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 18^th, 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 9^th and Shai 16^th. 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 20^th.

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.