Rechavia Berman – GangstaYid

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. 

** Your appreciation for the content can be shown by sharing, donating (top of the page to the right), or not least by commenting. Thanks.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Israeli Elections, Pt. 3

A good elections blog explains what you already know everyone’s talking about now. A great elections blog tells you what everyone will be talking about tomorrow, and explains that*. Judging by that standard, this fine educational feature did quite well with its last installment, edifying its readers about the V15 brouhahah a full news-cycle or so before Likud embarked on a major attack about it and made it headline news in virtually every website and blog discussing the elections.

So people are still talking about it, but there’s a new twist – only it too fails to rise to the level of real scandal. The right is claiming that V15 constitutes illegal campaign funding because the One Voice (“Kol Echad”) NGO that’s coordinating the PAC received donations from the American Embassy in Tel Aviv.

Now, this is true as far as it goes. However, the devil – or salvation, for the accused left – is in the details. Prior to the calling of new elections, One Voice wasn’t in the business of calling for a change of government. It was (and is) dedicated to mobilizing public opinion in favor of the two-state solution. Before elections were called, it wasn’t calling on people to replace Netanyahu. It was calling on people to petition him as the man in charge in favor of action towards of a certain policy – one that Netanyahu professes to endorse as well, mind.

It was as such that One Voice received donations from the US government via its Tel Aviv embassy – which is fine since the two-state solution is openly a cornerstone of the US vision for the region. The last such donation was received 6 months ago – long before elections were called. Since One Voice has transformed into a partisan entity (Semi-. They don’t endorse a specific candidate, but rather call on the public to vote for any party left of Likud so that a more peace-process-oriented government can be elected), it has not received any donations from any foreign government, including the US.

All that notwithstanding, Likud has kept its slender lead in the polls, averaging precisely 25 in the 5 new polls since we last spoke. Zionist Camp, which flubbed its economic platform rollout this week (see more below), is averaging just a tad under 24. Full poll averages and calculations at the end of this dispatch.

Don’t Hide Your Stars

While Likud has been enjoying its resurgence in the polls and mostly avoiding any self-caused injuries, Zionist Camp had a pretty bad week which illustrated its embarrassing lack of an actual campaign. Early in the week it held a press conference to reveal its economic program, crafted by the party’s outsider candidate for Finance Minister, Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg.

Alongside the man himself – no big favorite among the base, not a significant draw to any part of the electorate – were the two leaders of the list, Labor’s Yitzhak Herzog and HaTnua’s Tzipi Livni. Conspicuously absent: All the hot social justice stars who placed 2-3-4 in the Labor’s primaries, long-term worker’s rights advocate (and former Labor Chairwoman) Shelly Yechimovich and two of the top 5 figures of the massive 2011 social protests, Stav Shaffir and Itzik Shmuli.

When asked as to their absence, Herzog glibly said that “they’re not here because they weren’t invited.” He totally didn’t seem to get that this does not speak well of whoever did the not-inviting.

Watch Stav Shaffir rip the right a new one in Knesset and tell me if you’d be hiding that on the campaign trail…

Don’t Join The Herd

The contender party further alienated its base by joining in the demands to disqualify MK Hanin Zoabi (of Arab-nationalist Balad and the Joint Arab List) from standing for election. Why? The usual. She’s a traitor etc, etc. Now, Zoabi does delight in seeing how close she can skirt the letter of the law without crossing it (and sometimes in bluntly ignoring it to do what’s right in her eyes, using her parliamentary immunity to get away with it).

However, painting her as a demon that simply must be exorcised from the body politic is an old obsession of the right. Just two years ago Herzog opposed the demand to bar her from running, saying “If you take out a brick, you dismantle the whole building. It’s a slippery slope.” What’s changed? Nothing significant. She’s made some very offensive statements, but nothing to compete with actually being on a ship trying to defy Israel’s blockade on Gaza – which wasn’t enough for the Supreme Court to accept her being DQ’ed by the Elections Committee last time.

What’s changed is that this time Herzog and Livni think they have to tack right to compete with Likud for the middle. I believe that is a wrong understanding of how electoral physics work. For a party in Zionist Camp’s position, what needs to be done is to clearly define itself as an alternative to the two secular centrist Parties, let alone to Likud. Joining in the rabble cries to disqualify someone whose constituency regularly reelects, just because she really pisses us off with her opinions and dares to speak them, is not the way to do that. You want the crown, you better lead and hope folks follow. Not follow the herd.

