Hi there! Welcome to my 2019 Circus Series. But first, the basics. Perhaps not what some of you expect. Here goes, in friendly Salmon Red.
Since 1967, Israel has controlled the lives of the Palestinian people living in East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza, without giving them citizenship; the vast majority have been forced to live as stateless, rightless subjects under military rule.
Even now, as Occupation-tolerant advocates often deny and discount this basic reality (or are shamefully ignorant of it), Israel controls the freedom of movement of these territories' residents, in particular their ability to go abroad and return; controls their residency status; their airspace, currency, water supply, fuel supply, most of their electricity, and their ability to import and export products. All the while, deeply exploiting their day labor and natural resources — and further controlling their social and intimate lives via a secret police that extorts an extensive network of collaborators. THIS IS A VERY PARTIAL LIST.
This Occupation regime has continued unabated for nearly 52 out of the Israeli parliament’s 70 years of existence, covering the last 14 out of Israel's 20 general elections. Apart from a couple of elections in the 1980s-90s, no major Israeli party has campaigned on ending it.
As long as this continues, the Israeli elections cannot be considered really democratic. That said, one should never give up hope, and elections might open the door to the Law of Unintended Consequences, in a good way.
Besides, it’s one of the world's most entertaining electoral circuses. So I'm writing this series.
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Credits and Motivations
So… subir had diaried about this a few days ago, and my diary will likely get way fewer eyeballs. Still, I thought an Israeli insider’s (or more precisely, an expat’s) explanation might help.
So, what is this strange deal between Bibi and the Judo-Nazi Kahanists?
It all starts with an electoral Law of Unintended Consequences, that had almost cost Bibi the fruits of his party’s stunning 2015 election-night comeback.
How So?
Israel has a fully proportional single-district national election, with the Executive branch set up by a parliamentary coalition enjoying majority support. So, like in the UK/Canada, but with proportionally-elected rather than district-elected parliament.
It’s been a while since any single party had won even 30% of the seats (last happened in 2003), so the coalition is always a motley crew of parties. Even though in 2015 Bibi’s Likud ended up decisively edging Labor 30-24 (out of 120 seats) in the race for biggest party, what really matters is how many seats “one can do business with”. If the opposing camp can set up “a Blocking Bloc” of parties refusing to go with you — (yes, that’s the literal translation) then being biggest party isn’t worth much. Just ask Tzipi Livni whose party edged Likud 28-27 in 2009, only to get outfoxed by Bibi in post-election horsetrading and end up in opposition. In 2015 the centre-left got too close to winning “a Blocking Bloc” for Bibi’s comfort, due to...
A self-inflicted electoral accident.
In farcical contrast to the US’s fossilized “2nd Tuesday every 4 years, electoral college forever” Constitutional stability of election rules, Israeli governments endlessly tweak rules to their advantage.
There’s a rule to prevent party-splintering, requiring a minimum threshold of the national vote in order to win seats. So far, so good, this rule exists in many countries. But only in Israel does it keep getting raised every couple of years under various pretexts. Most recently, it was raised to the curious level of 3.25%. Why? Because that’s just about how much the 3 small parties representing the Palestinian-Israeli minority (usually misnamed “Israeli Arabs” in Western discourse) had each won in the previous election. Actually, 2 of the 3 won less than that. The idea was to either force a mass political extinction upon the Palestinian parties — or force them into a humiliating “marriage of inconvenience” between communists, Islamists, liberals, and everyone in between.
For the record, many supposedly “centrist and liberal” Israeli politicians voted for this atrocity, which passed with a narrow majority while the broader Israeli public yawned. Or cheered.
But the dirty trick backfired twice:
- The Palestinian-Israelis did unite, proudly, and won a record-breaking 13 seats in 2015, catapulting their leaders to the national stage like never before (including a first-ever parliamentary committee chairmanship; more on their Joint List and its travails in 2015-2019, in another Circus Act diary).
