Israeli General Election (2nd of March, 2020): Madness

[DavidB.]

How does Bibi still win after being in power so long and with all the corruption?  Honest question about what makes him unbeatable.

Excellent economy, better international relations than ever, less of a security threat by neighbors and militant Palestinians than perhaps ever. I'd have voted Likud in this one.

[DavidB.]

How does Bibi still win after being in power so long and with all the corruption?  Honest question about what makes him unbeatable.

Excellent economy, better international relations than ever, less of a security threat by neighbors and militant Palestinians than perhaps ever. I'd have voted Likud in this one.

I mean sure, but you're saying this as a natural voter for the right, quite a hardcore one.

Okay, but the economy, the good national security situation and Israel's improving international standing are still reasons for why more than a fourth of Israelis would still vote for Likud - which was what Mileslunn asked - even apart from my personal preferences.

Didn't intend to post on Atlas anymore, but just wanted to clarify, as I didn't want the impression that Likud solely received a big part of the vote because of some anti-Arab scare or "irrational voters" to go unchallenged.

[DavidB.]

Anyway, I'm done. I'm done defending Israel in this forum and generally. We're a deeply corrupt country and I have no business in this moral monstrosity. Bye.

I’ve said for a long time, Israel is much closer to the Arab world than a lot of us think. This kind of sectarianism is expected from a multitude of African, Asian, South American, and Arab countries. Israel was supposed to be better than this.

No, it wasn't. It was supposed to be a safe haven in which the Jewish people could live and thrive in safety and in freedom, and that's exactly what it has become - and most resentment against Israel stems from the fact that it is so successful at this.

[DavidB.]

The main thing that I would consider to be "destabilizing and backwards" has been the attitude of the Palestinian leadership - which is why even its Arab allies have abandoned it. Meanwhile, the country you, as an anti-Zionist Palestinian, want destroyed, is stronger than ever; and today, it has probably elected a government that will make it even stronger

[DavidB.]

How closely are the results we've had matching the exit polls?

_{(for various personal reasons it presently isn't really possible to follow stuff as closely as I usually would and then make sense of it, urgh)}

Likud and the right are further ahead than in the exit poll, but they always are at this stage; by the end of the count, KL/whatever center-left alliance is running against Likud usually starts picking up a lot of votes, presumably in the Tel Aviv metro area. So the right is currently ahead, but I wouldn't say it's out of sync with the exit poll (yet). However, ZU didn't quite experience this late comeback in 2015, so it's not guaranteed that Likud isn't actually further ahead than the exit poll suggests either.

https://twitter.com/IsraelexLive/status/1234649746431717376

[DavidB.]

LOL.

[DavidB.]

Prediction: Gantz as new Likud leader in 2 years.

[DavidB.]

Happy a unity government with a large majority and broad Knesset support across the aisle - from Labour to the National Union - is being formed in these trying times.

Sad that Lieberman, Lapid and Meretz think shopping on shabbat is preferable to having a broad unity government in times of a pandemic and with a recession on its way. Happy Gantz made the right call and Israel can move on.

[DavidB.]

Shlomo Filber is out with a new poll that I find...interesting.

Likud 38
Lapid 16
Gantz 15
Joint List 15
Labor/Meretz 8
Shas 8
Yamina 7
UTJ 7
Lieberman 6

Very good poll for Gantz and a very solid 75 seats for the soon to be formed government. It's obvious a lot of KL voters prefer this unity government over the Tibi coalition, protracted deadlock, or a potential fourth election. And also logical, given that most Israeli center-left voters are still Zionists after all.

[DavidB.]

"The Tibi coalition" is an interesting (read: delusional and shamelessly racist) way to describe a Zionist-center-left minority government that would have had outside confidence and supply from the Arabs. But delusion and shameless racism (whether against Ostjuden or Sephardim and Mizrahim or Arabs) have characterized a certain current in the Zionist center-left for a very long time, so I agree with you that it's not logical for these people to prefer a fundamentalist ethnarchy over AAAAAH AY-RABS.

I wouldn't see you downplay the significance of "outside confidence and supply" when it would be a hypothetical CDU-FDP coalition with AfD outside support in Sachsen (or indeed similar hypothetical arrangements with much more mainstream parties on the European right). What's the difference?
Current and recent former JL MKs have made endlessly more problematic comments on Jews than Höcke ever did.

Apart from that, Zionism is about Jews being in control of their own Jewish state. A weak minority government relying on Arab parties who are outright hostile to the idea of Israel as a Jewish state would seriously jeopardize this idea of Zionism and everyone who is intellectually honest knows this.

[DavidB.]

All in all, this seems nearly ideal. Good that annexation probably isn't happening and the door on the 2SS isn't being closed. Sad to see Ohana go, though, and I would have liked to see fewer Hosen ministers, but it's a small price to pay. Hope the fight against the scourge of dikastocracy will still continue. In a true democracy, power needs to be placed firmly in the hands of the parliament; this power should not be watered down by unelected judges with a different agenda. From that point of view, Levin as speaker would at least be good symbolically.

[DavidB.]

This would be nice to see. The Haredi parties are awful but at least they represent distinct cultural minorities with genuine material interests to advance. Yamina is the party of unleaded racism and illiberalism for its own sake.

Yamina broadly represents the ideology of religious Zionism (see Rav Kook) and the national religious sector within Israeli society, who, while more integrated than the Haredim, are just as much a "distinct cultural minority with genuine material interests" as the Haredim. You may well dislike their politics more than the Haredim's politics and want them to be out of government because of that, which I suppose is a legitimate political opinion - but it's not as if the national religious are suddenly not a group anymore, even if some of them vote for Likud.