It's just Idit Silman, right?
The outburst of joy and internet memes over Silman's fall is primarily a demonstration of the extreme thirst of the sane camp in Israel after four years of complete exhaustion and zero victories. A small victory, essentially an own goal by the opponent, triggers such a resonance that it can be heard even inside Metzudat Ze'ev.
Idit Silman sells bourekas and asks, "Should I add an egg?". Idit Silman is a sanitation worker standing next to a garbage truck. Idit Silman behind the counter at "Aroma". Haha. And even, I would say, hahahaha. What joy. What relief. What satisfaction. This woman, a political turncoat, a spineless person who sold a government in exchange for a position, which she dedicated entirely to neglect, daily poking fingers in the eyes of the whole world, and coining the term "Kaplan massacre" — is out of the next government. Probably.
The mockery, which Silman earned not only honestly, but primarily through villainy, echoed yesterday from the edge of the internet to its center. It is truly very joyful. And it is truly, simultaneously, pathetic. It is the joy of the poor. The joy of a bloc — which, according to almost all polls, is the largest in Israel, but has not achieved any victory at all for so long. It has absorbed so many blows that one small, tiny victory in the form of the ousting of Idit Silman releases a cork of immense joy, as if the state had been proclaimed again and we are all supposed to go out and dance the hora in the city squares.
It's just Idit Silman, right? A small, very small victory for the sane person, and an initial step for the Israeli public that seeks change. It's not like some reality-changing law passed here, like a media law, a Basic Law on evasion, a law on non-arrest of Haredi deserters, or a kashrut law — all these are real, huge achievements, inconceivable in their levels of corruption and internal Israeli betrayal, which the coalition has recorded only in the last few months. In contrast: Idit Silman. Oh, and also Dichter and probably Barkat are out. I was happy too, of course. I cheered. Justice was done, it seems, karma is a bitch, and all that. Certainly.
But let's be honest: this is a ball that the opponent took out of the field themselves. It is not an awakening of Likud voters, because Miri Regev, Yoav Kisch, Miki Zohar, Amir Ohana, Yariv Levin and all the other people that Benjamin Netanyahu was so good at reshaping are still elected, still there, and the chances are high that these people will sit — meaning insult — in the next Knesset as well.
I didn't need the image of Silman with dirty hands next to a garbage truck to gloat. And above all: it is so irrelevant and it is better that we keep our eyes on the real ball, the only victory that really matters: the elections. Idit Silman is going home (if Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't spare her somehow) and in civilian life her skills will be enough for exactly some invented position in one of the companies she made sure to benefit while serving as Minister for Environmental Destruction. This is the ultimate joy of the poor.
Let's scroll past Silman — it's really small, it's nothing, the woman is so unimportant that such quantities of contempt begin, paradoxically, to give her some importance. Let's focus on the real downfall that must come upon the government of absolute failure, if Israel is still a life-loving state and a democracy. Silman, Dichter, Barkat, thanks for nothing. Goodbye, and don't come to me in a dream. And now to the main game.
