Everyone’s having a good time

Smiles and handshakes, showing off children and parents and boyfriends, group pictures where not everyone is looking toward the same camera and — because it is 2015 — selfies.

Yes, the 20th Knesset was sworn in this week and from the looks of Wednesday’s newspapers everyone is having a good time.

Well, maybe not everyone.

Haaretz describes the swearing-in as “New Knesset, old conflicts.”

Ravit Hecht describes for Haaretz the current, more conservative political make-up of the Knesset. Those that think “basically nothing has changed” or “the right wing got weaker,” Hecht writes, need to wake up and face reality.

“Anyone who is not convinced from a breakdown of the Knesset seats is invited to leave the Tel Aviv, Sharon and Haifa enclaves and meet on campuses, in high schools and just on the street young people brainwashed with a fever of nationalism, fear and hatred of Arabs. In those places the word ‘liberal’ is a curse,” she writes.

And while Hecht is describing the right’s victory over Israeli hearts and minds, Akiva Eldar laments the left’s failings.

“What happened to Herzog’s memory?” he asks. Eldar discusses a 2011 article Isaac Herzog had written for the magazine Foreign Affairs that laid out his plans for a two-state solution. But when Eldar spoke with Herzog during the campaign, he writes, the statesman claimed he forgot having written it.

Eldar encourages Herzog to forget the losing campaign platform of “It’s us or him” and use his time in the Knesset “to change the catchphrase to ‘It’s his conflict, or our solution.'”

Israel Hayom leads its issue with the ongoing nuclear talks in Switzerland, but still keeps the new Knesset as one of its top stories.

Smadar Bat-Adam, a former candidate for the Likud-Beytenu party in 2013, writes for Israel Hayom an entirely unself-aware opinion piece, blasting the notion of a national unity government.

“What’s all this nonsense then about a ‘national unity government?'” she asks. Everyone knows that the country wants a right-wing government, she says, seemingly unaware that her connection to a right-wing political party might cloud her judgment on the issue. “It’s simple math,” she writes.

Bat-Adam does not get into the specifics of that “simple math,” but claims if you break down the numbers — what numbers doesn’t matter — 60 percent of Israelis want Netanyahu as prime minister.

“In order that all who vote know that they actually influence things,” she writes, we need to uphold the majority’s decision.

“The nation said its piece. Period.”

Yedioth Ahronoth keeps things a little bit lighter, its coverage of the swearing-in ceremony heavy on pictures (Ayelet Shaked took a picture with a member of the band — such news) and light on words.

Under an article on the Iran talks the newspaper’s front page even features a photograph from the event in lieu of a headline.

After the celebration, Aviad Kleinberg turns us back to the political in his piece. Kleinberg claims haughtiness is the greatest sin in Israeli society — a sin the left is constantly guilty of.

“‘Death to Arabs’? That’s just mischief. Excluding women? That’s Israeli tradition,” Kleinberg writes in Yedioth, “All those can be forgiven.”

“Even chauvinism we can handle in Israel.” But superiority is unforgivable and superiority is what the left does best, he writes.

“It’s not entirely clear why an egalitarian viewpoint (justice for all) is more condescending than a viewpoint that advocates clear preferential treatment for one group over the others (justice for Jews),” Kleinberg says, “It’s not clear, but it is.”

So, he recommends, let’s try to get past this sticking point of pomposity and move on, so we can tackle the real issues.