Israel elections a defeat for everyone

February 11, 2009 - 9:16 AM by · 5 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Politics, Pop Culture 

The Siamese twins of Israeli politics.

The Siamese twins of Israeli politics.

One of my favorite Elvis Costello songs begins, “Well, I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.” I’ve sorted adopted that credo regarding life in Israel. But after the election results, I’m back to being disgusted.

If last night’s voting tally – showing a slight victory for Kadima and Tzipi Livni over the Likud and Bibi Netanyahu, but overall a stronger showing by the Right block – proves anything, it’s that our electoral system is as irreparably fractured as the population of the country.

We’re in a situation where the party that received the most votes is going to likely end up out of the government and in the opposition – sort of like Al Gore and the Democrats in 2000. Netanyahu, instead of graciously accepting defeat and offering Livni the opportunity to form a coalition – a task she failed to do last year which resulted in these elections, and which she’s unlikely to do now – instead claimed a from the back end victory.

While smaller Right wing parties like Habayit Hayehudi and the National Union sapped votes from Likud – not to mention Israel Beiteinu and Avigdor Lieberman maintaining their strong showing of 2006 despite predictions they would do even better – Kadima undoubtedly lost a mandate or two from those well-meaning souls who gallantly but gullibly threw their support to the Green Movement-Meimad or the Green Leaf parties.

The spread of parties in the next Knesset, therefore, is going to continue to be a representation of the total schism in Israel society, where Arab parties, the Sephardic stronghold Shas, the waning Left faction Meretz, and the fringe Right Wing parties all sit together and cause a paralysis.

It’s time to raise the minimum threshold to even run for the Knesset by 1,000 percent or so, and cap the number of parties to 10 maximum, instead of this year’s unmanageable, outrageous 34. It may not be democratic, but neither is the government we’re going to get next.

What in the world made people like Ephraim Sneh or Michael Melchior think they could garner enough votes to even get one Knesset seat? Can anyone name a difference between Habayit Hayehudi and the National Union? the Green Movement and the Greens? And for that matter, Kadima and Likud?

barIf the politicians really believed their mantra that the good of the country comes first, then next week, we would see a coalition announced consisting of Kadima, Likud, and either Labor, Israel Beiteinu or Shas. But don’t think for a second that’s going to happen.

Ah, the hell with it. I’m going to bury my head in the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue with Israel’s own Bar Refaeli on the cover. At least that’s something we can take pride in.

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Why I’m Voting Green This Year

February 6, 2009 - 11:56 AM by · 4 Comments
Filed under: Israeliness, Politics 
yeruka
You would think that after voting for a Barkat and a Barack respectively in the local Jerusalem and U.S. elections, the logical next choice would be to support a Barak (Ehud that is) in the upcoming Israeli national elections.

Would that it were that easy.

The major parties fielded for the 2009 elections have got to be the worst in years. Which is too bad.

When elections were called after newly minted Kadima party head Tzipi Livni couldn’t form a coalition last year, I initially felt it was the right thing for the country.

Kadima, under the now disgraced Ehud Olmert, has veered significantly from the mandate under which it had been elected. Olmert’s public declarations on how much territory he would be willing to cede in a peace deal with Palestinians are from the consensus.

So elections, I thought, would allow the Israeli public to choose a leader who was more in sync with where the people stand today, one who made it clear which way he or she planned to take the country.

Except that we have no idea what the candidates are for at all, because they simply won’t tell us. A public debate like in the U.S.? Not here.

David Horowitz, writing in last week’s Jerusalem Post, nailed it on the head.

Is the Likud under Bibi Netanyahu committed to expanding settlements in the West Bank, Horowitz asked, or will it limit those to “natural growth,” possibly even proposing its own permanent borders?

Will Livni pick up the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority from where Olmert left off, or will she turn more hawkish like her political rival in Kadima Shaul Mofaz?

What about Labor? Ehud Barak proposed borders at Camp David in 2000 that fell far short than those contemplated by Olmert. They were subsequently rejected by Yassar Arafat and met instead by a protracted campaign of suicide terror. Will Barak now harden his stance?

And where do the candidates stand on the economy – not an insignificant matter in this time of global doom and gloom. Only the Likud – riding on Netanyahu’s tenure as finance minister – has spelled out a comprehensive plan.

But the real question that has to be asked: How did we get to a situation where two out of the three candidates competing for the premiership have already held the position…and were unceremoniously booted out of office? Where is our Barack Obama, a leader who seemingly comes out of nowhere to galvanize the country?

Traditionally, I have voted for one of the big parties. I want to have my say over who will be prime minister and, in Israel’s antiquated party coalition system, where there’s no such thing as U.S. style direct election of the country’s leader, that’s the only way to do it. I’m not beholden to any particular party. Over the past three elections, I have voted for all of them – Likud, Labor and Kadima, in that order.

But when the choices are as dreadful they are, I’ve turned my attention to the smaller parties. Not the ridiculous new pairing of the Holocaust Survivor’s Party with a spin off of the Green Leaf movement which has broadcast commercials of senior citizens pushing for legalization of marijuana.

No, the party that’s captured my interest is the Yeruka-Meimad list.