Shadow On The Right

What else? On the far edges of the Jewish right, where stated legislative goals become nigh-on impossible to distinguish from the Nazi Nuremberg laws, the former Chairman of Shas (the Sephardi-religious party) Eli Yishai, who was forced out a couple of months ago, has joined forces with the extreme right wing forces of “Power to Israel”. Together, they are finally polling above the threshold and winning 4 seats– which causes a commensurate ripple of seat losses at least halfway across the electoral map (since there are now only 116 for everyone else).

The Casino Scandal That Wasn’t

Before we go to the numbers, on Thursday Haaretz ran a blog post by veteran columnist and regular contributor Uri Misgav, saying a “very senior Japanese official” claims that Netanyahu asked the Japanese government to abolish its long-standing policy and grant his sugar-daddy, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, a license to open one of his cash-suck factories on Japanese soil. If true, this would be textbook corruption on a vile scale.

However, within less than a day the item was taken down – but no apology was issued. It’s been reported by some that Haaretz has caved to an Adelson threat – but not one of a lawsuit. See, in addition to blowing $3 million a month on a free daily that functions as a Bibi cheering section, Adelson also holds the fate of Haaretz in his hands.

How? Well you know that print newspapers are a dying, money-losing enterprise, and an elitist paper in a small country like Haaretz doubly so. Haaretz is kept afloat by the fact that Adelson pays to print his rag at Haaretz’s printing press.

But whatever the excuse, you don’t run that shit if you’re not prepared to defy the threats you know will come from the relevant parties. That is just not professional conduct. I actually believe it happened, but that’s not the point.

Finally, just to remind everyone what kind of person is at Israel’s helm: Bibi has announced that in an unprecedented move for a major (ruling!) party, Likud will not present an actual platform (the document that states what the party intends to do with the voter’s mandate). Why? “Because the media will use it to attack us”. Trust me, I’ll take care of you – but I can’t tell you how or my opponents will have a field day. Democracy, everyone! Big hand!

OK, polls** (average of the 5 new ones):

Likud 25, Zionist Camp 23, Jewish Home (hard right) 13, Joint Arabs 12, Yesh Atid+Kulanu (Jewish secular centrist parties) 19, Shas (Sephardic religious) 7, Torah Jewry (Ashkenazi religious) 7, Meretz 5, Yachad (nazi-like right wing) 4, Israel Beiteinu (right wing pretending to be center, embroiled in huge corruption case) 5

In bloc math it stands thus: Right wing 42, left wing 40 (with the Arabs in a blocking formation against Bibi), 38 up for grabs strewn in between. 61 needed to form a coalition, and in reality you want it more stable than that. Upon a closer look the left is in worse shape because Kulanu (8 seats as things stand now) and Israel Beiteinu (5) are considered to be more likely to cut a deal with Bibi than with Herzog. Shas (7) has actually announced this week it won’t sit in a “left-wing government” but as they like to say on Game of Thrones – Words are wind.

But there are 5.5 weeks left and much can change. I will do my best to keep you updated as it unfolds. Until then, thank you for reading. Please share and comment.

* Yes, I hear you, a great elections blog would publish more than once or even twice a week, and the way to get me to do that is to comment below. If you really want me to feel obligated (and if you appreciate the content to that extent) there’s a “donate” button at the top of the page…Most obliged.

** As usual, polling data courtesy of Project61 by my twitter buddy, the nice guy with the abhorrent views Nehemia Gerhshuni

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Israeli Elections, Pt. 2

Welcome once again.

Since we last spoke there have been weekend polls. Remember that 2-3 seat lead challenger Zionist Camp was enjoying over incumbent Likud? Gone. Polls show the two either tied at 26 or Likud leading 27-26. It’s way early, but we report the heartbeat of the campaign as it happens. The slim sliver of light in the polls for the left side lies not in Meretz’s court, as the Jewish left-wing party now seems closer to 5 seats than to 6. However, Zionist Camp has not lost any strength, and is rather solidifying at 26 across all three weekend polls.

