Election Results Memo - March 24 Israel - Knesset

 

So, here's my quick take on yesterday's Elections for the 120-seat Knesset.

The unvarnished truth is that Israeli voters' solid plurality stands for Bibi-ism, Kahane-ism, and Haredism.

Why do I say this? With nearly 90 per cent of the vote in (meaning small changes will still have a big impact), the Bibi-ist Likud got 30 seats. 

The Netanyahu camp also includes: (Haredi Sephardic) Shas 9; (Knitted yarmulke) Yamina 7; (Haredi Ashkkanazim) UTJ 7; and (Hardel-ni-kim) Ben Gvir / Smotchrich 6 = 59

I can't see how anyone with a liberal bone in their body (and I use the word liberal in the original sense) could swallow this with equanimity.

The Hardel Party of Ben Gvir / Smotchrich is the most illiberal of the Jewish parties. It combines religious, social and political fanaticism garbed in an oversized kipa shruga (knitted skull cap). The party is an amalgamation of various radical factions that Netanyahu soldered into one to ensure his broad camp lost no votes.

His camp being non-Zionist Haredim + Hardel-nikim (of Ben Gvir / Smotchrich) + Likud (long shorn of Jabotinsky values). 

All held together by Netanyahu's cult of personality, self-interest and anticipated patronage.

It comes down to Bennett (small knitted kipa) and how low he will go to become defense minister, and to get the Justice Ministry. In the hands of his number two, Ayelet Shaked, Justice would play to the mob telling them that Israel's Supreme Court should follow the dictates of popular opinion (which like in most polities is intolerant). 

And suppose by some miracle Bennett – a political Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – does the right thing and refuses Bibi. In that case, it is on to another cycle of elections. Unless he does the really right thing and hooks up with Lapid & Saar & Ganz (below).

Even with Bennett, Bibi would anyway require defectors from among his opponents' camp or one of the Arab parties' backing – Ra'am being a possibility.

Pundits say Bibi's partners would not cooperate with the Arabs even to form a government. We shall see. 

Bottom line: it is disheartening that so large a plurality of Israelis favor parties of intolerance.

What of the center? Lapid (who I voted for) and Ganz (who I voted for several times in the past), and Saar together garnered 31 seats.  I put Saar in the center to stack the deck. He is more right-wing than Lapid or Ganz but he retains some old-school Jabotinsky values.

The left parties of Labor and Meretz pulled 12. Both slates contain anti-Zionists. Labor was invigorated by a new woke leader. Meretz got a decisive piety vote from farbrente leftists. I am glad because it means Yair Golan will be in the next Knesset.

In his own category is Lieberman with 7 seats. His Yisrael Beiteinu Party represents the know-nothing older Russian-speaking street. Reactionary. Nationalist. Secular. His number two is an anti-Vaxer. Lieberman, like Bennett and Saar, is a former Netanyahu staffer who broke with the Master years ago and now works to bring him down.

The (more than you can imagine) fragmented Arabs got 11 seats divided between Ra'am and the Joint List. Like Bennett, they can play a pivotal role in creating or blocking a new government's formation.

Bottom line: It will take many, many, many, weeks for things to shake out. The prospect of another round in the Fall is not out of the question.

 

 

 

Join me in voting for Yesh Atid on Israel Election Day Tuesday, 23 March

 

Israel Knesset Elections 2021: Blog 2 | Netanyahu on N12

 

With 30-odd days to go, do you still think Netanyahu the most competent, gifted, and able of the candidates?

Binyamin Netanyahu has no equal.

Watch his performance as anchor Yonit Levy interviews him on Israel’s Channel 12.

Swave, informed, articulate, sincere, and doggedly on message. There is even a touch of self-depracation and genuine modesty. Netanyahu is like sugar. You crave more even if you know he is not good for you.

Every new promise is heartfelt and sincere, papering over long stretches of lies. But who cares? This time – this time, it will be different.

It is hard to imagine that Netanyahu will not form the next government. 

Orthodox people will vote for Bennett or Ben-Givir, or Netanyahu. Haredim for one of the ultra-Orthodox parties or Ben-Givir. Right-wingers for Netanyahu or his nemesis Sa’ar or Bennett.

When the dust settles, the likelihood is Bennett and Netanyahu will join forces pulling in Sa’ar or the remnants of his New Hope Party. 

The Lapid-led anti-Bibi camp does not have the numbers. For now, he is the only theoretical alternative to Netanyahu. A pale shadow of the Machiavellian master.

Labor is running the anti-Zionist Ibtisam Mara’ana. We can’t blame its leader Merav Michaeli for who her grandfather was, but for her views, that unspun are on society’s margins (she’d cancel marriage and is uber woke).  

The Meretz list includes the former head of Peace Now (which, whatever its origins long ago, evolved into a lobby for foreign interests).

In an alternate universe, Lapid, Sa’ar and Bennett would join forces after the election to block Bibi and the Haredim.

Alas, not in this universe.

Israel Knesset Elections 2021: THE PROCESS OF ELIMINATION BEGINS

 

 

So, 39 parties will be competing in the March 23^rd Knesset election. Do you know which one you are voting for?

Too early to tell.

But only a dozen of the 39 stand a chance of crossing the electoral threshold.

Who are you not voting for?

That’s easier.

I won’t vote for a party that rejects the right of the Jewish people to a national homeland.

That sounds like the Arab Joint List (sans Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am Party who is willing to sit in a Zionist government).

