Archive for August 2022
The shooting fades, Likud and Labor hold their primaries, and the dilly-dallying general finally makes up his mind – all in installment #6 of the Israelex Blog
Welcome back, ladies and gents, to the GangstaYid Guide to #Israelex5, coming to you live, not from the archive, straight from the Neighborhood of Hope in southeastern Tel Aviv. This week we’re back to the horse race in full effect, all those slaughtered in the recent round of shootin’ folks having been buried and conveniently forgotten.
Likud and Labor both held their primaries. The internal election for Labor’s top spot was actually held back on July 18th, with incumbent and Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli crushing challenger, and party secretary-general Eran Hermoni, 83%-17%. (Likud didn’t hold primaries for the leadership, cause nobody dared run against the Duce.) In the Labor primaries for the list of candidates for Knesset, the socialist wing of what used to be “The Laborers Party of the Land of Israel” (aka “Mapai”) won big. Na’ama Lazimi, who isn’t afraid to call herself socialist and stand up for workers, consumers, and all manner of ordinary folk, won first place in the primaries (second overall in the list, behind Michaeli.) Labor’s bylaws dictate alternate-gender seeding, so next is MK Gilead Kariv, a reform Jew. While this last bit may seem unremarkable to diaspora Jews, in Israel non-Orthodox Judaism is miniscule in size, and his very existence in Knesset is a red cloth to the Orthodox parties.
Then comes Efrat Rayten, a former actress and kiddie TV host turned lawyer and a fine, diligent legislator. Then come Ram Shefa (Kibbutznik, very mainstream, but also a hard-working legislator who is pro-legalization, so that’s good,) and Emily Moatti, a former publicist and digital media professional who formerly served in an advisory capacity much further to the left, in the Arab party Balad. For those of you counting at home, that’s two Mizrachi women in the top 6, and 4 overall. This also means that failed Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev and former (30+ years ago) IDF spokesman and current Diaspora Minister Nachman Shai1 are out of any realistic hope of a Knesset Seat. Bar-Lev finished 9th and Shai 16th. Bar-Lev could conceivably return to the Knesset if Labor outperforms all polling and gets 7 seats. In such a scenario it would likely be in the next government and get 2 ministers, who would then resign from Knesset under the Norwegian law2. Shai is out as sure as night follows day. Former IDF general Yair “Yaya” Fink is seventh, in case Labor do shock the pollsters.
So much for the party that for Israel’s first 44 years never fell below the 40 seat threshold. Meanwhile, over at Likud, which is expected to cross 30 seats with ease, you have to go down to number 4 in the primaries (5 overall) to find the first Mizrachi, and down to eighth place to find the first woman. The top 20 only has a total of 2 women and 9 Mizrachi candidates – in the party that prides itself on representing the “Second Israel.”
The top 3 spots in Likud were won by Yariv Levin, a dangerous snake of a lawyer who wants to destroy the rule of law, Eli Cohen, an intellectual non-entity who is very good at intra-party politicking, and Yoav Gallant, an oaf of a retired IDF general, who would have been Chief of Staff if he hadn’t been caught stealing land to enlarge his own megalomaniacal property. Like Netanyahu, all three are Ashkenazi through and through. Finishing fourth in the “Second Israel” primaries we have the first Mizrachi, former Public Security Minister, openly gay (kinda like Ernst Rohm) and total thug and enemy of democracy Amir Ohana, followed by corrupt bully apartchik Dudi Amsalem, who the police have recommended be indicted for corruption dating back to his days in the Jerusalem Municipal Council. The first woman, toxic hatemonger Miri Regev, is eighth. The second woman, her mini-me Galit Distel-Atbaryan, is 20th.
So other than women, who lost big in the Likud primaries? Anyone with a shred of independent backbone or insufficient allegiance to the glorious defendant… I mean, leader. Sound familiar, Yank brethren? Yeah.
Tzachi Hanegbi, who holds the unique claim to fame of having been central to the incitement leading up to two political murders3, was pushed out of the list entirely, as was vote-thief poseur Orly Levi-Abekasis, who fronted “social” but was actually ranked at the bottom on “social” (i.e., pro-poor people) voting. So a good bit of schadenfreude there.
And finally, the wait is finally over. In a moment that threated to rival LeBron’s “The Decision” (not), the most recent IDF Chief of staff who is eligible to do so, Gadi Eisenkot (Moroccan despite the name) has gotten off the fence and chose – to join Benny Gantz and Gideon Sa’ar in what will now be called “HaMachane HaMamlachti.”