Likud’s gains come mostly at the expense of its own flanker, right-wing Bayit Yehudi (“Jewish Home”), and at the expense of the two secular right-wing parties, former Likudnik Moshe Kahlon’s “Kulanu” (“All of us”) and former TV pretty-boy Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid (“There is a future”). BY is down to 15, 14, and 12 – bad news for what was supposed to be the juggernaut of this election cycle. (See more below.)

Both Likud and Bayit Yehudi are attacking “the left” (this btw seems to be the gist of both their campaigns in general – we hate the left! We hate ’em more! etc,) this time for the existence of a nefarious group of donors (mostly American) and receivers (in Israel) named “V15”, plotting to effect democratic regime change against Bibi. (“Foreign money to sway the elections!!!” is the charge).

This is particularly rich coming from Bibi, whose donor list is massively tilted outside the country he’s fighting to stay in charge of. His sugar daddy is US multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who burns $3 mil a month to run a free daily mass-circulation newspaper dedicated to support of one single politician. Bayit Yehudi also get tons of their money from rich American and French Jews.

Used to be the right would claim the problem was that, unlike the right’s private (mostly Jewish, with the odd antisemitic “Pro-Israel” evangelist) donors, the left’s civil society foundations took money to influence Israel’s business from foreign governments (such as arms of [or mainly supported by] the European Union that exist to support causes outside Europe).

This time that dog won’t hunt, so they’re trying to cry that some of the political machinery that works for President Obama’s campaigns is suddenly helping the dastardly dread Left here in Israel. This would fly a tad better if the Prime Minister crying foul hadn’t just recently been seen in the process of letting the Republican Speaker of the House use his magen-david-tattooed dick to piss on said Democratic President…

Welcome to Jamaica, have a nice day...  

Besides, ain’t nothing new about the political help either. Clinton’s team of Stanley Greenberg and Jimmy Carville (I love Jimmy) worked for Ehud Barak against Bibi in 1999. Republican super-adviser Arthur Finkelstein worked for Bibi since 1996.

Another scandal currently rocking the so-called start-up nation is known as BOTTLEGATE. Bibi’s wife, Sarah Netanyahu, has a long history of allegations of unstable and abusive behavior. With this scandal, for the first time, the claim is surfacing that the problem is alcoholism (rather than, as was suspected before, a mental-health condition she was refusing to take medication for).

Now this is gonna sound bizarre, but it’s true: Apparently the Prime Minister’s house buys a shitload of alcohol (in addition to large amounts of soft drinks of course). That’s not the point, although the numbers (spent mostly on one type of $22/bottle red wine) are kinda staggering ($25K over two years, but a peak of $12.5K over a 3-month period with no unusual entertaining patterns). Now the vino was bought on the taxpayer’s dime and in principle that’s fine. Point though is she’d have the staff collect the bottles, take them to the recycling plant like a good citizen – and pocket the cash.

I mean, the bottle deposit refund should go back to the actual payer, right? Not like the public coffer, but the Official Residence budget. At least that’s the way I (and the law, apparently) figure.

I’m sure it’s nice, but that comes out to quite a bit of wine.

Bibi and Sarah are rich. Their declared net worth is slightly over $10 million.  That’s more here than it is in the US. He’s not the richest politician, but he’s done well for himself for someone who for most of the past 30 years has been earning a government salary and enjoys the high life. The idea of his wife scheming to cheat on bottle refunds seems outlandish – but we know that she “voluntarily” returned about $1,000 (4,000 shekels) worth of back deposit money. A guy who used to work at the residence (and is currently suing her for treating him like crap) claims that the real figure is probably closer to six time that amount over a 4-year period. Some would call it petty cash but, you know, WTF?

The other big story was Bennett’s scoring into the wrong goal. Twice. Bayit Yehudi were getting rave reviews (professionally-speaking) from knowledgeable observers for their campaign until last week, and Chairman Naftali Bennett apparently decided he could pull stuff from his backside and people would call it a rose. He decided to wink to the low-class, low-income, low-brow electorate by using one of his reserved seats in his party’s list to guarantee a Knesset seat at the 11^th spot for former local soccer god and shampoo model Eli Ohana. Ohana was one of Israel’s greatest on the field, but absolutely mediocre both as a coach (where he got jobs either through politics or because it was his old team Beitar Jerusalem) and as a TV analyst.

