Why Can't Israel Get it's Own Version of Obama?

Today, April 29, 2009 is by a historical coincidence Israel's 61 Independence Day and the 100th day since Barack Obama became the president of the US. While many people have all kind of things to say about how successful or not these first 100 days have been, the change in this country is unmistakable. The best and most interesting piece I have read about the Omaba phenomenon was written by the British novelist Zadie Smith in the New York Review of Books. It was published this week, but is based on a lecture she gave just before Obama was elected.

Smith writers: "For Obama, having more than one voice in your ear is not a burden, or not solely a burden—it is also a gift." She adds a hope: "It's my audacious hope that a man born and raised between opposing dogmas, between cultures, between voices, could not help but be aware of the extreme contingency of culture. I further audaciously hope that such a man will not mistake the happy accident of his own cultural sensibilities for a set of natural laws, suitable for general application."

After merely 100 days, it is surely too early to tell whether Obama will be able to fulfill Smith's audacious hope and the hope of so many people in the US and around the world. The point is that we haven't heard a politician, a leader of a country who is so inspiring in...I don't know how long. And this brings me to the country in which I was born and I still love, Israel. Israel used to have some inspiring politians, leaders with intellectual ability, moral stands, ideology (good or bad), but these days are gone! Politics in Israel is a dirty word, and the political system seems to attract cynical opportunists with zero intellect and nothing inspiring to say. Since Rabin's assassination (not that he was perfect, but at least he was thinking) in 1995, Israel saw a line of bad leaders - Bibi Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Arik Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and now Bibi again...with the help of a new and more dangerous politician - Avigdor Lieberman.

After 61 years of existence and many achievements (and many failures and mistakes as well), one wonders - why can't Israel get its own version of Barack Obama? What does it take to produce a man like Obama , who to quote Smith can "speak in tongues" and not shy of politics. Anyone familiar with Israel knows that such people exist, and yet they are nowhere to be seen in Israel's politics.

So my wish for Isreal and its people for the state 61 birthday: I hope the day in which you (we!) get a leader as inspiring as Obama is not far. When you have a politician and a president like Obama, suddenly politics is not such a dirty word.