Why am I not simply translating that mouthful for you, my faithful and sorely put-upon reader? Because “mamlachti” is one of the trickiest words to translate in the Hebrew political lexicon. The closest you could come would probably be “republicanism” in the very old sense – of putting the greater good above partisan considerations. Its great proponent was the country’s founding father, David Ben Gurion, who in the name of this national tone of uniformity disbanded both the fabled Palmach paramilitary organization (which was aligned with a rival socialist party) and more importantly, to some – the labor movement’s education system, which was superior to that of the rest of the Hebrew-speaking population.
The point is that “mamlachti” has become a buzzword in the face of Benjamin Netanyahu’s relentless war on the rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances, and anything that reeks of the notion that the greater good and one’s personal interests are not necessarily aligned. It is, of course, harnessed to promote a vapid “unity” discourse, which means “forget about actual policy differences and principles and rally around the leader, cause we need to beat them other guys, who only rally around their leader.” It’s kinda like in ancient Rome, home of the original “factions” in the Senate of the late Republic. Now, everyone belonged to a factio, but nobody admitted to it, as these factions were informal voting alignments and not official entities. You were a high-minded, patriotic Roman, with only the good of the state as a whole in mind. Your opponents, now – they belonged to factios, the self-dealing, ambitious curs. You? You’re mamlachti to the bone. Update: They’ve decided that their name in English shall be: The National Unity Party. Nu.
So why did Eisenkot – considered to be somewhat left of both Sa’ar and Gantz – choose them and not Lapid? According to reports, it’s because they were willing to promise him primaries for the top spot in the new unified party after the elections, whereas Lapid refused. That’s right – the great hope of Israeli democracy, the second largest party in Knesset, is run by the fiat of one man. Lapid remembers what party voters did to his father, who took a party from nothing to 15 seats only to be pointedly saddled with a list he didn’t want, and vowed it wouldn’t happen to him. Democracy, you see. Not that Gantz and Sa’ar are so high-minded about popular choice. They just know that their union is unlikely to survive long after the upcomin’, obviating any need for the promised primaries.
Onto the polls, which start scary but have pleasant finishing note:
Likud 35 (+2)
Yesh Atid 22 (-1)
“National Unity Party” 14 (+2)
Judonazis 9 (-2)
Shas 8 (-)
United Torah Judaism 7 (-)
Joint List 6 (-)
Israel Beiteinu 5 (-)
Labor 6 (+1)
United Arab List 4 (-)
Meretz 4 (-)
Zionist Spirit, perhaps terminally hurt by Eisenkot’s choice (and his using one of his three spots in the new party on former Yamina minister Matan Kahana) is dead in the water at 1.6% – less than half the 3.5% threshold. Put it all together, and the Bibi Nay camp theoretically has 61 votes (if they can all agree somehow), and the Bibi Yay camp doesn’t. Toldja it has a happy ending, but it’s just a poll, and as Shimon Peres once said: Polls are like perfume. Sniff, but don’t drink. And on that fragrant note of advice, I thank you for reading, and please comment and share on the way out. Till next time.
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1 Nachman Shai was IDF Spokesman during the first Gulf War in 1991, and became a national darling due to his competent, soothing style of reading the official announcements off a teleprompter while Israelis were cowering in plastic-sealed rooms, being bombarded with Scud missiles and fearing they were chemical. This eventually brought him to Knesset, where he has been respectably boring the shit out of observers since, until the most recent primaries put an end to his Peter Principle career.
2 The Norwegian Law allows a Knesset Member, who was appointed as minister, to resign their seat in Knesset in favor of the next person on their party’s list – with the automatic provision that should they resign their ministerial position, the seat in Knesset automatically reverts to them
3 Tzachi Hanegbi was a campus thug back in the 70s, who first came to prominence (other than being the son of Jewish supremacist MK Geulah Cohen) in the protests against the peace with Egypt and the evacuation of the Sinai peninsula. Then he became a leading voice in the vicious incitement that led to the murder of Emile Grinzweig at a Peace Now demonstration in 1981. Fast forward 12-13 years, and there he is again, a leading voice in the incitement that led to the murder of PM Yitzhak Rabin. Unhappy trails to you, Tzachi.