 Eli Ohana 

When it was first announced some would-be-shrewd observers praised the move, saying it would sway some of Likud’s die-hard electorate. We’ll never know cause the BY base was not having it. The base threw a shitfit, replete with gems like Knesset Member Ayelet Shaked trying to placate hundreds of irate activists over whatsapp with: “look, we needed someone who’s Mizrachi and grew up poor”. In US-speak, that’s “we needed a token ghetto candidate”. One prospective MK actually quit over it and another turned down an additional reserved seat (over a slightly different political blunder by Bennett).

Despite accepting and recording a campaign video (“I grew up poor, but I was proud of my country, when I wore its colors on the field and now…”) Ohana withdrew after a couple of days, saying “Hey, I didn’t know y’all would have such a conniption…” The party came out of the whole affair looking both inept politically and kinda racist (towards Mizrachi Jews and not just Arabs), as evidenced by the polls.

Lastly, there was some shooting up north as you may have heard, and that may have helped Likud in the polls in a “rally ’round the leader” kind of way. Israel had recently killed a senior Iranian officer scouting the border on the Syrian side with some Hizballah people. This week Hizballah killed two Israeli soldiers with an anti-tank missile at a patrol jeep. Bibi huffed and puffed but quickly reached a tense “neither of us wants blood right now” understanding with Hizballah. Zionist Camp Leaders Herzog and Livni didn’t cover themselves with any glory in the response, but rather went to pose near the border in leather jackets and shades along with their shadow-Minister of Defense. Meretz tried to mend fences with its hardcore base by taking a clear stand against any escalation, but got hit by a TV expose on its connections with the corrupt National Jewish Fund (controls 13% of the country’s land).

Speaking of the polls, we’ll wrap up with a quick breakdown of what they (average of last 3) mean in the big picture:

Right-wing bloc: 40

Left-wing bloc: 31

Center secular: 21

Ultra-religious: 15

Joint Arabs: 12

While both blocs could conceivably persuade all  of the secular center and both the religious parties to form a coalition with them, the 12 seats of the Joint Arab List will only be used against Bibi. They don’t want to sit in the coalition (that’s too much complicity in Israel’s actions for all of them and in its very existence as Israel for some), but they will join a blocking formation against the right and generally support a left-wing government against a vote of no-confidence. So in some ways it’s Left bloc 43, Right bloc 40, 37 in play for both sides. The whole Arab vote issue deserves a post of its own, which I know I promised. Coming up real soon. Until then, thanks for hitching and hitch me up with a comment so I know you made it this far. Most obliged.

* Polling data courtesy of the excellent polling collation and analysis “Project 61“, by my right-wing, religious* twitter buddy Nehemia (The Wunderkind) Gershuni.

* Abhorrent views, but hell of a nice guy other than that…

Friends, Americans*, Countrymen, lend me your ears (eyes, minds, work with me here). I come not to confuse y’all but to break it down. To tell the truth, I wasn’t even feeling terribly inspired to tell you folks all the ins and outs of the Israeli election, but ole @johnboehner decided to force our PM on your politics and himself and y’alls domestic strife on our politics, so I guess y’all interested parties now and deserve an explanation on what in tarnation all the ruckus be about. Settle in, grab a sip and a bite, this’ll take a few.

* I'm American by birth. I get to say that.
Non-Americans welcome along for the ride, of course.
Apologies in advance for the yankee-centric imagery

Israel, which in the spirit of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy can be termed “mostly a democracy**, is having general elections.

** (that it to say, it is a democracy to most - 
not all - of those it controls)

Q: When?

A: March 17

Q: Who’s up for election and re-election?

A: Everyone. The entire legislature (Knesset), the majority of which appoints the government and the Prime Minister (so that job’s up for grabs as well).

Q: Who’s running?

A: Lots of folks. A dizzying, GameofThrones-like array of characters and allegiances, but I’mma break it down for y’all.  (let it be broke, mofo!***).

*** (This is an invitation to play "place that quote")

The two main, and practically sole contenders for Prime Minister are the incumbent, Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu (you can call him that), and the challenger, Labor Party Chairman Yithak “Boujie” Herzog (but don’t call him Boujie! He’s trying to brand as serious and PM-worthy, and that’s too cutesy and soft a nickname his momma tagged him with).

Who are they? Well, if you don’t know (and have some opinions about) Bibi chances are slim you’re reading this, but see here (reference link under construction) for a summary of him (and others) as candidate and PM.

