This would just break my heart:
A Channel 10 poll published on Friday, just three days before next week’s Knesset election, has given only 20 seats to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party – the lowest the party has polled since the leadup to the vote.
Conducted by Prof. Camil Fuchs on behalf of the channel, the poll gives 24 seats to the Zionist Union of Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni.
In another poll published Friday evening by Channel 2, Likud got 22 seats, while Zionist Union got 26.
This four-seat gap between the two main parties reflects the results of most of the polls conducted over the past week.
Still the right-wing bloc was ahead of the center-left. In Channel 10’s poll, the Arab Joint List got 13 seats, while Yesh Atid and Habayit Hayehudi both polled at 12 seats and Kulanu polled at 10. Shas stayed on seven seats, United Torah Judaism polled at six seats, and Yisrael Beiteinu, Yahad and Meretz all got five seats.
Friday is the last day that polls will be published before Tuesday’s election, in keeping with Israeli law. In the past week, Netanyahu and his party have dropped in all the polls, despite a last-minute media blitz by the prime minister.
In a series of interviews to TV and radio channels, newspapers and news websites this week, Netanyahu hammered home the message that voting for the Likud was the only way to avoid a left-wing government in Israel.
It’s important to recognize precisely what a left wing government in Israel means, because if Tzipi Livni is “the left,” I’m really not sure what to think. Livni is the individual who during the ruthless Gaza War (a thousand plus Palestinian dead, numerous war crimes, and a completely demolished Gaza to 13 Israeli dead, half of whom were from friendly fire, if my memory is correct) that Israel viciously launched the moment Obama was elected who mocked the notion there was a humanitarian crisis, so don’t think that she is some kind of pushover. She appears to me be just as hawkish as anyone else, just she isn’t certifiably crazy and self-defeating like Netanyahu. If I’m wrong, fill me in. IIRC, she is supportive of a two state solution.
JPL
It might be time for Bibi to bomb someone. Does the law saying anything about killing a few Palestinians before elections?
Cervantes
You’re not mistaken. The “Zionist Union” would not be an improvement over Netanyahu except in name — and even there just barely.
Cervantes
@JPL:
It’s practically required.
Villago Delenda Est
I certainly hope that the outcome being predicted is the outcome that happens.
But it’s never over until Elmer sings his dirge at the end.
trollhattan
Could we (and by “we” I mean much of the world) possibly be that lucky? Those Republicans are magic, I tell ya, they’ve got inverse Midas touch.
BGinCHI
Bibi can still become a brother in SAE.
Amir Khalid
Most of the story at the link is behind a firewall. Pout.
ThresherK
What’s the Bizarro World version of the Colbert Bump for people who don’t know “Stephen Colbert” is a put-on?
Bibi got that from Boehner and McConnell.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI: Oh, I think he’d fail one of their tests. Skin color seems to be OK, but that sabbath on Saturday thing…well, that’s way too Mel Brooks, if you catch my drift.
beltane
There will be no real change in Israel’s behavior no matter who wins the election. The Israeli right-wing has shown itself willing to use 2nd Amendment remedies against any peacemaking PMs. However, a Netanyahu loss would be a good thing because 1) Boehner will be made to look even more ridiculous than usual; and 2) Bill Kristol will manage to keep his 100% failure rate intact.
srv
Likud only got 19 in 2013. Bibi will remain with a right coalition, albeit weakened.
mai naem mobile
I was listening to NPR this am. They said Bibi could lose but could still be the PM because Herzogs party won’t be able to get s majority while Likud will which is just as whacked as our system.
BGinCHI
@Villago Delenda Est: He’s reputedly a good chanter about “those people.”
max
@JPL: It might be time for Bibi to bomb someone. Does the law saying anything about killing a few Palestinians before elections?
He already is. They charged into Gaza a day or two ago with armored bulldozers and destroyed a bunch of Palestinian farms. Here.
Also they’ve been intermittently attacking Hizbollah around the Golan heights. (They haven’t attacked Nusra down there and they haven’t attacked Hizbollah in Lebanon. All the action has been in Syria.)
He’s been a busy beaver for some months. Not working though.
She appears to me be just as hawkish as anyone else, just she isn’t certifiably crazy and self-defeating like Netanyahu.
That’s the upset. Bibi also wants the US to get into a serious war with several countries because then he can come to the US and parade in front of his fans.
max
[‘At the moment the big issues are the economy and housing and bombing things doesn’t help with that.’]
RareSanity
@Amir Khalid:
Google News link to the rescue!
