THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

The "deep rift that is developing within Israeli society" is the "most complex" challenge to Israel's security, said Ronen Bar [the head of the Shin Bet] two weeks ago.

He didn't specify, but may have been thinking about the fact that the fastest-rising political force ahead of November 1's elections is led by a charismatic extremist who boasted about being able to "get to" Yitzhak Rabin amid the fevered internal climate shortly before the prime minister's 1995 assassination, and who intends to expel "disloyal" citizens if, as is more than possible, he attains ministerial office a few weeks from now.

Or of the routine viciousness with which some of our leaders disparage and delegitimize their rivals, as in the case of Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman, who, on the very day Bar was speaking, felt the necessity to invoke the Nazis when claiming opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu was behind a smear campaign against him. "These are Netanyahu's methods," Liberman declared, "exactly like those of [Hitler's propaganda chief] Goebbels and Stalin, to make the most severe, absurd accusation and repeat it a million times until people get used to the absurdity."

Or of a political climate so hate-filled that Likud MK Shlomo Karhi, gently encouraged at the end of a television interview a few days ago to give the watching nation a blessing for the New Year, said he hoped it would bring the demise of the current "iniquitous" government. [...]

Our Jewish obligation, at this time of year, is to look back at what we have lately wrought, internalize our misdeeds, and at least try to do better -- in order to, as the High Holiday liturgy cited above puts it, "overturn the evil decree." Our moral requirement, at this and all times, is to live by and disseminate the core imperative to treat others as we would wish to be treated. At Rosh Hashanah 5783, that imperative seems unusually urgent.

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