Quick bio recap:

Netanyahu (65) is the son of a world-famous expert on Medieval Jews in Muslim and Christian Spain. Eternally Bereaved Brother of mythological ground commander of the legendary Entebbe hostage rescue, Yoni Netanyahu.

Bibi (who also served in the fabled Matkal commando unit, but at lower rank) was living at the time in the US, under an American name, with a non-Jewish wife. The death of his brother, whom their father had always groomed for public greatness, summoned Bibi back to the fold to take the mantle upon himself, which required among other things getting rid of the shiksa spouse. Bibi, with polished English uncommonly good in Israel (especially back then) and fine debating skills, climbed quickly in Likud, rising from UN Ambassador, through Deputy Foreign Minister, to win control of the party in 1992, first becoming PM in 1996 (till ’99, then again from 2009 to now).

Herzog (54) is the son of Israel’s sixth President, Chaim Herzog, who had also been a military general and Ambassador to the UN, where he won undying fame for contemptuously ripping the Assembly General’s 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism on the UN podium. His son Boujie served in the military as well, rising to Major, and then became a lawyer, inheriting a partner’s position in one of Israel’s most powerful law firms.

His first national political exposure came in 1999, as campaign manager to a victorious Ehud Barak and Labor campaign, and immediately thereafter as Secretary of the Cabinet under Barak. He came into the spotlight in unflattering circumstances, when he refused to cooperate (basically taking the fifth, in US terms) with a police investigation regarding campaign violations. He has since served in four consecutive Knessets (since 2003) and served as Minister of various departments on behalf of Labor as a junior coalition partner (including in Bibi’s 2009-2013 administration.) He has been Housing, Tourism, and Welfare Minister, as well as holding lesser portfolios.

Early elections were called in early December after Bibi and his main coalition partner, centrist Finance Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party (19/120 Knesset seats), each lost the ability to work with the other at all. Lapid was joined by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni with her 6-seat party in leaving the coalition (well, technically being fired by Bibi, but deliberately bringing things to that pass). Since then the twists and turns have been thick and heavy, but I’ll try to pick a minimum of crucial ones to the big picture.

Remember Tzipi Livni? Leaving the coalition with her 6-seat party? Well, after polling at the edge of survival**** for a week or two, she made the first splash of the election by negotiating a very favorable (for her) deal to unify with Labor (15 seats/120 in the outgoing, polling a tad better at this point). Usually when a party A unites into a single list (that is, not merging parties, but running as a single unit in a given election) with party B, and party A is 2.5 times bigger, the head of party B gets the number 2 spot and a few reserved seats in the unified list for their people, and consider themselves to have done pretty well. Livni not only got the number 2 spot in the unified list (and guaranteed spots for 5 more people under the 25^th spot), but an agreement that should Herzog form the next coalition, he would rotate with her after two years. If Herzog did not prove terribly sharp bargaining skills (always a must for leadership in the land of bazaars) he did prove he was fully willing to put ego aside in order to maximize any possibility of actually winning the elections and switching the course of the country after 6 years of Likud and right-wing policies.

**** (there's an electoral threshold, currently set at 3.25% 
of all votes, which translates to 4/120 Knesset seats)

However, a deeper reading of this deal will show that while Livni drove a fantastic bargain, it’s mostly a prestige paper achievement. Sort of similar to a pro athlete’s bombastic new contract: “100 million for 6 years!!! – of which 2 years and 25 million are guaranteed.” The athletes are not that dumb. They know this, but there is symbolic capital in signing a 100 million dollar contract, even if you won’t actually get most of that. Livni is not likely to get to be PM even if Herzog gets to be PM for two reasons:

a) After two years he can refuse and dare her to take her 6 seats and leave the coalition. Chances are he’ll still have a slim majority in Knesset if he managed to form a coalition in the first place.

b) Now that Livni got such a deal, any prospective coalition partner with the most seats behind him (a number bound to be greater than 6) will settle for no less. So even if there is a rotation, it won’t be with Livni. But hey, props on your 100 mil contract, playa.

The practical upshot of all this is that as of this writing, the gamble Herzog and Livni took has paid off pretty resoundingly. They Labor and livni’s “Hatnua”party held 21 combined seats in the outgoing Knesset and never polled higher between the calling of the election and the deal. They immediately polled at around 22 following the deal and have been averaging 25 over the past few weeks – maintaining a slim 2-3 seat lead over Likud.

