Here we go again
So, it’s all but a foregone conclusion that we’re headed for early elections. Just what this country needs.
Kadima leader Tzippi Livni, claiming that she wasn’t ready to give in to the ‘blackmail’ of potential coalition partners like Shas, took the high road and went to President Shimon Peres today and returned the mandate he entrusted her with last month to form a new government.
So barring some unforeseen blip, and owing to the convoluted manner the president and the Knesset parties must behave now, we’re looking at mid-Feburary for election day. And guess who’s prime minister til then? Ehud Olmert.
Ain’t Israeli politics grand?
I’m actually looking forward to the campaigning, because the televised election ads are among the most entertaining moments of TV since the original Saturday Night Live in the mid-1970s.
That’s about the only consolation to the whole ordeal, because whether Livni and Kadim come out on top again (highly unlikely), the Labor Party and Ehud Barak make a comeback (even unlikelier), or the Likud and Bibi Netanyahu clean up (Lord help us because it’s very likely), the resulting coalition will be very similar to The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, which goes “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
I’m sure that despite the fateful issues and decisions facing us, the next elections will have a record low turnout. Until we start producing some new blood and new ideas, more and more Israelis are going to continue turning off to politics. And it’s a time when we can ill afford to leave our fate to others to decide.
Maybe the environmental Green Party will finally galvanize voters and become this next election’s Pensioners’ party or Shinui – a dark horse coming out of nowhere.to capture the minds and hearts of the population.
Israel, the swing state
While the Israeli-Arab conflict is probably somewhere under the plight of the spotted owl as an issue important to the American voter, Israel might end up playing an important role in the elections anyway.
According to Shimon Greenspan, director of the nonpartisan Vote From Israel organization, which helps Americans living in Israel to register and cast their absentee ballots, approximately half of some 42,000 registered US voters living in Israel are voting in swing states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania
“If the election is close, as it was in the past two [presidential] elections, then the deciding votes could be coming from Israel,” he told The Jerusalem Post today. According to the organization, Israel has the third-largest group of American voters abroad, behind Canada and Britain.
Sensing that the Israel vote could be important, representatives of Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama are scouring the country try to woo voters, especially voters from Florida, according to the Bloomberg news agency.
Republicans Abroad in Israel has been passing out bumper stickers that carry McCain’s name rendered in Hebrew. Democrats Abroad set up booths on Israeli campuses to promote Obama, 47, to year-abroad students.
Kory Bardash, co-chairman of the Republicans Abroad in Israel, focuses on areas where there are lots of Americans, including the Tel Aviv suburb of Ra’anana and West Bank settlements Efrat and Maale Adumim. At a retirement home in Jerusalem, he helped register a 105-year-old Democrat, Miriam Pollack, who is from Delray Beach, Florida. Obama is “too much of a risk,” Bardash said she told him.
Democrats are signing up students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and promoting absentee ballots at house parties. A get-out-the-vote event closer to the election is planned at Mike’s Place, a bar overlooking Tel Aviv’s beach next to the U.S. Embassy, said Joanne Yaron, chairwoman of Israel’s Democrats Abroad.
Hey guys, it looks like we’re going to have our own elections to deal with soon. So chill out, and leave the voting to those Americans living in the US. We’re too busy dusting off our Center Party buttons.
There’s no more ‘after the holiday’
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life
The sounds of people taking down their succot is in the air, the month-long holiday season is over, and there’s no more excuses.
It’s virtually impossible to get anything done here in the weeks leading up to Rosh Hashana through the end of Succot. ‘Aharei Hachagim’ (after the holidays) has become a catchphrase that’s both made fun of and used constantly – by the same people. There’s no way to avoid saying it, even as you realize what a cliché it is.
Whether being fooled by the unpredictable – or basically non-existent – schedules for opening hours of banks, post offices, and government offices, trying to contact subjects for interviews, setting up parent-teacher meetings, or even worse, if you’re trying to do something life important, like buying or selling a house, the past month has been one cruel joke on anyone with an ounce of efficiency in their blood.
The country basically runs on auto pilot. I’m sure even in the IDF, there are signs posted on the doors outside senior military briefings about Iran saying ‘Convening after the holidays’. The only people who actually seemed to be doing anything were the rioters in Acre, and they probably weren’t upset at that Arab Yom Kippur driver, but because the Lotto lottery stands were closed so much.
But now, everything’s changed, and all the chips are being cashed. For all of the plumbers, lawyers, gardeners (alright, they’ve been saying ‘after shmita’ instead for a whole year), and a whole slew of other deadbeats who have pulled that line on me this past month, I expect you here at noon time today. We have work to do.
Olive you
Despite the historical connotation of the olive branch, olive harvesting season is often not a period of peace here. Clashes between Palestinian olive farmers and settlers in the West Bank regularly mar the olive harvest, and according to Israeli security sources, the situation is worsening.
However, my own personal olive harvest is going just fine, thanks. When we moved into our current home, we inherited a healthy olive tree that produces more and more green olives every year. It’s one of the few objects of vegetation in our yard we haven’t managed to kill.
Only problem is, even though I love olive oil, I hate olives. Fortunately the rest of my family is more Mediterranean oriented, and they love the little critters.
So for a week in October, they turn into people of the earth and climb the tree to fill bucket after bucket of the hard olives.
Once in a while, just like the Wilderness family, my wife will bottle the olives herself, with a precise recipe involving garlic, lemon vinegar and other tangy ingredients.
But she’s never been so happy with the results, saying the olives in the supermarket deli are tastier. So usually, we give away the olives that have been picked to anyone who wants them – neighbors, friends – we even stop people on the street asking them to please take these olives off our hands.
So, for at least one family, olive harvest season is still about holding forth the olive branch.
(Photo courtesy of Matan Brinn)
In praise of dry toast
Filed under: Food, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life
There’s nothing quite as daunting for immigrants to Israel from North America as going to the home of the Israeli parents of your daughter’s significant other.
Sure, after 23 years here, I feel as Israeli as the next Dudu, but there’s something about those natives born here from ethnic origins like – Iraq for instance – that’s just sooo Israeli, that I couldn’t even begin to approach it.
We’d already met Y’s parents on a couple occasions, once when we hosted them for a Yom Ha’atzmaut barbecue, and a couple times at the airport dropping off and picking up the young couple leaving and arriving from a two-week adventure in the US.
But this was the first time we were going to their home – on their turf, with their customs. It felt a little like the boyfriend’s family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding when they’re invited to meet the extended Greek clan.
Y’s parents weren’t barbecuing a sheep on the front lawn, but they were vivacious, offering tons of delicacies, and there were lots of them – brothers, babies, girlfriends and even a feisty grandmother, who probably had fought Arabs in the War of Independence with her bare hands.
I always thought we were a pretty upbeat, vivacious family of our own, but after spending an afternoon with Y’s family, I began to feel like Ian Miller’s ‘dry toast’ family.
When the heaping platefuls of Iraqi hamin (cholent) was passed around, I received the honor of getting a big calf’s leg. The father said ‘you’ll love it, the meat is so tender’. Well, it felt a lot like fat, or jelly, to me. So I pretended to move it around on the plate and take a stab or two at it, before leaving it on the side with a defeated look on my face.
I guess it’s now our turn to invite them over next time. Maybe we’ll make a nice bundt cake…
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