The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the #IsraElex, Pt. 4

It’s been a week, but it seems like much more. The #IsraElex campaign has switched into high gear with a number of plot changes and issues big and small. Welcome back to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Israeli Elections.

The contender to replace Bibi’s Likud as the ruling party, Zionist Camp, has fired its campaign team and rolled out a new, much more aggressive line of ads, finally attacking Bibi’s record and not just saying “It’s Him or Us” and promising absurd nonsense like “Zero Poor Elderly Within A Year.”

The new billboard banner (rolled out for trial under the name of the party’s youth staff) reads: “Only a sucker votes for Bibi.” The determination not to be a sucker – a “Fry-yer” in Hebrew, – is considered to be the quintessential Israeli trait. Kinda ironic, if ya think about it…

Zionist Camp’s new svengali is ad man Reuven Adler, who last thumped Likud for Kadima and Olmert in 2006 and surprisingly outscored them for Kadima and Livni in 2009. (Livni then failed to form a coalition, so Bibi became PM, but Adler delivered in terms of electoral results, narrowly outdoing Likud by a seat.)

“One in three children are hungry – and he buys breakfast for 20,000 shekels. Only a sucker votes Netanyahu”

Stick It To The Eggheads

But this (Zionist Camp’s reboot) failed to grab top headlines in light of the beside-the-point stupid uproar du jour, or de la semaine as the case may be. The reigning Levy-weight champion of the world, Bibi Netanyahu. is anxious not to talk about his actual record OR plans for the future (the party has no platform for the upcoming elections and Bibi practically never takes questions from the press). So he masterfully created a lil tempest in a teapot that won’t lose him a single vote nor garner the opposition any.

The Israel Prize, the country’s highest civil award for accomplishments in arts and science/education, is awarded by a panel of judges, who are appointed by the Minister of Education. That portfolio is currently in the hands of the PM, as it was vacated by Shai Piron, a member of the centrist Yesh Atid party, when the coalition fell apart and early elections were called.

So Bibi, ignoring the supposed tradition that says that you don’t do drastic things in election time (a tradition often violated, as a glance at Israel’s military history can show), used his power as acting Minister of Education to dismiss two of the judges on the panel. His excuse was that the panel is a cabal of establishment academia, which of course means leftists, and he wishes to “open the process to other segments of society.”

Problem is that the Israel Prize isn’t provenly biased against right-wingers. Former Minister of Ed. Limor Livnat screeched that “Naomi Shemer [quintessential Israeli folk songwriter and composer), Moshe Shamir (intellectual novelist) and Ephraim Kishon (internationally beloved humorist) never got the prize cause they weren’t from the ‘correct’ side of the spectrum!!”.

You know how this ends, right? All three were awarded the Israel Prize, in 1983, 1988 and 2002 respectively. (No correction and apology issued from the venerable Ms. Livnat, who was taken to task by Shemer’s grandson on facebook). Now, the Israel Prize IS indeed severely biased – against women (only around 25 17%) and Mizrachim (Jews of Mideastern and North African descent, around 8% of all prize winners) and of course non-Jews (no Arabs ever save for one Druze). In other words it’s by and large a white male mutual admiration society. But that doesn’t get the base’s blood roiling as much as “damn secular lefty eggheads looking down on us patriotic folk,”

So Bibi got to pose a little to the base as taking care of the hated leftist conspiracy against good regular peeps (at the expense of Bennett, who is now averaging a disastrous no-gain), and got to spend another week away from anything that would really cause a groundswell against him.

Shrinking Left Hits Back

Meretz has decided to start fighting hard for the 1-2 seats that have left it for Zionist Camp. It began by hurling a nasty (but justified) one at Zcamp’s #2 Tzipi Livni for her many switched allegiances over the years (Left Likud for Kadima, left that after losing a leadership primary election, then to the “left” with Labor). A bit overdone with the alarmist AV, I thought, but the sentiment was right.

Flip Flop Blues

Finally Approaching touchdown, a hearing was held at the Knesset’s elections committee on motions to disqualify MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad/Joint Arab List) and Baruch Marzel (#42 on the Yachad list, heads the Judo-Nazi “Power to Israel” faction). The DQ passed by foregone conclusion. Now the Supreme Court decides). Zionist Camp, though, set records for flip-flopping on this issue. First they said they’d vote yes (contrary to their stance on the very same question two years ago), then the Arabs made it clear that this would have consequences the day after the elections so ZCamp said they were reconsidering. Then they voted yes anyway. Sad part? It’s utterly possible they garnered a vote or two by doing so. Blegh.

The Eternal Jew

This just in! And you gotta fuckin’ see it to believe it. People thought Bibi’s new “Zionist Camp will bring ISIS to your doorstep!!!!”  video was offensive, but now the Samaria Settlers Council – the mainstream of Jewish Home’s base – have released this video. It’s subtitled in English so, um, enjoy, I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhbyRb8fu44

The only thing that begs explanation is the name of the newspaper read by Mr Sturmer (Get it? Get it?). “Hasmol” means “The Left” in Hebrew. (In other news, a 75 year-old Jewish man in Paris was reportedly arrested for scribbling antisemitic graffiti. Dunno what brought that to mind.)

This is really what these elections are, or at least should be about – drifting closer to this insanity or making a serious course correction. The holocaust happened to all Jews on some level. The only difference is who has left the concentration camp behind and who’s still trapped in it.

Polls!

We gots lots and lots of new polls – 7 in the week since we last spoke – and the average numbers (rounded* to make exactly 120) are as follows:

Likud 25

Zionist Camp 24

Jewish Home 13

Joint Arab List 12

Yesh Atid 10

Kulanu 8

Shas 7

United Torah Jewry 7

Israel Beitenu 5

Meretz 5

Yachad (Shas’s ousted ex-boss and the Judo-nazis) 4

In terms of blocks: Right wing 42, left wing 41 (assuming the Arab List gets over the fact that Zionist Camp supported the motion to disqualify MK Hanin Zoabi from running this week…) with 37 left in play. Of these, Kulanu (8), Israel Beitenu (5), Shas (7) and UTJ (7) are considered more likely to cut a deal with Likud, giving Bibi enough for a coalition and a win. However, the religious parties have a huge grudge against Netanyahu, so they could be bought. Same for Kahlon, who left Likud to start his own party. Can’t see Liberman crowning a left-wing government. Maybe if Merertz is left out of it, which makes his contribution equal to his cost…

That was the update for this week, one month before the polls open. Keep visiting for more and thank you for flying the Hitchhiker skies**.

* Likud, Zionist Camp and Jewish Home are actually each polling one seat lower by just a bit. I rounded them up to make 120 seats. 

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