- The planned electoral extinction ended up happening... on the right:
Yachad, an improv spare-parts party set up by a disgruntled leader of the well-established Shas Orthodox party, enlisted the Kahanists (whose followers number ~1%-2% of the electorate) as partners. But the partnership fell just short, with 2.97% of the vote, losing the right-wing bloc a precious chunk of its margin, and costing Bibi some of his negotiation leverage with coalition partners.
FF to 2019. As usual in Israeli election season, egos right left and center inflate, deals wheel, traps spring, and Likud’s nationalist-Orthodox ally Jewish Home got poached and splintered by its leader setting up a new charismatic far-right party (you guessed it: more on that, in another Circus Act diary). Jewish Home remnants suddenly felt as stale as leftover week-old Challah, and strongly at risk of failing to clear 3.25%.
Along comes Good Samaritan Bibi
This time around, Bibi was determined to not let 2015 repeat itself, by hook or by crook.
Bibi courted Jewish Home with the genius idea of bringing in the Kahanists (as well as another party or two in the space between Jewish Home’s racist self-righteous Jewish Supremacy, and the Kahanists’ outright Judo-Nazism), to round the numbers up. To sweeten the deal, Bibi offers the new stinking amalgam 2 cabinet posts in the future government…. and the 28th seat in his own Likud party list! Yes, he did.
Say what? The latter part might get overruled by the head of the Election Committee (a judge), because it is mighty strange — and quite probably illegal — for one party to offer a seat on its list to a competing party that is running separately. Classic over-the-top Bibi move.
King Bibi: Myth vs. Reality
Despite a disproportionately large amount of coverage, American media never fails to fail to understand Israel. For example, they keep bloviating about Bibi’s dominance of Israeli politics — the bottom line is true enough, his current streak of 10 years in power are the longest-ever consecutive hold by an Israeli PM, and this year he may break the legendary Ben Gurion’s record of 13+ cumulative years as PM.
But they are missing Bibi’s secret recipe, as well as his closest US analogue. No, certainly not Trump. They are both right-wing crooks, for sure. But Bibi is far, far more similar to Nixon. Bibi’s charisma has always appealed to a far narrower slice of the Israeli public than perceived here. And he’s underperformed in 4 of the 6 election campaigns in which he’s led Likud, including two devastating losses. He hasn’t dominated Israeli politics via magnetic larger-than-life personality. Rather, he’s done it via the Art of the Dirty Deal. A different deal each time, to keep things interesting.
Was 2019 One Deal too Far? The bad publicity might cause the partly-Nazi amalgam to flop at the ballot box, or even break apart before it. Happened before. Whoever writes that Bibi’s deal “all but guarantees” a Kahanist in the next parliament, is betting too high too fast.
And now… Introducing The Moderately Worded Tweet
What caught America’s attention to this particular circus act, is the response from Diaspora Jewish Establishment. Or rather, the reporting of this response. Classic case of compromised mainstream journalism.
We are made to believe that bodies like AIPAC that have marched lockstep with Israel’s decades-long rightward slide, have now “slammed” Bibi, and are “making a stand”.
Hahahahahahaha (that’s my sad laugh)
What AIPAC did, was support a tweet by another Establishment body. The tweet itself slammed only the Kahanists, without mentioning neither Bibi, nor the deal, by name. The Kahanists themselves, of course, couldn’t care less about being slammed by Establishment bodies. And for the record, they did run in 2015 with nary a comment from the very same august bodies (AFAIK). As well as before that. A few parliaments ago one of their reps even got in.
And here’s what another right-wing Jewish Establishment hack said about Bibi’s deal; apparently fiery words worthy of breathless coverage:
“He obviously has some political calculation that drove him to it, but politics can’t dictate everything,” Hoenlein told the wire service. “You have to take into consideration all of the ramifications and all of the concerns.”
Wow, such bold words and serious action. I’m sure Bibi is quavering in his boots. Just compare to what the same Jewish Establishment assholes have said recently about Linda Sarsour; not to mention Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.