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QqQIoADAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.haaretz.com%2Fnews%2Fisrael-election-2015%2F.premium-1.646792&ei=MEwDVYDTDYmcNuSegOAJ&usg=AFQjCNHsNYOiowzW91Uq3bjD8-QwPRJ1Ig&bvm=bv.88198703,d.eXY
Adam L Silverman
John,
Livni was one of the Likudniks who left the party with Sharon when he set up Kadima. She’s not center-left or left. She’s center-right, by Israeli standards and has entered into a partnership with Hertzog’s party. As I mentioned the other day in comments to Zandar’s karma post, Livni’s list actually won more votes in the last election, but Netanyahu out maneuvered her in building a coalition that got above 60 seats in the Knesset. If these poll numbers turn out to be accurate, it is highly likely that Bibi would try that again. There would be huge consequences though, the smaller parties, especially the ultra-religious ultra-Zionist, tend to be much more extreme. So he’s going to have to promise them a lot to get them on board. Imagine, if you will, an Israeli government where Avigdor Lieberman or the folks from the settler political blocs or the non-settler bloc rabbis have more power and authority to bring legislation, force it through Knesset, or have tighter controls of their preferred ministries to enact their pet regulations that would otherwise be tolerated.
Calouste
@BGinCHI: I wouldn’t be surprised if SAE also has a little ditty about Jews. And Hispanics. And Asians.
beltane
@mai naem mobile: Most of the smaller parties are to the right of Likud and run the gamut from un-housebroken religious nuts to the type of lunatic racists who would love to join Stormfront if only Stormfront would have them.
Amir Khalid
@RareSanity:
Muchas gracias.
dmsilev
@ThresherK:
The Bill Kristol Seal of Approval.
raven
@Calouste: And catlics
BGinCHI
@Calouste: That’s why they call them “The singing fraternity.”
We always called them Same Assholes Everywhere.
Chris
It’s… kind of like America that way; hawkishness is the default setting and even those on the “left” who do sincerely want to make things better have a hell of an uphill battle to fight (see also Obama’s attempts to close Gitmo, with a lot more than just Republicans opposing him).
JGabriel
Haaretz via John Cole @ Top:
Keep in mind that there’s usually a 5 seat flip to the left over and above the polling predictions, via Times of Israel:
It’s probably going to be close either way.
Cacti
The Jerusalem Post just broke this one…
Israel has been opening its Syrian border to treat wounded Al Qaeda and Nursa Front fighters.
Israel.
Our bestest friend evar.
ThresherK
@dmsilev: I don’t want to be funny, per se. My comedy ambition is to set someone else up with the straight line.
There were several answers I was hoping for, and I think you got the best one in first!
pseudonymous in nc
@Adam L Silverman:
He could try, but there’s not an easy path to a coalition for Bibi either, because right-centrist secular parties that focus on socio-economic issues aren’t going to make nice with the ultra-Orthodox sectarian parties. The question of military service for yeshiva students hasn’t gone away.
The mathematical reason for this kind of stalemate? 11% of the seats going to the joint Arab list. It’s a bloc that technically holds the balance of power but in practice cannot do so.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
What I’ve read so far says Isaac Herzog and Livni will split the PM with Herzog taking the first two years, then Livni taking the next two. I’m skeptical, but we’ll see how that plays out over time. But if Likud loses, then it looks like Herzog is slated to be the PM if they can form a “left” block coalition.
Of course, that’s a pretty big if.
D58826
@srv: I think this is correct. Most of the articles I’ve seen have made the point that there are more right/very right wing parties than center or left. Bibi has more ways to form a coalition government than the center/left does. So I would hold off on popping any champagne corks until the coalition forming dust settles. I don’t think we have seen the last of Bibi. unfortunately.
beltane
@Cacti: This has been going on for a while, leading to all kinds of conspiracy theories about the relationship between Israel and ISIS.
boatboy_srq
There are days I’m convinced that any Israeli pol not committed to driving steamrollers over Ramallah is “liberal” by their standards.
Cacti
@beltane:
I’m waiting for the story that Mossad has been feeding intel to ISIS/ISIL.
beltane
@Cacti: We will never hear that story, at least not in the American media.
azlib
From Krugman’s blog today, it appears there may be some domestic issues in play as well:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/israels-inequality-election/
Hard to believe Israel has more income inequality than the US. Wonder if they have Koch Brothers equivalent?
JPL
Bibi will always have a job with the republican party, in fact Rand Paul might hire him because he knows the jewry voters will be interested in his story.
chopper
just because Likud gets fewer seats than ZU doesn’t mean Bibi doesn’t get to stay PM.
