Judicial-Whatever is going to come back to the headlines with a vengeance soon. When it does, it seems, the lines between “right and left” may well look very different than they did in January - September 2023.

A sincere and important text by Prof. Tovit Rosenzweig, resident of Kedumim, a Religious Zionist woman:

“I ask you to join me on a brief journey back in time.

January 2023, Yariv Levin announces the judicial reform, which quickly acquired a parallel nickname — the judicial revolution.

For 10 months, tempers flared, streets filled with massive protests, and the people were divided between supporters of the reform and those who feared a revolution.

The distinction between calling the move a ‘reform’ or a ‘constitutional coup’ became the litmus test for Israelis’ positions.

In those murky days, I did not make an absolute choice in naming the event. I deliberately called it one thing sometimes and the other at other times, to remind myself of the complexity. Being deeply identified with the necessity of rebalancing power among the branches of government, held by years of frustration with the judicial system — with what I saw as an improper balance between civil rights and the rights of the state as the state of the Jewish people — I said: reform.

And on the other hand — understanding that the move led by Levin and Rothman was forceful, ...

"If only we could be like Hungary"