Why is it legitimate to choose a Prime Minister based on their external appearance?
Bibi is an avant-garde movement that challenges the aesthetics of Israeli society and confronts it with a stark choice between Jewish aesthetic norms and Christian-European norms
One day Ayelet Shaked will be Prime Minister. Why is this prophecy so widespread? Why is it so difficult for voters worldwide to ignore the external appearance of candidates, from Gantz to Hillary Clinton, which is
one of the best predictors for winning elections? Could it be that choosing based on first impressions of candidates' appearances is more justified than it seems at first glance?
The importance of aesthetics in the political world has been recognized since ancient times. The Bible already favorably mentions - and exceptionally for men - the external appearance of Saul, David, and two of his sons as a criterion for choosing them, in the sense of "Your eyes will see the king in his beauty," in contrast to other central biblical heroes like the patriarchs or prophets. The aesthetic commitment of rulers, from ancient times to the royal courts in Europe, has given us the best works of art and architecture in human culture - and often this was their main enterprise. What replaces this in modern political culture?
If we deconstruct politics from an aesthetic point of view, we can arrive at the following claim: Politics is primarily a matter of style. The head of state largely determines the aesthetics of the state, sometimes more than the policy itself, which is often the institutional policy of giant systems that he represents more than controls. Even when he doesn't have much executive power, he still has significant aesthetic power, and therefore he is often chosen for aesthetic reasons and also removed for such reasons. Bibi, Sharon, Ben-Gurion, Rabin, and Begin - each of them had their own consistent aesthetic style that they imposed on Israeli public life (confrontational, manipulative, stately, direct, and pompous - respectively). Meanwhile, leaders who caused their voters to experience an aesthetic failure - like Olmert, Barak, and Peres - are ousted and abandoned by their own voters and pay a much higher price for it than for policy mistakes.
Barak, for example, represented the aesthetics of precise intellect, the beauty of a sophisticated intelligence operation by an elite unit, the assembly of Swiss watches and piano playing, and when exposed in his nakedness, was abandoned like a failed operation or a broken watch. A known convention holds that when a leader becomes ridiculous, it's his political end - more so than if he were responsible for a war. Therefore, it is not absurd to choose a Prime Minister based on his face, his splendor, and the aesthetic aroma he brings with him. After all, leaders are among the most viewed and recognized figures in the public eye, the central piece of furniture in democracy's living room, and their ability to present what was until yesterday considered ugly as something beautiful and acceptable is well-known. In the Facebook era, the Prime Minister is the profile picture of the state.
The unprecedented controversy surrounding Bibi's figure stems mainly from profoundly opposing aesthetics rather than significant policy gaps. To the left, Bibi appears to rule in an ugly manner, as a severe aesthetic disturbance and nauseating in his very existence at the center of the public eye, combining cheap manipulative kitsch with incessant jarring noise. In contrast, the right identifies with his style, which can be seen as an updated and cheeky postmodern reincarnation of Beitar's splendor in the Facebook version, with unapologetic realism added. Therefore, aesthetically, Bibi is an avant-garde movement that challenges the aesthetics of society. Such a movement sometimes succeeds in bringing about a change in aesthetic taste and sometimes is remembered as a ridiculous curiosity, but there is no doubt that he divides society aesthetically much more than previous leaders who tried to cater to the accepted aesthetics in broad layers of society.
Bibi's struggle with the legal system is a much more important struggle than a personal or legal one, and unlike them, it has not yet been decided, because it is a struggle over Israeli good taste. Is an aesthetic that subordinates means to an end beautiful or ugly? Are Israeli cunning and scheming aesthetic, or are the European norms - which he mocks and whose elimination is the main part of his aesthetic enterprise - the aesthetics to which Israel aspires? Do we identify with Jewish aesthetics - the mess, the sweat, the gevalt [Yiddish exclamation of alarm], and the pilpul [Talmudic-style argumentation] - or with Christian aesthetics?
The term "beautiful soul" [yefeh nefesh] is a key expression in the Bibi-ist avant-garde manifesto. The choice of models like Gantz and Lapid is therefore a return to the familiar aesthetics of the beautiful Israeli, hence their power of attraction in the Bibi era - the desire to return to the aesthetic center and the classic taste of Israeliness. The aspiration for the center stems from a desire for symmetry after the breaking of norms and the defiant Bibi-ist form. If Rabin represented the Sabra's [native-born Israeli] material poverty, Ben-Gurion the brutalism of state-building, and Begin the nationalist expressionism of grand gestures - all modernist aesthetic trends - Bibi represents a postmodern aesthetic. This aesthetic is characterized by a mixture of contradictory trends such as forcefulness and victimhood or humor and insult, sharp transitions between large and small - from international statesmanship to obsessive preoccupation with trivialities, and exceptional sensitivity to media image.
This sensitivity indeed leads Bibi to his downfall, but it is not at all clear that its addition to the work of art that is his political life will not actually strengthen his figure from an aesthetic perspective - and for generations. Especially if he succeeds in causing a constitutional crisis and unprecedented chaos against the legal system - the distilled expression of the norms of respectability against which he rebels - this colossal entanglement will be the pinnacle of his aesthetic enterprise of erasing Europeanness from within Israeliness, as a continuation of Ben-Gurion's negation of the diaspora project, and the creation of a culture whose definition of beauty is chutzpah [audacity] - and that's its pride, both in high-tech and in international relations. This legacy will be deeply engraved in the culture - because the very creation of a precedent for the unprecedented is its required achievement, just like in postmodern art.
And what about Ayelet Shaked? She already represents another possible futuristic aesthetic for the State of Israel. This is an aesthetic of cold, forceful, and efficient femininity. The combination of expressionless robotics with rounded and smooth symmetry, clean lines, and perfect finish is a characteristic of many gadgets that aspire to create an experience of "soft power". This is female power expressed in efficiency and elegance that contrasts it with crude male power, and differentiates "smart" devices from the "strong" machines of the previous industrial revolution. Such a political-technological aesthetic, if it sweeps global taste in the future, can be expressed in the rise of a new generation of particularly young and beautiful female leaders, compared to whom current leaders will look like a vacuum cleaner next to an iPhone.
The rise of the leader-model type, if realized, will present the feminist movement in a sharply ironic historical light. Precisely the ultimate achievement of women climbing to the top of the power ladder will be associated with meeting extremely high standards of female beauty, in accordance with the aesthetic logic of digital media that aspires to a perfectly designed image. Unlike the current Israeli tendency towards an aesthetic center and symmetry - "neither right nor left" - which is essentially a reactionary aesthetic trend trying to return to "beautiful Israel", Shaked offers us a futuristic political aesthetic, compared to which even the Bibi-ist postmodernist aesthetic is already outdated. This is a clean and updated "high-tech aesthetic" with which an absolute majority of Israelis can identify. And that's why one day she will be Prime Minister.
* An edited version of the article was published
on Channel 7and in Haaretz.