The Blog Dahlia
@Cervantes:
Why the scare quotes? It’s the name of the political party.
max
@beltane: We will never hear that story, at least not in the American media.
We’ll hear it. It’ll be posted at 3 AM and on the front page in tiny type at 6 AM and pushed off the front page by six PM and then it will be pulled for ‘corrections’ and never heard of again.
Then an oped will appear in the WaPo on Sunday (in the back) saying that Bibi totally had to do that to thwart Obama and Iran.
max
[‘If you mention it to someone later, they will have no idea what you’re talking about.’]
Cacti
@beltane:
Funny how our three most “stalwart” middle eastern allies: Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, all seem to have no real problem with ISIS/ISIL.
chopper
@Adam L Silverman:
right. there are enough rightist seats that bibi could cobble something together, although it would be even more spread out than his current coalition which has gotten little done. herzog would not likely be able to do any better given the current polling but who knows.
ZU is a notable improvement over likud in many regards, but as to Palestinian statehood differing attitudes won’t add up to much of a change in policy. too much institutional momentum against any real progress.
Cervantes
@boatboy_srq:
Netanyahu could vanish and not much will improve for the Palestinians in the foreseeable future.
Recall that Lipni is the Justice Minister who, when a vote was taken to investigate her government’s excessive use of force in Gaza, replied: “I have just two words about the UN Human Rights Council decision: Get lost.”
As for the aristocratic Mr. Herzog, he’s running a campaign commercial in which he talks ambiguously about “wiping out these people.”
Goblue72
@azlib: This is understanding as well. Here in the States we view Israel through a single foreign policy lens on a single issue – Israel-Palestinian.
We forget they are a country like any other in that there are a host of domestic issues at play that are just important to their voters as our domestic issues are to ours.
Another Holocene Human
Not dancing on this asshat’s political grave until he fails to form a majority government.
Israel has enormous domestic problems their current government is completely unable to address for political reasons … hmm, sounds familiar.
chopper
@Goblue72:
this. for American liberals it doesn’t really matter who’s in charge. for israel israeli on the streets of tel aviv it matters a lot more.
beltane
@Cacti: If any truly charismatic,unifying, and effective leader emerged in the Middle East, our allies would shit bricks and implore us to remove this terrible threat to the status quo.
Baud
@chopper:
Good explanation for why the GOP wins more elections than they should.
chopper
@Baud:
not a dime’s worth of difference!
chopper
@Another Holocene Human:
even if he ends up losing the PM spot, he’ll be back.
beltane
The op-ed described in this piece is typical of far-right Israeli thinking: http://www.timesofisrael.com/op-ed-calls-on-israel-to-nuke-germany-iran/
LanceThruster
Sheldon Adelson needs to loosen up on the purse strings it seems.
beltane
Netanyahu is a bit like an even more unpleasant version of Silvio Berlusconi, supposedly unpopular in his own country but nearly impossible to remove from government. Even if he loses outright this time around, the only thing that would remove him from power permanently is a long prison sentence.
D58826
@beltane: Isn’t that the rag that Adelson pays to have distributed free through out Israel?
beltane
@D58826: Yes, it’s free and is supposedly the most widely read publication in the country.
Tree With Water
May the next prime minister of Israel be touched by wisdom, and seek peace.
beltane
@Tree With Water: Why are you wishing death on someone like that? Seeking peace and being touched by wisdom is a guarantee of early death in that part of the world.
max
@Another Holocene Human: Not dancing on this asshat’s political grave until he fails to form a majority government.
Seconded.
max
['If he loses though, the denunciations of the voters are going to be funny.']
JPL
IN my comment at 35, I mentioned that Rand Paul used the word jewry. Is that a common word used among others? He used in the context that he thought the repubs message could appeal to their votes.
I’ve never heard that particular word before.
Baud
@JPL:
I’ve seen it. It’s a legitimate word.
Germy Shoemangler
@Goblue72: I wish we had their healthcare system!
Howard Beale IV
@chopper: So Bibi is like herpes? (You didn’t want it, you got screwed when you got it, and if you could get rid of it you would-but you can’t)
dedc79
I think it’s mistake to try and put a left/right framework on the gaza stuff. Israel has conscription for all but the most religious, so everyone has friends/family doing the fighting and that very much impacts how politicians close rank during a conflict. And however awful you think their conduct was (and there is certainly much to criticize), and however much blame they bear for the situation inside gaza to begin with, it’s a conflict that’s occurring right on their border.
How many dems were criticizing the first or second Iraq war early on, even though it was happening a million miles away with volunteer troops?
