“Those voting for the political center are not stupid,” declared veteran advertising executive Udi Pridan, whose agency coined “Without unity, your vote is lost,” the slogan opening a campaign to encourage a group of seven Israeli public figures to unite under one political umbrella. Unite4Israel, launched Jan. 20, urges them to “set aside their egos” and join forces to win the “war for the state.” A poll commissioned by the campaign showed that 79% of the supporters of the seven — more than 1 million adult Israelis — want them to join forces.

Admittedly, most center-left Israelis are not stupid, but they are undoubtedly confused and embarrassed, having lost their way. The deep yearning to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his associates, among them Culture Minister Miri Regev, appears to have become their be all and end all, blocking the political and moral field of vision of wise and principled people. In other words, the dream of toppling Netanyahu and company in the April 9 elections has distorted the thinking of Israel's best and brightest when it comes to the tremendous diplomatic, political and social challenges facing Israel.

This elite political commando unit consists of four men whose most obvious common denominator is the number of stars that adorned their shoulders when they led the Israel Defense Forces. Giant portraits of Lt. Generals Ehud Barak (formerly of the Labor Party), Benny Gantz (head of the newly formed Israel Resilience), Gabi Ashkenazi (unaffiliated) and Moshe Ya’alon (Telem) grace billboards and newspapers alongside photos of Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid), Tzipi Livni (Hatenua) and Avi Gabbay (Labor Party).

The campaign is being sponsored by the businessman and advertising executive Ilan Shiloah, Maj. Gen. (Res.) Moshe Kaplinsky, Brig. Gen. (Res.) Giora Inbar, social entrepreneur Noa Eliasaf-Shoham and Yonatan Ben-Artzi, grandson of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Borrowing from military jargon, this group is calling on the seven to “get together under the stretcher; this is our state that’s bleeding up there.” The answer they propose to the question of who will lead is “Fuck it, the state will lead” — yet another symptom of Israel's stultified public discourse.