Yeruka-Meimad is an amalgamation of an environmentally conscious list (“yarok” is Hebrew for green) and the tolerant religious party Meimad. Together they stand for many of the issues I have always cared deeply about.
Read more

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Nostalgia Sunday – Elections in Israel, Part 2

February 1, 2009 - 5:29 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: General, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture 

ballot_boxElections are coming up on February 10th and now seems the appropriate moment to take a look at how we do it here. The Ministry of the Interior has very efficiently issued a guide in four languages (including English), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has put out a comprehensive backgrounder, and the Knesset has posted an explanation of the Israeli electoral system. But these dry documents can’t possibly convey how much fun voting is here – the bright colors, the block letters, little pieces of paper and funny TV ads.

voting_booth_interior_smOkay, that sounds a bit infantile, but look how cute the inside of an Israeli voting booth is! Every one of those letters represents a different political party. So you go in, put a little “petek” in the envelope, seal it, go outside and slide it into the ballot box. And no matter how bad you want to, you mustn’t put in more than one! However, if you are sorely tempted, you can stuff your pockets full of ballots from funny parties you would never vote for, and give them to your friends later in the day, just for laffs.

This past summer, the Ministry of the Interior issued a tender for computerized voting in November’s municipal elections. That’s as far as we’ve gotten with introducing IT into the electoral system and, given the computer crashes that plagued both Likud and Labor’s primary races – which left Silicon Wadi with egg all over its face – that’s as far as we’re going to get right now. But, even without computers, look how far the system has advanced in 60 years.

wzo_election_then

Okay, maybe not so much.

wzo_election_now

These two photos are part of a wonderful WZO slide show entitled Celebrate 60 Years with Israel – “Fulfilling the Dream”. Click here for Nostalgia Sunday – Elections in Israel, Part 1.

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Voting in the Israeli elections with a compass

January 30, 2009 - 11:02 AM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Politics 

greenWith elections only 11 days away, it looks like a shoe-in for the Likud party led by Binyamin Netanyahu. But according to polls, there’s about 400,000 voters – which almost 10% of eligible voters – who haven’t yet decided which of the 34 parties running for Knesset to vote for.

You could count me as one of them. Alot of friends and acquaintances are voting for the Green Movement-Meimad ticket, but I fear they’re going to get 90% of the vote among liberal religious Anglo residents of southern Jerusalem neighborhoods like Baka and Talpiot, and 0.2% everywhere else.

Will they cross the threshold of minimum votes to gain at least one Knesset seat and not result in a wasted vote? Their TV ads aren’t very convincing – using Rabbi Michael Melchior giving a speech instead of utilizing one of the young, dynamic members on the list like Alon Tal. Melchior’s fine, but he’s a known entity, and his Meimad party has limited support around the country.

Perplexed, I ended up on this site my wife told me about – the Election Compass - a multiple choice questionaire about different issues related to Israel’s security mostly. Based on your answers, you receive a report with a compass on the political map pointing to the party you should be voting for – or at least the general vicinity.

Launched by the Israel Democracy Institute, the site had nearly 500,000 visitors by Thursday. Questions like ‘Would you be willing to give up Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem for a Palestinian state?’ have to be answered with a ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ checkpoint range.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the model was initiated in the Netherlands for that country’s 2006 elections and was eventually used by 3.4 million people out of 12.6 million voters. The Israeli version was developed by a team of IDI scholars and researchers lead by Senior Fellow Prof. Asher Arian.

“The compass has three main goals,” Arian told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. “The first is to help the perplexed voter find his position within the Israeli political map. The second is to encourage parties to be more forthcoming with specifics regarding their various platforms. And the third is to encourage political participation. We’re very concerned about the low participation rate in Israel, and we thought that this could add a buzz.”

After dutifully answering the questionaire, I awaited the tally and the compass page to find out who I should be voting for. And, my compass pointed to an area populated by – guess what – the Green Movement-Meimad.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Elections in Israel, Part 1

January 25, 2009 - 11:36 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: General, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture 

Let’s go back in time, shall we? The year was 1988. Israel still had only one television station but, then as now, was blessed with a multitude of political parties that, for the first time, were allowed to present their platforms on the air, thus providing the entire country with an evening’s entertainment. So there we sat, transfixed. Remember: there was only one TV station. Also, some of the ads were nothing if not amusing, especially if you go for Theater Of the Absurd.

This man, for example, from the “Quiet Party”, advocated getting rid of government stagnation and corrupt politicians by either voting for his party – symbolized by the ever-popular letter “zayin” – or putting in a blank ballot, or just not showing up at all.


The logic still escapes me but they look like a fun bunch, floating on the Dead Sea in their inner tubes.

tarshish_smBut the most memorable catchphrase of 1988 was, without a doubt, “Noar, Noar, Noar” (“young folks” repeated three times), from the ad presented by Tarshish, a Netanya-based party headed by Nissim Douek. Although his party’s symbol was “zayin ayin mem” (there’s that zayin again!) — meaning “rage” — Douek seems more doleful than angry as he tells the country’s Sephardic youth they has been lied to by the government, then promises to found a university in Netanya.

To see all the election commercials from 1988, visit the Nana-Channel 10 portal.

Compare these clumsy awkward efforts of yesteryear with media-saturated today. Every political party, TV and radio station, has a YouTube presence. A good one is Channel 2′s Election 2009 channel, where Israelis (celebs, demi-celebs and non) sound off about… well, whatever.

It’s also important to keep up with weekly satire show Eretz Nehederet (Wonderful Country) which, having finished up with the war, now turns its attention to the elections.

Another fun online tool for keeping up with things is the Israel Democracy Institute’s 2009 Israel Election Compass. A joint project of IDI and Ynet , the Election Compass guides users through a series of questions that help them identify which political parties and Prime Ministerial candidates most closely reflect their views on Israel’s most pressing social, political, economic, and security-related questions. It’s amazing what you can learn about yourself in filling out these questionnaires. Apparently, I should vote Labor, although in fact, that wasn’t my plan.

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