Shootout at the OK Gevald
Posted on: August 9, 2022
Welcome back, one and all, to another installment of the #Israelex5 Blog at the Weekend Holyland Update, brought to you live, with the style for which we strive, by Kedem Productions and GangstaYid Inc, straight from the sweltering concrete jungle of southeastern Tel Aviv.
A lot has happened since our latest dispatch, and while mine own energy levels have been suffering from the stupor-inducing summer temperatures, that hasn’t stopped events from rambling on, to include a brief performance of the annual bloodletting ritual.
As all the official babble, and much of the media coverage, has blathered the usual cliches about Israel’s right to defend itself, the right of its citizens to be free of rocket fire, and blah blah some more, perhaps a brief recap of this proactive, Israeli-instigated short shoot-up show is in order:
In the early morning hours of August 2nd, IDF forces raided the West Bank Palestinian city of Jenin (as they frequently do) and arrested several men wanted for terrorism (ditto), including one Bassam a-Saadi, an operative of the Islamic Jihad in Palestine (IJP) who, whether it was necessary or not, was documented being dragged by attack dogs as he was arrested.
Following this, Israel claimed to have intelligence of planned reprisals attacks by the IJP, and shut down traffic in the south of the country – roads, rail, summer camps, workplaces, events, the works. People in Israel were grumbling about this seemingly craven approach, and crowned the IJP the winners of this round without firing a shot.
But although Israel is stupid, it is yet to reach that nadir. Israel was planning all along (at least since arresting a-Saadi, who may have folded instantly under questioning) to assassinate a senior IJP commander in the Gaza Strip, southern sector commander Taysir al-Jaabari, which objective it carried out at 16:16 hours on Friday, August 5th. Having preemptively made sure there would be no civilians on the road for the IJP to target with their rockets and anti-tank launchers in reprisal, Israel was free to keep hammering the Gaza Strip and making withdrawals on its target bank, to the tune of 35 casualties, of which 11 were non-combatants (IDF’s count) or 46 casualties, of which 16 were non-combatants (Gaza Health Ministry’s count). More non-combatants seem to have been killed by the 200 or so IJP rockets that fell short of Israel, within the Strip. Of the app. 1,100 that did make it across the border separating Israel from its open-air prison, 95% were reportedly intercepted by the Iron Dome system, and the rest causing only some property damage and a total of three wounded from shrapnel and some others who were treated for bruises and anxiety.
So a great success for the interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid in his first baptism by fire (well, not his personally), right? Superficially, yes. It was a well-conducted operation, as such things go, with no funerals on Israel’s side of the border, and the polls (we’ll get to them below) reflect that. But what about the long term?
Well, if you want to be an optimist, there are signs that not everything about this latest round of shootin’ down folks and blowin’ stuff up with drones was same old, same old. For one, Hamas stayed out of it. The IJP, as the distant second place movement in the Gaza Strip* can be all purist and ideological, vowing to fight to the last man with the last pipe-bomb launcher, hiding under the last pile of rubble. Hamas, as the entity in power, has to actually govern in between skirmishes with Israel, and therefore it has to somewhat listen to what its people want, and what the people in the Gaza Strip wanted this summer was a respite from skirmishing. Hell, that’s what they want most of the time. Only when Israel pushes them too far do they truly support the futile defiance of hurling metal pipes out of fireworks launchers against a country that can darken the skies over their heads with drones carrying smart bombs – basically saying “fine, but your life gonna be disrupted for a lil bit too.” This time the vast majority in the Strip, according to what I’m reading, wanted nothing of the sort. This, beyond natural fatigue with the horrors of these extended bloodletting orgies that occur once every year or two, is a product of Israel smartly focusing its recent suppression efforts on the IJP, and working quietly to drive a wedge between the two Islamist terror groups (while Hamas is the actual representative of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Palestine, IJP is a more radical Brotherhood offshoot, much closer than Hamas to global jihadi movements such as Al-Qaeda and Daesh [ISIS].)
Haaretz analyst Zvi Bar’el wrote on Sunday that it is possible that one result of Israel’s assassination of Jaabari (and his counterpart, the southern sector commander) is that younger men will be promoted to these important positions who are a) less experienced, naturally, but more importantly, b) less aligned with the organization’s political leadership, which sits in Damascus and Beirut. This prediction may be borne out by the organization’s surprisingly mild response, after the ceasefire which ended three days of one-sided ass-whooping, to a pointed question about Hamas’s refusal to join in: “There are other ways to help than fighting.” When you’ve just been stomped, you can’t afford to fight with your infinitely big brother as well, I guess.