All of this is just to say that just b/c you think Lipni was wrong on Gaza, doesn’t mean she wouldn’t be a vast improvement in working toward a two-state agreement with the Palestinians.
Fair Economist
@Cacti:
And why should they? Daesh (a better name) is no threat at all to Turkey or Israel, and not much to Saudi Arabia. But it’s a great bogeyman to keep the US shoveling money in their directions and ignoring the significant-to-horrendous human rights violations they themselves are guilty of.
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
Our bestest ally in the Middle East, behaving the way we’d expect a true ally and friend to behave.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I remember the concern about Soviet Jewry in the 70’s, or was that Soviet Jewelry?
ETA: Oh, that’s different…
JPL
@Baud: Thanks. I must have been living under a rock because it sounds like a slang term to me.
gogol's wife
@Baud:
Okay, this is going to open up the whole Emily Litella thing again. “Why do I need to save Soviet jewelry?”
gogol's wife
@BillinGlendaleCA:
That was SNL. But yes, there were bumper stickers in the 1970s saying “Save Soviet Jewry.”
Amir Khalid
I don’t see what difference it makes who wins the Israeli election. I agree that Bibi’s a nasty piece of work, he’s as corrupt as it gets, and Israelis would benefit some if he’s out of office. For that reason alone, I would enjoy seeing him lose. But he’s come back before, and he’ll keep coming back as long as he’s not in jail and not too old to run. Meanwhile, his rivals in this election aren’t going to be any kinder than he is to the Palestinians. What’s wrong with how Israel looks at and treats Palestinians seems to go right across the board politically.
@Baud:
Tsk, tsk. Around here we say a word is “perfectly cromulent”.
Calouste
@JPL: There is a street in the City of London that is called Old Jewry. It start where Cheapside changes into Poultry. (Yeah, those Brits are a bit more creative with their street names than 51st, 52nd, 53rd street, my favorite London street name is Petty France).
Roger Moore
@LanceThruster:
Given that some of Netanyahu’s problems have come from people upset with his ads, your suggestion seems as sound as using gasoline to fight a fire.
Howard Beale IV
@JPL: The Neo-Nazi’s are notorious for using the phrase ‘jewry’-back in the 1980s there was a Chicago-based neo-Nazi organization that had a call-in pre-recorded weekly message that always railed against ‘organized jewry’.
Now the fact that Paul the lesser used that same exact phrase, well, seems the acorn doesn’t fall that far from the tree after all. He probably is a Dominionist crank where Jews are just pawns (a la Hagee-ism) and that’s that.
TopClimber
Having done marathon web searches of all things related to this election, there are two important changes that the rise of a still hardline Labor/Centrist alliance could well bring.
First and most dramatic is a kingmaker role for Israeli Arabs/Palestinians. Making up 20% of the population, they typically do not vote in large numbers and have further diluted their strength with a multitude of small parties. This time, thanks to a measure making it harder for small parties to reach a membership threshold (ironically championed by official Israel’s biggest bigot, foreign minister Lieberman), the Arab parties ran a united slate. This has created great excitement among Arab citizens, and has also started their potential party leaders to think this might be the time to join an Israeli government.
Should current polls hold and the Arab Line does in fact back the left/center bloc, the path to coalition is much easier–Herzog-Livni and their natural allies in Maaretz (peace party) start with 30 votes; centrist parties look to have 20 and the Arab list 12. That is enough.
Israeli parties have typically refused to allow Arabs in the mix, but Herzog has hinted this time might be different. I’d say!
Second, one of the BIG gripes among Israeli’s feeling an economic squeeze are the huge subsidies going to expand settlement areas on the West Bank, particularly in areas that are unlikely to survive in any Palestinian state. Redirecting housing funds from settlements to heartland Israel is one of the main appeals of the centrist bloc.
Should the left-center-Palestinian(?) coalition in fact occur and prove stable (perhaps adding one of the less absolutist religious parties), there could well be fundamental changes that put the 2-state solution back in play.
Now, if only we can get Hamas to play nice….I don’t know how, maybe by making their patrons in Iran less paranoid via a nuclear deal and an actual attempt to resolve the Palestinian issue?
Amir Khalid
@Calouste:
In his book Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson says London used to have a street called Gropec*nt Lane. (He said it was precisely what you’d expect, with a name like that: a base for prostitutes.) That C-word was apparently not as disreputable then as it is now.
BBA
Speaking as a Jew, if I were an Israeli citizen I’d vote Arab List and self-deport.
Another Holocene Human
@Amir Khalid:
Zombie Nixon.
