Israeli Elections in the Time of King Bibi

[Ken Burch]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/13/israeli-elections-in-the-time-of-king-bibi/

by URI AVNERY
Once a Soviet citizen went to vote. He was given a sealed envelope and told to put it in the ballot box.

“Could I possibly see for whom I am voting?” he asked timidly.

“Of course not!” the official answered indignantly, “in the Soviet Union, we respect the secrecy of the ballot!”

In Israel, elections are also secret. Therefore I shall not tell you for whom I shall vote. Certainly I shall not be so impertinent as to tell my readers how to vote. But I shall set out the reasoning that will guide me.

We are voting for a new government, that will lead Israel for the next four years.

If this were a beauty contest, I would vote for Yair Lapid. He is so very handsome.

If we had to decide who is the most likeable candidate, it would probably be Moshe Kahlon. He seems a very nice guy, the son of a poor, Oriental Jewish family, who as Minister of Communications has broken the monopoly of the cellphone tycoons. But sympathy has nothing to do with it.

If we were seeking a nice, well-mannered guy, Yitzhak Herzog would be the obvious candidate. He is honest, of good family.

And so on. If I were looking for a bar bouncer, Avigdor Lieberman would be my man. If I were looking for a smooth TV performer, both Lapid and Binyamin Netanyahu would be more than adequate.

But I am looking for a person who will at least prevent war (and perhaps bring peace closer), bring back some form of social justice, put an end to the discrimination against Arab and Jewish Oriental citizens, restore our health, education and other social services, and more.

Let me start with the easy part: for whom I shall not vote under any circumstances.

On the extreme right there is Eli Yishai’s “Beyahad” (Together) party. I never liked Yishai. Before he split from “Shas”, he was Interior Minister and persecuted refugees from Sudan and Eritrea without even a modicum of compassion.

With his new party desperate to overcome the threshold clause, which is now 3.25%, Yishai made a deal with the disciples of the late and unlamented Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was branded as a fascist by the Supreme Court. No. 4 on the list is now Baruch Marzel, who once publicly called for my murder. Even a bottle of the noblest wine is spoiled by a few drops of cyanide. No sell.

Next on the list is Avigdor Lieberman, the center of whose election platform is the proposal to behead with an axe all Arab citizens who are not loyal to the state. (I am not making this up.)

Not far from there is Naftali Bennett, the smooth, baby-faced former high-tech entrepreneur with the smallest kippa on earth. After conquering the Religious-National Party in a hostile takeover, he turned it into an efficient outfit.

The Religious-National Party was once a very moderate political force, which put a brake on David Ben-Gurion’s adventurism. But its semi-autonomous education system has turned out generations of extremists. Now they are the party of the settlers, and Bennett is wooing young Arab-hating, war-loving secular Jews, who otherwise would vote for Likud.

Thus we come to Likud, the party of “King Bibi”, as Time Magazine admiringly called him.

Binyamin Netanyahu is fighting for his political life. A few months ago, when he decided to dismiss the Knesset and call early elections, he certainly did not dream of such a predicament.

It seemed that Israel’s march to the right was inevitable and unstoppable. That Netanyahu’s eternal reign was preordained. That the Left was facing a sordid end. That the Center was evaporating. It was just a matter of Netanyahu changing his horses (or asses, some would say).

And here we are, a few days before election day, with Likud almost desperate.

Why? How?

It seems that people are just fed up with Netanyahu. They seem to be saying: Enough is enough.

(to Lithos or whomever: yes, I know this is from Counterpunch, but Uri Avneri is personally as far as you can get from being "anti-Israel". He fought in the War of Independence. So please let the source of the article go, if you could be so kind.

Also, I've quoted more than four paragraphs above, but most of those "paragraphs" are a single sentence. So again, I'd ask that something of an exception be made on that as well, due to the importance of the article).

[Mosby]

1. who can get to 61?

That's the real question. Lapid is the key.

[Ken Burch]

3. He'll probably sell his soul and back Netanyahu again, just to keep a cabinet post.

All Lapid ever was was a guy you'd cast as an Israeli general if you were making a movie-a uniform wearing a man. No core values, no coherent ideas and nothing but a pretty face.

It doesn't really matter. The Israeli electorate has just voted, once and for all, to give up ever even trying to end the war. It's a vote for more West Bank land theft, more troops in the West Bank, more missile strikes against Gaza, and more cuts in the pitiful remnants of the social wage.

And none of them will be any more "secure" for doing this.

Anyone who wants Netanyahu to stay in power wants the misery and the ugliness to go on forever. Shame on all who did vote for him.

[Mosby]

4. I dont agree with the way you characterize it

But I do think most israelis are sick and tired of trying to appease the Arabs, the two state solution is dead, and the Palestinians are left holding the bloody knife. Through the years neither the Israeli left or right have been able to change the Arab position, they want to see Israel go away and will do anything to make that happen.

[Ken Burch]

5. What's the alternative to the two-state solution?

You know perfectly well it's impossible to ever get the Palestinians and the other Arabs to accept Israelis having a state and Palestinians being forced to choose between statelessness(or rule by Jordan, which would mean eternal powerlessness and hopelessness for them)or exile.

The present situation can't be indefinitely maintained. And it would be immoral and unsustainable to ever expand any more of the illegal West Bank settlements.

The single state solution isn't workable as of now either(especially if it is built on Naftali Bennett's notion that it would be a state in which Israeli Jews had the vote and the say and Palestinians could live there but not have any say, and on the Israeli side they wouldn't tolerate a single state in which everyone was equal).

I've thought that the Belgian model might be an option(but NOT if it was twisted in to being confederation with Jordan, which would be inherently unjust to Palestinians.

Palestinians have continued to resist, and their tactics haven't always been decent. But their resistance has never been about hatred of Jews(they lived alongside them in Palestine for centuries and things were always relatively accepting between both communities-not Utopia, but a hell of a lot better than anything in Christian Europe). It's about not wanting to get dispossessed and driven away from where they've always lived. It needs to be acknowledged that Palestinian Arabs have just as deep a connection to the land as Israelis do, and that both have a right to live in this place.

But Netanyahu will always refuse to acknowledge that...not for any reasons having anything at all to do with "security", but because he just doesn't ever want the war to end(he CAN'T want the war to end, because the Likud Party would vanish if it did). He is driven by insane hatred of all Arabs and by an obsession for getting vengeance for his brother's death in the raid on Entebbe, even though that was forty years ago and it was the Ugandans who killed his brother, not the Arabs.

It's a sad night...and no decent human being can be happy that the results were like this. Certainly no one who wants their kids to live in peace can be.

[sabbat hunter]

6. neither lapid or

Moshe Kahlon have much love for Bibi. without them, even if Bibi gets all the far right wing parties, along with Shas and UTJ, his coalition would be 3 votes short.

I for one am hoping that they refuse to join his coalition and instead join a ZU led one. With them, Shas, UTJ would get to 63. and if the JAL joins a Herzog led government, they can lock out Shas and UTJ.

[bravenak]

2. Best Wishes to Israel on this Important Occasion.

I hope you find a leaders who cares as much about the issues important to you as you do. Don't forget to vote!!!