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15 years later

Nothing seems to be more polarizing in this country than the memorial day for prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, which is taking place now on its Hebrew date (Rabin was murdered on November, 4 1995.)

As Gil Hoffman point out in The Jerusalem Post , Rabin’s legacy has become whatever the politician who is speaking explains it as – an advocate for peace and a Palestinian state, or a cautious statesman who would not have sold Israel short and retreated to 1967 borders.

As each year goes by, there’s less pomp and circumstance surrounding the memorial day, with fewer events taking place and not as many people showing up for them.

But according to Dani Inbar, a film maker whose documentary “Where Were You When Rabin Was Killed” aired last night on Channel 2, there’s still plenty of raw emotion surrounding the assassination.

When he took on the project, Inbar told me that the Reshet broadcasting company published a public announcement asking people for interesting stories about what they went through the night of the assassination and how it affected their lives.

“I was a little skeptical because, 15 years later, I thought, ‘Will people remember? Will they care? Will they cooperate?’” said Inbar in a phone call. “It was amazing – we got thousands of people calling us, leaving messages, crying on the phone. And that turned out to be the heart and bones of the movie.”

The pessimistic message that emerges from the film is that, according to Inbar, the mood has gotten worse during the ensuing 15 years since Rabin’s murder.

“I said I didn’t want to use cliches [in the film], but the problem is that the biggest cliché is also the saddest truth of what is going on today – 15 years later, the situation is worse. That’s what people talk about in the second half of the film – the loss of hope, the feeling of no light is at the end of the tunnel.

“I think the clear and sad outcome which many people in the movie convey is that [Rabin assassin] Yigal Amir won. Simple as that. And you can see it in black and white. The peace process was killed, and Yigal Amir is sitting in jail now smiling. That’s the saddest thing of all.”

Inbar may be looking through a narrow lens in his assessment, but for the rest of us, it’s worthwhile to reflect on his conclusions as we mark 15 years since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

New Knesset elected, coalition talks underway

The results are in. The election is finally over. Even though the Bibi Netanyahu-led Likud party was well ahead in the polls a few weeks ago, Tzipi Livni’s Kadima garnered one more seat than Likud in a stunning photo finish, explained by Haaretz thusly:

Livni forced Netanyahu to treat her as an equal, despite his negative ads claiming the job is “too big for her.” From that point, he lost the advantage of experience. Livni proved to be an expert campaigner who saved enough energy for the final and decisive round.

Several fascinating statistical and graphical breakdowns of the results can be seen here, while a breakdown of the number of seats per party, along with plenty of analysis and victory speech soundbytes, can be seen here.

Perhaps because the left has splintered into several newer and smaller parties, many of which did not garner enough votes for even one Knesset seat, the mainstream left-wing Labor, led by Ehud Barak, will only hold 14 seats, leaving its leadership disillusioned and vowing to sit out of coalition talks.

Avigdor Lieberman’s hardcore right-wing Israel Beiteinu managed to crystallize Israel’s right-of-center undecided, which, in essence, ended up detracting from Likud’s support among hard-liners, which, in turn, gave the relatively centrist (but Ariel Sharon-founded) Kadima a proportionate edge (causing the world to wonder where this leaves us in terms of options for diplomacy with the Palestinians).

However, it’s Israel Beiteinu that’s going to make or break any coalition which Livni has already hit the ground running trying to form, so Lieberman’s agenda hasn’t backfired completely. Let’s not forget that this is Livni’s second chance to try and form a coalition, with the first time around, this past fall, not yielding any results at all.

So yes, it does seem that public opinion here has moved towards the right, and it’s parties which sit decidedly on the right which have the power to make or break a government. But at the same time, the Likud’s failure to seal the deal says quite a bit about the strength of the middle ground (whatever that may or may not mean).

Image courtesy tzipilivni2009 from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Why I’m Voting Green This Year

Shas trying a bit of feminism

The Shas party has had the upper hand on Tzipi Livni ever since the Kadima leader’s aspirations to take over from Olmert as prime minister were dashed by Shas’s coalition holdout tactics.

As a result, Livini and Kadima were forced to keep Olmert at the country’s helm, and the general elections scheduled for next week became a necessity. With Kadima trailing in the polls, one can’t resist wondering if Livni has been secretly regretting her decision to not kowtow to Shas back in the fall.

One of the most popular of the second-tier parties, the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas party doesn’t stand a chance to elect a prime minister, but it always finds a way to obtain big cabinet appointments and budgets for its programs as coalition bargaining chips.

But until now, Livni has had one clear advantage over all of the other parties: the feminist card. No other major contending party in this race has a woman at the top of its list, which, as we know, can be a major draw.

And Shas can always use some good PR for believing in the leadership potential for women – especially given that the party’s spiritual figurehead, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, makes a habit of saying politically incorrect things. Shas has been “trying a bit of feminism” (as our friend Ali G puts it) ever since it launched a “Strengthening Women” platform in December.

This week, the party upped the feminist ante by allowing Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s daughter-in-law (and flat-mate), Yehudit Yosef, to take on a more public role, Haaretz reports. Apparently, Yehudit Yosef has for years been a major playing behind the scenes with Shas, but this week, she began campaigning on behalf of the party, rallying supporters with an inspiring speech in Jerusalem on Monday:

“I know how concerned [Rabbi Ovadia Yosef] is about women’s issues, how he educated his children to take care of their womenfolk so that they would not lack for anything,” she said. “When he gives his class on Saturday night and comes to the issue of women, he gives them a lecture on how to treat a woman, what to do for her, how to behave, what to buy her, and so forth. It’s such a lovely thing.”

Will lip service like this woo away some potential Kadima voters? We’ll know next week.

Image courtesy tzipilivni2009 from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

The Quiet Within the Storm

You have to give Israelis credit; when the chips are down, even the ones who aren’t necessarily suspected of idealism come shining through.

As Israel went to war against Hamas over the weekend, the leaders of the major political parties all decided to suspend their political campaigns for the duration of the operation – which, both Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Barak said could be lengthy. Barak, who leades the Labor Party, said that he had to concentrate on the operation and had no time for politics.

The Likud, too, suspended its campaign, and has put on hold a radio campaign featuring ads attacking Kadima chief and Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni. Posters that bear the campaign’s tagline – “Tsipi, the job is too big for you” – that have already been put up will be taken down. In a statement Saturday night, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu said that “there is a time for debate and a time for unity, and today is a time for unity,” he said. “If our enemies thought we would not be united under rocket fire, they were wrong. The cannons roar, but we are united.”

With the elections coming just about a month from now – and the gap between the Likud and Kadima narrowing, according to the latest polls – the suspension of campaigning is really extraordinary. It wouldn’t be surprising for opposition politicians, for example, to accuse the government of timing its operation to cynically improve its standing in the polls, giving it a “January surprise” type of bounce that could sustain it until the elections. But no – politicians on the left and the right spontaneously announced (without any coordination, as far as I could tell) that they were holding off on the negative noise we are set to be subject to. Not that any Israeli, given the choice, wouldn’t opt for the noise if it meant that the south was secure. But it does show that our political leaders and would-be leaders are a better caliber than we usually give them credit for being.

(Photo courtesy One Family Fund)

 

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