Baud
@Amir Khalid: I think that word still isn’t as offensive in UK and Australia as it is in the US.
beltane
@Amir Khalid: It’s a fine, olde English word, not nearly as disreputable in other English speaking countries as it is here in the US.
Amir Khalid
@TopClimber:
In the Middle East, who if anyone gives a damn about playing nice? Everyone’s pursuing their own agenda.
Another Holocene Human
@Howard Beale IV: Good catch.
One often finds in the annals of White supremacy that the use of archaic words is another dog whistle to archaic attitudes.
Cf: Oriental, blackamoor, musselmen, Polacks, jewess, etcet.
beltane
@Howard Beale IV: The term “Jewry” is something that recalls anti-Semitic tracts such as “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. It is a very strange word to use in 2015 and highly telling as to Rand Paul’s friends and associates.
Baud
@beltane: Really? I’m confident I’ve sent it used by Jews to refer to Jewish people (such as American Jewry or European Jewry).
Elie
I disagree that there won’t be change afoot for Israel – esp within the next five years. Especially so if there is an Iran Peace deal. They are going to be pulled into a strategic power balance in the ME that will put increasing pressure on them to change their ways. The bad stuff that happens to Israelis is exacerbated by their land grab and other horrible treatment of the Palestinians — which they in turn retaliate against. Israel’s policies are bigoted and totallyself serving. Europe (and increasingly the US), is tired of the bullshit and this is going to get more obvious with time.
I will also add that Bibi’s and the Likud’s antics have permanently damaged the US Israeli relationship which will never be the same — Thanks Be! They took the first big step in liberating us from the prison of their control. In moving it to the Republicans, maybe they intended to hurt the Democrats, but instead I think they profoundly changed the dynamics for themselves. Me, I think that is a good thing for not just us, the ME and the world, but for THEIR souls and sense of justice… they are/were destroying their own souls and stopping that is a good thing, though many of them won’t thank us for that for a long time.
beltane
@Baud: I’ve never seen it used except in an archaic context. It’s a very old fashioned way of saying the “Jewish population” or the “Jewish community”, terms which I find much less creepy. I’ve seen plenty of things written by Jews which unwittingly embrace anti-Semitic tropes (there was an atricle in The Forward last year extolling the existance of the “Jewish race”) so I wouldn’t be surprised to see that be the case here.
Violet
@Elie:
Yeah, I’m thinking something like has happened. I don’t think we quite know how it has changed or how it will play out but something has shifted.
JPL
@Baud: Wow.. I was raised in the North East and never heard the word. When I first married we moved a lot, I would always look for an area, that had a large Jewish community because they valued education so much. See I have my biases. That was also the days before google and the web, though.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane: Well, this country is notorious for having a collective broomstick up the collective ass about anything involving human sexuality, so there’s that.
Baud
@beltane: @JPL:
Interesting. I’ll have to remember to be on the lookout for where it’s used.
max
@JPL: N my comment at 35, I mentioned that Rand Paul used the word jewry. Is that a common word used among others?
Nope. ‘Jewish voters’.
He used in the context that he thought the repubs message could appeal to their votes.I’ve never heard that particular word before.
It’s an awkward word. You don’t have the context, do you?
max
[‘If you hear anything about a Jewish-Bolsheviks or worldwide Zionist conspiracies or Zionist-Bolsheviks or anything like that, run.’]
Gin & Tonic
@Violet: Maybe the US will show its displeasure by giving them $3 billion next year instead of $3.1 billion.
beltane
@max: Yes, at the very least it is meant to convey the notion that all Jews form a single, collective entity with one mind and one voice.
Violet
@max:
Here you go:
Violet
@Gin & Tonic: I think Bibi has begun the process of politicizing Israel as an issue in the US or at least getting voters to think about it in that way. Add to it the Evangelical Christian craziness about End Times and Israel and that’s another wedge. I don’t think by next year we’ll see a big change but I do think the process has started and it’ll be interesting to see how it shakes out.
beltane
@Violet: That speech is insulting on several levels, the word “Jewry” being the least of it.
JPL
@Violet: Depends on the meaning of interesting.
Elie
@Violet:
I agree that the scope is unknown, but its hard to think that things will be the same ever again… I dunno how Sheldon Adelson, Bibi and the others figured it would go, but its hard to see how this can result in a win for Israel in the short term even… It was and is, an embarrassment all around. Embarassing for this administration, for this country as it demonstrated how an ally would treat a sitting President of no matter what party in such an openly flagrant way. You can’t shit in the punch bowl like that and expect the host to want to take you back, even after fervent regrets…
Maybe some good will come out of the notion that maybe Sheldon Adelson can’t give good advice or counsel, even if he has a lot of money, you take it at your risk. Maybe good lesson there for anyone willing to learn it.
