Photo Credit: Asher Schwartz

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may demonstrate foolishness regarding a great many things in public life, but no one ever accused him of demonstrating foolishness with regard to his own electoral prospects. His enemies are suddenly foaming at the mouth. In response to the remarkable jump in Likud popularity in the polls, they claim, Bibi has decided to pull a fast one and has decided to take the undemocratic decision of holding elections. That Netanyahu’s rivals claim it is undemocratic when elections are held is only the tip of their problems. What really has them worried is that the Israeli electorate is about to sic itself against most of the non-Likud parties.

To a large extent, the real factor behind the dismemberment of the government coalition and the calling of new elections is the military operation against Gaza from this past summer. The events surrounding those battles shook up the Israeli electorate and reshuffled the political deck.

Advertisement




The Gaza war made the Likud very popular. The Jewish public almost unanimously supported the operation against the Hamas barbarians. Israelis do not think that too many Gazans were killed but rather that too few were. The main complaint from Israeli Jews was that the Likud did not go far enough and ended the military incursions there too soon.

But the Gaza war also decimated the political base for the Likud’s opposition. In Gaza, Israel had carried out to the letter every “idea” of the Israeli Labor Party and its allies. It had evicted the entire Jewish population of Gaza, removed every single Israeli soldier and military asset, turned the area over to the “Palestinians,” ending every single vestige of “occupation.” The result was the raining down of thousands of rockets upon the Israeli civilian population fired from Gaza, some hitting Tel Aviv and some landing near the airport, plus the terror tunnels built to carry out large-scale massacres of Jews. The Hitlerjugend on Western campuses may be marching around chanting that Jews are subhumans whose lives not worthy of being defended and protected, but no one is going to get very far in Israeli politics mouthing such a platform. The huge bulk of Israelis see the Labor Party and the “center-Left” as directly responsible for turning Gaza into one huge rocket launching pad and putting almost the entire Israeli civilian population at risk, all in the name of “the need to end occupation.” Israelis now understand that Arab terrorism is not caused by Israeli occupation but by the ending of Israeli occupation.

That means that everyone knows that at the very first electoral opportunity, the Israeli voter will exact his revenge against those who turned Gaza into Hamastan. That means the Labor Party and Tzipi Livni, and what is left of the once large Kadima bloc.

So the Labor Party, which in its first decades exercised a monopoly hegemony over Israeli government, is likely to fall in any new election far below the 15 parliamentary seats it managed to hang on to in the last elections (out of 120).

Livni is what is left from the larger Kadima party that implemented the Gaza capitulation and the conversion of Gaza into ISIS-South. It managed to get 6 seats in the last election and was invited by Netanyahu to join his coalition. There Livni herself pursued a leftist agenda within the government coalition. As Minister of Justice, she appointed far leftist judicial activist court judges. She also rallied in defense of the Islamofascist terrorist Haneen Zoabi, a Knesset Member from one of the Arab fascist parties, defending her from attempts to indict her for treason and terrorism. There are serious doubts as to whether Livni’s party will pass the minimum threshold and even make it into the next Knesset after the election. The ultra-leftist MERETZ party, with 6 seats at the moment, is also likely to get pummeled in a new election. Israel bashing is just not a great vote grabber in Israel these days.

Advertisement

1
2
3
SHARE
Previous articleLetter To A Young Jew: How To Respond To the Rise Of Anti-Semitic Hatred
Next articleHaredim Puzzled By World’s Use Of Sukkah Decorations In December
Steven Plaut is a professor at the University of Haifa. He can be contacted at [email protected]