A good read of hope: . "Yair Lapid's Vision For a New Israeli Future"

Unlike the “extreme right” and the “extreme left,” Lapid argued, “I do not and the majority of Israelis do not define ourselves by hating somebody else, but by the proactive, positive ideas that ensure our ability to live together.”

“This is why we formed this government,” he said, adding, “I think we’re going to do better … and not listening to the extremists is always a very good start

It's is a mighty tall order but maybe this will be a turning point, for the sake of humanity. This is the stuff of great leaders. We wish him succes.

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Yair Lapid’s Vision For a New Israeli Future
https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61c27a114dbd460022ddce6c/yair-lapids-vision-for-a-new-israeli-future/

SNIPPET from the link:
Our conversation focused on Israel’s internal challenges, from democratic erosion to extremist Jewish violence to Arab inequality. But it’s not hard to see how Lapid’s positions on these topics underlie his outlook toward Israel’s external challenges, including its conflict with the Palestinians.

He has always supported a two-state solution that would end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, saying that Israel and the Palestinians did not need “a happy marriage,” but rather “a divorce we can live with.” Given the fractured nature of both groups’ political leadership, Lapid sees little hope in the near term for realizing this vision today. But he likely believes that an Israel more at peace with itself—and particularly with the Palestinian citizens inside it—would be better positioned to make peace with those Palestinians outside.

“It is not authentic to be an extremist.” That’s what Lapid told me shortly after he became Israel’s opposition leader last year. He has staked his entire political career on this proposition.
He insists that violent Arab and Jewish extremists are aberrations who abuse nationalism and faith to justify their anti-social impulses, unlike the Israeli mainstream that he aspires to represent. “That is my lifetime mission as a politician: to unite Israelis who believe in democracy and outreach to people who are different from you,” he said.

It’s a powerful story, and as a former journalist, Lapid is good at telling it.
But it’s not Israel’s only story. A few months ago, Bezalel Smotrich, the head of the far-right alliance, got up in the Knesset and said something very different. After being heckled by several Arab Knesset members, he snapped, “I’m not talking to you, anti-Zionists, terror supporters, enemies. You’re here by mistake, because [David] Ben-Gurion,” Israel’s first prime minister, “didn’t finish the job and throw you out in 1948.” This ugly outburst brought to mind a different Knesset riposte by Jamal Zahalka, a member of the hard-line Arab party Balad, in which he turned to his Jewish colleagues in a heated 2015 exchange and declared: “We were here before you, and we’ll be here after you.”


This is the story that many people in Israel tell themselves. It’s a zero-sum struggle in which only one side can win and the other must lose. I recalled these stories to Lapid, and asked whether there was truly an electoral constituency for his alternative narrative. Did enough Israelis really share his story?

“The examples you use are the sharp ends of Israeli extremism,” he replied. “This is not the majority. We are the majority.” He pointed to the current government, with its eight parties—left, right, Jewish, Arab—somehow serving a common cause, as proof.

Unlike the “extreme right” and the “extreme left,” Lapid argued, “I do not and the majority of Israelis do not define ourselves by hating somebody else, but by the proactive, positive ideas that ensure our ability to live together.”

“This is why we formed this government,” he said, adding, “I think we’re going to do better … and not listening to the extremists is always a very good start.”