This movement gave me a political home. Now it's my turn to give back.
I didn't decide to run overnight. I decided after one too many conversations with members who felt their voice stopped mattering the day after the last primary.
You know the conversation. It happens in a branch office with folding chairs and bad coffee. Someone who has carried this movement for twenty years - who put up posters in the rain, who argued with neighbours, who brought their whole family to vote - tells you quietly that nobody has called them since. Not once. Until the next campaign needs volunteers.
I've had that conversation in Jerusalem, in the north, in towns that get remembered every four years and forgotten in between. And at some point you stop shaking your head about it and you either do something or you stop complaining.
What the Likud gave me
This movement gave me a political home. It gave me a place where you can argue loudly with someone in the morning and stand beside them in the afternoon, because what you share is bigger than what you disagree about. That is rarer than it sounds, and we should not treat it casually.
So this isn't a campaign against anyone. I'm not running because I think the people currently doing this work are villains. I'm running because I think the distance between the leadership and the membership has grown, quietly, year after year - and distance like that doesn't close on its own.
What I'm actually promising
I want to be careful here, because campaigns are where promises go to inflate. So let me keep it to what I can actually control:
- I will publish where I stand, in writing, before you vote - not after.
- I will show up at branches that aren't convenient and aren't photogenic.
- I will answer the hard question in the room rather than the easy one I prepared for.
- When I get something wrong, I'll say so plainly.
A movement that only hears from its members during a campaign isn't a movement. It's a mailing list.
Between now and the primary I'm going to publish one short post every morning. Each one takes a single subject - security, cost of living, our communities, the state of the movement itself - and tells you what I think and what I'd do. In my own words, not a spokesperson's.
Read them. Argue with them. Send them to the person in your branch who has been waiting years for somebody to ask what they think.
And if what you read makes sense to you, put your name on the list below. That's how this starts.