Violet
@JPL: Chinese curse version.
beltane
@Violet: Unconditional support for everything Israel does will be like opposition to gay marriage, a position that starts out fairly widespread but ends up being limited to evangelical wingnuts. However, people like Netanyahu should always keep in mind that support for Israel is not really a top concern for evangelicals, most of whom are far more energized by the struggle to ram their beliefs down the throats of other Americans.
JPL
Well next Paul will try to encourage the polacks and the canucks to vote for him.
chopper
@Howard Beale IV:
bibi is pretty much just like herpes.
dedc79
@beltane: May just be one of those words where it also depends on who’s using it. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen jewish philanthropic groups refer to “jewry” in a non-sinister way, where they’re just trying to say that they want to help jewish communities around the globe.
For example, see this reference to soviet jewry: http://www.ujafedny.org/news/voices-of-the-soviet-jewry-movement/
and
http://www.jewishphilanthropyct.org/stand-together-with-french-jewry
Baud
@JPL: And the Chicanos!
beltane
@JPL: Also the Dagos, Wops, and Chinamen.
Kropadope
@Violet:
I see Paul is hard at work making me resign to vote for Hillary Clinton.
chopper
@TopClimber:
if ZU asks the Arab parties to join their coalition I’ll eat my hat.
I really hope I’m wrong, maybe things are ready for a change, but that just doesn’t happen in Israeli politics. the Arab parties are always left out.
beltane
@dedc79: I have to wonder if the use of the term is meant to subconsciously convey uneasiness, thus motivating people to donate more money. Successful fundraising is dependent on emotional manipulation to a degree.
Elie
@beltane:
I think we have to look past just the narrow US perspective. Europe, which used to be silent is more activated on this issue and as we know, has been involved in the peace discussions with Iran. The Israelis are going to be one “interest” among several others. The US has other fish to fry economically and geopolitically. While the Israelis may remain a sentimental favorite for a while, the momentum has changed. Sheldon Adelson nor anyone else can buy that… they can only a little around the margins.
For me, I don’t think a mint will take the bad taste out of my mouth about this whole sorry episode. My hope, as I said upstring, is that we can start to see some humanism creep back into the considerations that the Israelis are taking in their policies. Maybe not. Its up to them.
beltane
@chopper: Even assuming ZU would have them, the Arab parties would need to have something in exchange for supporting the coalition and I’m not sure I can see this happening right now.
beltane
@Elie: I agree with you completely.The recent Netanyahu episode has opened a lot of American eyes, eyes that the Israelis would have preferred stayed closed for perpetuity.
Steeplejack
@beltane:
I think you’re mistaken here. (Not about what you’ve seen, but about usage.) Jewry certainly is used as a dog whistle by bigots, but it has legitimate uses as well, though perhaps it has faded from common use. Words go in and out of style.
As someone mentioned upthread, it was used in the ’70s with regard to the issue of “Soviet Jewry,” which was a thing, as the yoots would say now. There was an advocacy group called Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (founded in 1964), as well as the Greater New York Coalition for Soviet Jewry and the Washington Committee for Soviet Jewry, to name just a few examples. The word certainly had enough (legitimate) currency to be the basis for the Emily Litella joke on Saturday Night Live.
ETA: But context does matter, and it does merit at least an eyebrow raise when it shows up in the vicinity of Rand Paul.
beltane
@Steeplejack: I’ve never seen it used in normal conversation, and the context Rand Paul used it in was not referring to any sort of historical event, but was an appeal to the dual-loyalty of American Jews, a concept that is the cornerstone of modern Antisemitism.
dedc79
@beltane: Interesting take on what’s gong on with the coalition of arab parties. Tablet can go off the rails on some of this stuff, but this article is more objective.
Elie
And though Cotton and the republican senate’s Iran letter are not directly linked to this, they are “kissing cousin” events. That put a double dose of poop in the punchbowl. The repubs hadn’t recovered from the first and they upped the impact by doing this. They actually made something already bad, worse for the Israelis because these events were temporally close and the whole shitty aura will surround both of them. Good work!
chopper
@beltane:
plus ZU has gone out of their way recently to piss off the arab parties. no bloody way is that happening.
beltane
@dedc79: IF it works out it would be truly revolutionary and a major step in the right direction. Ayman Odeh reminds me a bit of Alexi Tsipras in Greece, a young, charismatic leftist who seems cut from a different cloth than the politicians of the past few generations.
max
Thanks!
