What the Israeli elections revealed is not what will happen in Tel Aviv, but rather what is happening in our own minds. The day after the vote, with the ballot count still ongoing and no party yet possessing the necessary majority to form a government, and regardless of the anticipated results, I was struck by the disconnect that accompanied this purely Israeli event among the majority of Arab and Muslim populations.

They follow the Israeli elections as if their own votes were being cast. They express their opinions and judgments, distribute endorsements and insults, and interfere in a vote in which they have no right to participate. In the midst of this, they forget that Israel has Arab and Muslim citizens who vote and hold the same citizenship, and that this is a country where people live, work, and pay taxes. We see them analyzing and inciting from the outside, as if their goal is to fragment Israel from within, as if these citizens are mere pawns in someone else’s battle, not decision-makers. They have become accustomed to foreign interference in their countries, and thus the deterrent has vanished.

The secret to this preoccupation is that, in the eyes of many, Israel appears like a beautiful woman who may be admired from afar but must not be approached, or like the sun that attracts and burns. A morbid admiration coupled with blind hatred. We follow its elections as if they were a final match, analyzing its coalitions and counting its seats, then declare it an artificial, nonexistent entity! Why all this obsession with something that doesn’t concern us? Because the answer is simpler and harsher than we admit.

We admire it in secret, and curse it in public.

We admire its democracy, its freedom, its institutions, and its laws. We admire its technology, its army, and its capacity for innovation. We admire that its economy is among the strongest and most innovative in the region, and has withstood wars on multiple fronts. At the same time, we hate it, not only because it attacks or defends itself, but because it surpasses us in areas where we are incapable.

The irony is that no one wants to accept that an alliance with a state possessing such capabilities is better for all the countries of the region than waging war against it. Hence the importance of the Abraham Accords. The truth is that the stances of some parties on this issue often stem not from principled rejection, but from a fear that other nations will open up to the Israeli people, envy them, and demand the same rights, freedoms, and democracy they enjoy, foremost among them the principle of accountability and the principle that the people are the ones who judge and remove their leaders.

Furthermore, in Lebanon, for example, I believe that three-quarters of Lebanese people envy the Israelis for their leaders. This isn’t just because these leaders possess absolute loyalty to their country, but because they wish Lebanon had leaders who love it and are prepared to fight and die for it.

Look at Israeli candidates and politicians, from Yehiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, to Gadi Eisenkot. Both lost a son in the war, and many like them offer their sons for military service, exposing them to danger and hiding them behind titles. This is what makes a leader speak of blood when he knows its price.

In contrast, what the rulers of Lebanon and Iran do is the exact opposite. Their children live abroad in luxury and the most expensive and opulent places, while the children of ordinary people are sent to their deaths and suicides in the name of the cause. And so it is in Palestine itself: the children of Hamas leaders and the children of Palestinian Authority officials live in hotels and capital cities with vast sums of money, while ordinary people pay the full price in blood, hunger, and displacement.

The children of the people die, while the children of the leaders go shopping.

This is precisely where the hypocrisy is revealed. We hate Israel because it wins, we envy it because it holds people accountable, and we fear it because it does what we don’t dare to do: make the leader pay for his decisions.

I am not calling for us to love her, nor to forget the pain, nor to ignore what she did. I am calling for us to reconcile with truth and reality, and to search for the best way to live with and alongside her. He who cannot acknowledge what he admires in his enemy will not learn from him, and he who does not learn from his enemy will remain trapped with his true enemy: his ignorance.

Originally published at nowlebanon.com/fauda-is-number-one-shana-tova-is-forbidden. Republished by Faith & Freedom News. The views expressed are the author’s own.