After falling for the same trap the IJP did and braying loudly about the shameful and cowardly shut-down that preceded the op, the opposition played nice once the guns got going, and rallied behind the government during the weekend military excursion, with Netanyahu finally deigning to show up to a security briefing (it’s mandatory for him as Opposition Leader, and he’s refused to do it for a year so as not to have his cultists see him accord another man PM props). As soon as the ceasefire was declared it was back to business as usual, with all kinds of bitchmoanplainin’ about how Lapid and Defense Minister Gantz dared to be photographed doing their jobs and looking all leader-like in election time. A Bibi mouthpiece named Yaakov Bardugo tweeted stupidly that the Lapid government is leading a “stupid trend” of differentiating Hamas from the IJP. So no, dividing your enemies is actually wise. Problem is, Israel already pulled that with the PLO vs. Hamas – and didn’t use its success to actually do business with the more moderate wing of the broken wishbone. So why should we expect any different in Gaza?
Meanwhile, since the media must have its heroes after a shoot-up, even one that’s really fish in a barrel[1], the “hero” dujour is an IDF shero, who bragged to the media about shooting an unarmed man descending an IJP guard tower on the other side of the border – just shot him, for no reason, no threat, no action, no nothing. But it was open season, so it’s somehow cool. It’s a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and all the fresh wounds in the world aren’t gonna change that.
So much for the shootin’. You can take a breath, a sip, a toke or whatever before continuing to the intra-Jewish politics below.
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[1] (if Hamas is like David compared to Israel’s Goliath, the IJP is David’s addle-brained baby brother who can barely grasp a sling, let alone use it)
Pretty Boy Fails To Revive Flagging Zionist Spirit
There’s a new alliance in town, and according to initial polls, its seemed to actually be doing its job and dragging the corpse of Yamina across the electoral threshold in the polls. But recall Ran Shimoni’s point – no union of existing actors ever exceeded its initial polling, which means there’s every chance in the world that even with Yoaz Hendel’s “Derech Eretz” party, Yamina will still fall short of the goal line. More recent polls indeed have the new bloc, titled “Zionist Spirit” polling at about 2.6% – far short of the 3.5% of the vote needed.
Who’s Yoaz Hendel, you ask? He’s a dashingly handsome naval commando alum, grew up with a knit skullcap but took it off in his youth. Worked for Bibi’s PM’s Office and resigned in protest when Bibi flouted the court ruling, that said his chief of staff Nathan Eshel, who was caught practicing the sexual offense known as upskirt photography, should be banned from public service. Eshel officially resigned but remained as an unofficial advisor to Bibi and a heavyweight power in “court,” and Hendel correctly said “Fuck that.”
But since this display of fine moral spine, Hendel’s conscience has proved far more limber in terms of political loyalty. His adventures in electoral politics began when he and the Frack to his Frick, Zvi Hauser (who likewise quit Bibi’s inner circle due to Upskirtgate) joined their new and untested “Derech Eretz” party to former IDF Chief Moshe ‘Bogie’ Ya’alon, who also formed a new party called Telem, ahead of the 2019 elections (the first of the current neverending cycle of them. There was one in ’19, two in ’20, one in ’21, and the upcomin’ scheduled for November 1st, 2022.)
Along with Ya’alon and Telem, Hendel and Hauser then joined forces with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Benny Gantz’s “Hosen L’Israel” and another former IDF Chief named Gabi Ashkenazi, to form Kachol-Lavan (“Blue and White”) – a brand now left in the exclusive control of Gantz. This alliance vied for electoral supremacy with Bibi’s Likud with considerable success, only breaking up in the third elections (late 2020) when Gantz stabbed his partners and voters in the back and joined Bibi with about half of the unified list’s MK’s – Hendel and Hauser among them, despite their leader, Ya’alon, going the other way.
Then the two jumped ship again and joined Gideon Saar’s New Hope (“Tikva Hadasha”), and now they’re fleeing that host (which united with Gantz, who they already burned and who carries a grudge) and latching on to the dying cadaver of Yamina, which for the first time in all its iterations over the past decade or so, does not have a single religious person in a realistic spot on the list. They’re keeping the 3rd spot open for outgoing Religious Affairs Minister, Matan Kahane – but he already spurned the offer in such disdainful terms, I can’t see him swallowing it and reneging.