@Violet:
That’s…. that’s…. wrong. ‘I think that should send a message to a lot of American Jews [better ‘Jews in America’] …’
“Jewry” is supposed to refer the collective Jewish community. Like this:
So what he said was a lot like saying ‘I think that should send a message to a lot of Armenian community…’
but using an old and not particularly friendly word.
max
[‘That’s some two-fisted dog whistlin’ right there. Or the most awesome grammatical screwup ever.’]
Villago Delenda Est
@max: Yup, he’s definitely sending a signal to the traditional ZOG conspiracy theorist community, AKA “the base”.
chopper
@Steeplejack:
“jewry” is kind of like “negro”. it’s a dog whistle among certain groups, but the right kind of ‘old fashioned’ that others just see it as an anachronism.
NotMax
Inside the blockquote at #103:
Oy vey.
Pretend the wife wasn’t present. Who of sound mind would spout “I sat down with he” and presume that correct?
Steeplejack
@beltane:
I wasn’t suggesting that the word’s only legitimate use is about some sort of “historical event”; that was the example that came to mind. There also is a scholarly journal called Contemporary Jewry, which, as far as I can tell, is not a right-wing hate publication.
And there are many words I see in written prose that I don’t hear in “normal conversation.” My only point was to propose that jewry is not the automatic red flag that you seem to think it is.
Finally, Paul picked a strange venue in which to blow his dog whistle: a radio program called Jewish Moments in the Morning. My guess is that among his (many) other flaws Paul is tone-deaf and thought “Jewry” would sound classier than “Jews.”
NotMax
@JPL
And American Papists.
beltane
@Steeplejack: Given the environment Rand Paul was raised in, it’s logical to assume he didn’t come by the word Jewry from UJA fundraising appeals.
TopClimber
@Amir Khalid: Playing nice means pursuing an agenda that might actually get you somewhere without sacrificing 100 of your own people for every 1 Israeli.
Mary G
I had an editor tell me in the early 2000s that “jewry” is a word that Jewish people can use if they want to, but as a non-Jewish person, I should not. I asked if it was like the n-word, and he said no, but all Jewish people are not the same and in some circles it can cause offense by implying that they are.
Steeplejack
@beltane:
I don’t really care how Rand Paul came by the word. I care about—or did, but am rapidly losing interest in—the notion that jewry is used only in an archaic context and is automatically an anti-Semitic trope.
TopClimber
@chopper: I would not bet the house or even a utility shed on it happening, but that’s partly because like many post-2009 folks I have no cash to spend on such things.
However, one of the ways the last great Israeli PM stayed in power (Rabin) was by getting the Arabs to work as a “blocking majority.” They didn’t vote in favor of Labor, but they blocked the right from forming a majority or winning a no confidence vote.
Interesting possibility: ZU falls short of a majority, as does Likud. Israeli president pushes for a national unity government including ZU and Likud (which both have ruled out, but take Netanyahu out of the picture and maybe the Likud survivors go along). You throw in at least the biggest centrist party and you have a numerically stable if ideologically paralyzed coalition with Herzog at the helm.
Bad news for real change in Israel (at least temporarily) but good news for the Arab List. They could well be the biggest party on the outs and so therefore the official opposition. This means they get to sit as shadow government on key committees, including defense and foreign affairs. It’s a thing parliamentary governments do.
How many heads would explode over that one?
liberal
People should remember that the expansion of settlements in the West Bank wasn’t just a right-wing project in Israel. Certainly Labor supported it.
liberal
@azlib:
I don’t know much about Israel’s demographics, but my strong impression is that there are lots of people there who are pretty destitute. I would assume that would include many Israeli (non-Jewish) Arabs, Jews who fled from or are offspring of Arab Jews who left/fled to Israel, and some Jews who fairly recently came from Russia/Eastern Europe.
And Israel probably has oligarchs, too.
TopClimber
@beltane: Ministry of Justice would be nice, but chopper would be down another hat and it sure ain’t likely.
How about Ministry of Agriculture, or Health, or anything of benefit to the disproportionally poor Arab/Bedouin/Druze populace?
Take your pick http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/aboutisrael/state/government/pages/israel%20government%20ministries.aspx Whatever it is is more than the zip they got now.
Roger Moore
@beltane:
And Zionism.
TTT
“Israel has been opening its Syrian border to treat wounded Al Qaeda and Nursa Front fighters.”