So, why are the headlines not screaming “upset!” yet? Glad you asked. In the Israeli system (a parliamentary one as opposed to a presidential one like in the US), there is no separation in elections between the legislative and executive branches. You don’t vote once for the guy in charge and once for you personal rep to look after your share of the pie. You vote for your favorite party. If it’s the largest one it normally (but not always) gets to be at the head of an alliance of parties called a coalition, that form a majority in Knesset (i.e 61 or more/120). If you voted for the second smallest party you normally (again, not always) get to spend the term rooting for the team on defense that’s trying to cause a turnover and regain possession of the ball.

This leads us to the second crucial difference between the systems: In the US, short of praying for a President from the other party to die or trying to cook up grounds for impeachment, there’s nothing for the party out of power to do but wait 4 years for the next round (it can form a majority in the legislature and use that to impede the President, but it can’t seize the executive branch). In a parliamentary system where power depends (always has here) on coalitions, the party out of power can spend its time trying (as Sun Tzu recommended) to break up its opponent’s alliances. Once you convince enough coalition members to defect, the government no longer has a majority in Knesset. When that happens a “vote of no confidence” is called. If such a vote passes by absolute majority, new elections must be held. The shortest-lived coalition in Israel’s history was Ehud Barak’s Labor-led administration from 1999-2001 (lasted 20 months). Several lasted the full four years or close enough to it. Sometimes the main party in power will engineer a fight with its coalition partners in order to call for early elections when it believes it will gain more seats in a new election than it has without them. Sometimes it’s the junior ally who makes that calculation and picks an issue to split over.

Why am I explaining all this? Because even if the election results match the current polling, Bibi will have a better chance at a stable coalition (one with as few partners as possible, to minimize the different vectors pulling it apart with their different demands and interests). Bibi and Herzog each have one natural ally to the radical end of them – Bibi a right-wing ally (the mostly religious Bayit Yehudi party, under high-tec rich guy Naftali Bennet) and Herzog a left-wing ally (the mostly-white-bread liberal Meretz party, under career politician and activist Zehava Galon). Even if Bibi finishes with three seats or so fewer than Herzog, he has the stronger basic building block for a coalition with Bayit Yehudi, which is polling at 15-16/120 seats, compared to 5-6 for Meretz.

Is all lost for those hoping for a change in government? No, but at current results, it will be an uphill battle for Herzog to be the first to complete a puzzle with 61 pieces or more. Here’s how it works:

The President chooses who will be the first to “get the ball” so to speak and receive two weeks to attempt to score by putting together a coalition that will pass a vote of confidence in Knesset. (President is a mostly ceremonial position. This is his most influential role.) The process is that after the votes are counted and the seats in the new Knesset are assigned, the President calls the heads of the parties and asks for their recommendation as to who should be chosen to form a coalition. If a clear majority of the Knesset recommends one guy, it’s over and that person will, barring bizarre developments, quickly conclude coalition deals with enough partners and be PM. If there is no clear majority it’s completely at the discretion of the President, who still has to take into consideration who has the more realistic shot to get it done so as not to waste the nation’s time.

Now, if a candidate gets the first shot but doesn’t have a majority already agreeing to form a government with him, he has to negotiate with each partner he can possibly work with and give them a piece of the pie. This is where the other party can play active defense: It can also negotiate with all the other (or any of) the other parties and try to persuade them NOT to sit with the party that got the first crack. If they succeed in putting together a majority in Knesset that refuses to sit with the other guy, they have created what’s known as a “blocking bloc” (sounds bad in English, I know. Call it a blocking alliance or whatever). Having managed to cooperate on denying the leading candidate the job, such a blocking coalition will usually manage to form an actual ruling coalition together and enter into power. This is Herzog’s most realistic path to the crown. Bibi will get the first nod because he has a solid 38-40 seats (at current poll numbers) whereas Herzog will only have 30-32 (again, at current numbers. Lotta football to be played here yet). The rest of the parties mostly lie generally in the middle between the two, be they center-secular or religious parties.

The one exception to the above is the secret ace up Hetzog’s sleeve – the Joint Arab List. This list, a new election-specific union of the three Arab (or Arab-majority) parties is a huge story in itself, and one which will wait till the next chapter in this series*****.

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