Which brings us to another desertion from the listing ship of New Hope, which as the mindful reader may recall, united with Benny Gantz’s Blue and White to form the third largest bloc in Knesset, with 14 seats in the current Knesset and 11-14 in the polls for the next. MK Michal Shir, a long-time ally and follower of New Hope Chairman Saar, announced that she is taking her seat and MK’s funding unit and going over to Lapid’s Yesh Atid. Her reason, btw, is quite hilarious. “Benny Gantz is a socialist leftist” (‘scuse me, as Jimi said, while I fix to die laughin, cause Benny the Goose Boy is about as socialist as Milton Friedman; carry on) and some more shade about how he isn’t fit to be PM (which is what he is explicitly aiming for, and not unrealistically as things are shaking out) and how Yesh Atid “reminds her of the old-school Likud” (i.e. before it was taken over by thugs and religios and Judonazis).
On the left, Zehava Galon did indeed come back to stand for leadership (as predicted by this fine and friendly family feature) and save the day, and the polls give Meretz under her leadership a whole seat more than under dumbass IDF he-man Yair “Being called a lefty is like being called the N-word” Golan. I’ll be shocked if he comes close to beating her. By close I mean 40%.
The upshot of all this is, according to the polls, that if Yamina does indeed clear the bar and get in with 4 seats, or even 3[2], Bibi will have his parliamentary majority, with Judonazis as his senior partner.
Bibi Didn’t Know!
In other news: The defendant Benjamin Netanyahu was under questioning again, this time not as a defendant but under implicit warning. This questioning took place in connection with the Meron Festival disaster, where 45 pilgrims were crushed to death in a stampede in April 2021 due to overcrowding, a shoddily constructed stand collapsing, and a lack of regulation and oversight undergirding both those factors. Bibi was PM at the time and despite the panel of the inquiry commission showing him more and more instances of communications to him on the subject over the years (this is an annual event that just keeps getting bigger), he kept insisting that he never saw them, that this is low-level stuff that simply doesn’t reach the actual PM’s actual eyes. Thus, even when presented with “The PM’s response to the State’s Comptroller Report,” which mentioned conditions at Meron being ripe for calamity, he insisted that “it’s called the PM’s answer, but in practice it’s written by someone in the office. I didn’t see it.”
What did he see? COVID-related stuff! As there was, somehow, no epidemiological disaster at the festival – it somehow didn’t become a super-spreader event – Netanyahu took a victory lap. And the 45 dead? That’s somebody else’s department, see.
And as us Jews continue our interminable petty squabbles about the precise flavor of the regime of Jewish supremacism in this land, we have (in addition to the spree of carnage in Gaza) continued killing Palestinians in the occupied territories at the clip of 2-3 per week (most recently: An elderly, unarmed mental patient and a 15 year-old boy), and our Supreme Court overturned its own ruling from two years ago, and in an expanded panel ruled that private Palestinian land, stolen for the purposes of creating a settlement outpost that’s illegal even under Israeli laws, does not have to be returned to its owners if settlers are already living on it, because said court ruled that the land was stolen “in good faith” (i.e. the thieves didn’t know it was private property, and thought it was merely public Palestinian land they were appropriating in the name of God’s master race.) The court did pay lip service about how future cases will be held to a high bar of “good faith,” but this one the gonifs get away with.
Post bloodletting polls:
Likud 33 (-2)
Yesh Atid (Lapid) 23 (+2)
JudoNazis 11 (+1)
Blue&White / New Hope (Gantz & Sa’ar) 12 (-)
Shas (Sephardic Ultra Orthodox) 8 (-)
United Torah Judaism (Ashkenazi UO) 7 (-)
Joint List (most Arab parties) 6 (-)
Israel Beiteinu (Finance Minister and crook and possible Russian spy Avigdor Liberman) 5 (-)
Labor 5 (-1)
Meretz 4 (-1)
United Arab List (Islamists, were in the last coalition) 4 (-)
Zionist Spirit: Does not make it in 2/3 polls.
Blocs: Bibi Yay 59, Bibi Nay 51, Arabs in the Middle 10
So much for this long-delayed installment, which all you good patrons of this fine and friendly family feature have been patiently awaiting. Don’t forget to tip (be it in the form of dineros or comments, or a share on your preferred public media) on the way out. Till the next time.
[2] Mathematically possible but practically not really
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