It looks like Ra'am seems to be offering Arab citizens a real choice for the first time in a long time.

Go on...

I wouldn’t cast a ballot for a party or amalgamation of parties that want more religion in the public square; or, ultimately, theocracy; or that is obsessed with battling homosexuality, or is led by an agitator who identifies with a crusade that advocates the forced deportation of sectors of the civilian population; or would favor treating Jews and Arabs in separate hospital rooms.

Wait, haven’t you just described the Hardal camp's party?

Have I?

Anyone else you won’t vote for?

Anyone who will join a Netanyahu-led government.

Why?

It's just time. It's just time.

Go on…

Or anyone who would sit with the UTJ or Shas – the Haredi parties.

Because of COVID?

Yes, but not just…

Is there anyone else you’d exclude?

Yes, anyone who would threaten the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review.

And on security issues?

This election is not about foreign policy or Iran, but I’d also prefer not to vote for a party whose security policies are in la-la land. Or has an outed anti-Zionist on its list.

Now, it sounds like you are talking about Labor…

You think?

So, where does that leave you?

In a bind….

OK. Check back later then….

For sure.

 

Was it Really Worth it?

It was dinner time in Jerusalem when Donald Trump addressed his supporters waiting for him on the Ellipse just south of the White House.

We watched live as he spewed his lies, big and small. His stream-of-consciousness rant was unsettling. Here and there he forced himself to read verbatim what had been written for him. These sentences had subjects and predicates.  

In an America that has suffered 360,000 COVID-related deaths and 22 million cases, his audience was mostly unmasked. No one in a position of authority had done more to play down the pandemic's dangers than Trump. No one in charge set a worse public health example for people around the world than Trump.

However, incitement, not COVID, was on Trump's agenda yesterday.

Trump told the mob-to-be that he had been cheated of victory and stabbed in the back by disloyal Republicans. And that he would march with them to the Capitol (which was one of the smallest fibs of his presidency). Then he got into his limousine and went back to the White House.

Next, what Trump and his enablers had threatened would happen – happened. As his supporters marched on the Capitol, others already there began storming the doors of Congress.

The next thing we knew, Trump's cretins were disporting themselves on the House and Senate floors and in the Speaker's offices (images that will forever sully the history books).

What, I wondered, are my Trump-supporting family, friends, and former comrades making of all this.

Some of them drank the cool aide. My Cousin A in Brooklyn thinks Trump is the best president in US history flaws and all. He hates everything and everyone Trump hates: socialists, leftists, Democrats, and anti-Trump Jews. To keep pure, he watches only Fox, listens exclusively to Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, and reads only The New York Post. Cousin A is neither Jewishly observant nor rich; he feels empowered by Trump's aggrieved message. He believes Trump. That the president is also pro-Israel only solidifies A's absolute devotion.  

My other better off Trumpian friends and former comrades have fewer illusions about the man.

They have shilled for him and contorted themselves to see past what he said or how he behaved because "he was good for Israel" or upheld conservative causes or both. They have embraced his inflammatory populism because, they said, it is the only way political power can be wielded in the age we are in. And they generally like the direction Trump's policies are taking America.

Some also identify with Trump's opposition to healthcare, environmentalism, and appreciate his belligerent stance in America's culture war.

Every one of my friends, family, and old comrades will have an alibi to explain why they linked up with Trump. For almost all, pro-Israelism will play a role.

However, the claim of Trump's pro-Israelism does not paper over his peccatum mortale.

I never denied that having Trump in office was -- comparatively speaking -- good for Israel. I just never thought that should be anyone's yardstick, given the stakes.

That Arnold Rothstein, Dutch Schultz, Bugsy Siegel, and Meyer Lansky were good to their mothers did not mitigate their criminality.

Whatever good Trump did for Israel – and this is not the place to parse his policies or motives – the damage he has done to the US does not mitigate his trampling of the Madisonian model of democracy.

That he was "good for Israel" does mitigate the insurgency he led against the American political system. It does not ease the damage he has caused to the fabric of democracy and the terrible example he set for children.

Trump is the most successful demagogue in American history – and having him as a "friend of Israel" has to be a mixed blessing.  An embarrassment, actually.

The "good for Israel" claim did not justify his manipulation of the federal government and the presidency to harm his perceived political enemies.

The "good for Israel" argument did not explain away Trump's flirtation with the extreme white/right. No one in government authority has done more to catalyze repulsive conspiracy theories than Trump.

I know CNN has a history of anti-Israel bias (as do many media outlets), but the "good for Israel" claim does not warrant intimidation of the media by a sitting president.

Trump's presence has been corrosive to the stability of the American political system – and nothing can be worse for Israel than an America brought to its knees by a rabble-rousing president who has led it to the brink of civil war.

So, if you spent the past five years making excuses for Donald Trump or defending him or winking at his crimes and misdemeanors because he was ostensibly "good for Israel" – now is the time for soul-searching.

Consider that you may have been wrong for thinking so little of the Zionist enterprise to imagine we could not have handled Hillary Clinton's diplomatic pressure. Or that we can't take whatever Biden-Harris will throw at us.

You are not to blame for Donald Trump's 1/6 attack against the United States of America, but neither should you wash your hands of any responsibility. 

In a commitment wrapped in yet another lie, he released a statement today: “Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th."

But God only knows what this arsonist-in-chief may yet do between now and then. 

Let's just pray; it has nothing to do with "helping Israel."