In 1977, after being deposed from a half century in power, Labour politicians and intellectuals bitterly accused a public of being “riffraff” and black-hats of stealing “their” country. An old guard socialist leader suggested the voting public must be replaced with a better one. Since then it has become customary for our politicians and media to blame “the public” for everything, even when it just reacts to misguided and inept leadership.

If we have an extremely autocratic and secretive government, constantly making backroom deals at the public’s expense, it is because the public is not democratic enough. If the shekel falls, “the public” is guilty of a run on the dollar, even when few were permitted to buy it, and banks and large enterprises made massive purchases. When stock markets collapse, the public is blamed for panicking, although banks urged them to buy their stock funds at speculative highs, and markets are routinely manipulated.

When acrimonious and violent strikes erupt as a result of our politicized Byzantine labor market and a discriminatory wage structure, employees are usually blamed. Fires threaten lives in not properly fire-proofed high-rise buildings, so it is the public’s fault if it panics.

Fatal accidents reoccur in dangerous roads, but it is only the drivers’ fault.

The public is driven to distraction by thousands of arcane laws and obscure regulations, and by inept bureaucrats, who imperiously deny service paid for in very high taxes. But the public is always guilty of unruly behavior.

These may be just growing pains, but shifting blame to an amorphous public is permitting our elites to disastrously shirk responsibility, even, ominously, in national security matters.

Recently, for example, several generals conceded that Prime Minister Barak’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from south Lebanon may be very risky. Barak takes this risk because he and the army leadership believe that “the Israeli public” is incapable of bearing the sacrifices required to keep it.

A similar perceived weakness probably motivates Barak to cut a precipitous deal with Syria, though the benefits of an agreement with an aging dictator of a bankrupt country may be rather transitory and ephemeral.

Barak may be expecting a confrontation with the Palestinians prior to a settlement, and is convinced, it is reported, that “the Israeli public” cannot stand its ground on two fronts. He therefore feels he must regroup and eliminate a Syrian front before he can successfully tackle the Palestinians.

Whether this is entirely true or not (Barak does not consult anyone, so there is no way of knowing), it is dangerous when leadership is perceived as following trends rather than leading. Defeatist Israeli attitudes are not innate. They are born of the public’s perception that its leadership, both civilian and military, is weak and inept, that it has lost its stomach to stand up and fight even for vital security needs.

The same Israeli public that was deeply depressed when its leadership exhibited confusion and indecisiveness on the eve of the Six Day War, rallied behind Moshe Dayan, mostly because he conveyed a can-do attitude.

Since the intifada, most of our top brass have become dangerously risk-averse in preparation for a political career. So, they tell us that their mission is a mission impossible, that you cannot control stone-throwing mobs, that the grand Israeli army is no match even for 300 to 500 Hizbullah fighters, who seem to outsmart and outfight our bravest and brightest.

The media, convinced apparently that a strong military is an impediment to peace-now-under-any-circumstances, has done its bit to foster no-win attitudes with close-ups of wounded soldiers, funerals and weeping mothers, and by the ceaseless promotion of small, militantly anti-war groups, that, perhaps with best intentions, are emasculating our forces (how can any army function if its objective is not to win, but only to return “our boys” unscathed to their mother’s lap). They also endanger the very peace they so yearn for, since peace will not last if Israel is perceived as weak. Had Churchill concluded after the Dunkirk debacle that the British were beaten and exhausted and he must therefore sue for peace, Hitler’s Germany would have dominated the world.

By relying on polls reflecting temporary attitudes, and a reaction to weak leadership, our leaders may be selling us short. Their perceptions become self fulfilling prophecies, and actually further lower the public’s morale. To matter, a leadership must chart a course that reverses dangerous trends.

There is nothing Israelis fear more than being taken for suckers. Perhaps the way their leaders shirk responsibility, while putting the blame entirely on them, proves that the public has excellent reason to fear.

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