This is not breaking news. It is a known fact for decades that the IDF operates a “no questions asked” hospital in the Golan Heights. It has nothing specifically to do with Al Qaeda and everything to do with keeping tabs on militants while spreading good propaganda to civilians. It makes a big difference to families if their kids can get better medical care in Israel than in Syria.
LanceThruster
@Roger Moore:
Sheldon’s money would certainly buy a lot of white phosphorus. Bibi’s never been one to eschew doubling down on bad decisions.
pseudonymous in nc
@liberal:
The state gives out a lot in benefits, especially to new arrivals and politically significant groups like Russians and ultra-Orthodox. (Another reason why the GOP-Likud ties are grotesquely hilarious.) But the secular middle-class has been squeezed out of affordable housing thanks to stagnant wages and rising house prices, and retirees have been pushed under the poverty line through rising prices while on fixed income.
So you have Israelis saying “why can’t we afford to put a roof over our head?” and Bibi says “shut up and think about how Iran wants to blow all the roofs off our heads!” Except that’s not working so well any more.
kindness
At this point I think the only real fair solution is one state. Make the West Bank, Gaza & Israel one with everyone having the same voting rights, and rights in general.
It’ll never happen in my life time but that is what should happen.
Cervantes
@Roger Moore:
Exactly.
Cervantes
@Steeplejack:
Same here, mostly because it’s unknowable unless we ask, he responds, and we believe what he tells us.
Having been around in English for eight hundred years, the word is certainly old. The only non-archaic sense it has now — some might say the least archaic sense — corresponds roughly to “Christendom” (at some scale or in some sense). Israel Zangwill, for example, wrote in “Children of the Ghetto” about “that long cruel night in Jewry which coincides with the Christian Era.” Zangwill was no anti-Semite.
Cervantes
@The Blog Dahlia:
You’re asking me a question? Don’t waste your time. Better yet, don’t waste mine.
Heliopause
Yes, it’s important to recognize exactly what this means. For most of its history Israel has been governed by people who were hysterical communists by American standards, yet still managed to subjugate the Palestinian population. The current “left” mainstream parties can do nothing without a coalition with religious parties, so the only meaningful question is just how much of Adam & Eve’s naughty bits the fig leaves will cover.
Israel is finished as a western-style social-democratic project. Netenyahu has won, regardless of this election; the left position is so far right as to be unrecognizable to the left of even 20 years ago. Thanks to Netenyahu and US policy it has slowly transformed into a reactionary regime virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding hardline Arab dictatorships. What happens there is now irrelevant. It’s all up to the US. Keep supporting it and you’re supporting proto-fascism.
Elie
@Heliopause:
Its changing as the dynamics in the ME change. It has to.
You might find this an interesting and pertinent read. I like it in its description of the history and the outlook.
pseudonymous in nc
@Elie:
For once, this is an example of how immigration alters politics. You don’t add a million Soviet immigrants to a country of 7 million over the course of a decade without it changing things.
But the economic changes accompanying the decline of Labor Zionism are significant as well: co-operatives became corporate giants, and the tech boom — with a big Soviet-origin input — created a lot of very rich founders: Israel is very big on security tech, and many spinoffs have been bought up by American tech giants.
Bill Arnold
@pseudonymous in nc:
How did this Russian immigrant infux shift attitudes in Israel? E.g. were Soviet attitudes towards Muslim subpopulations adopted? A brief web search didn’t turn up much – this tikkun piece The Russians Came suggests that this was the case, but without supporting survey evidence.
I agree about the tech boom.
pseudonymous in nc
@Bill Arnold:
The Soviet immigrants were/are secular, aggressively nationalist and not especially into the whole Zionist melting pot thing. They speak Russian, not Hebrew. They eat pork. Many of them aren’t considered halakhic Jews by the Chief Rabbinate, because their Jewish ancestry is patrilineal, not matrilineal, meaning that they have to get married in civil ceremonies outside of Israel. A lot of them became settlers because that’s where the subsidised housing was offered. They represent an eighth of the Israeli population. Yisrael Beiteinu has been their vehicle through the last decade, though it looks like a big bribery and kickback scandal will knock down their support this time round. Lots of them would like to see Israeli Arabs swear loyalty oaths or be disenfranchised / expelled.
If you look at Likud’s adverts during the election campaign, they have Hebrew and Russian subtitles.
Ruckus
@TopClimber:
Now, if only we can get Hamas to play nice….I don’t know how, maybe by making their patrons in Iran less paranoid via a nuclear deal and an actual attempt to resolve the Palestinian issue?
Continuing to do the same thing over and over, expecting different results always works so well, maybe trying something that’s never been done before might just do the trick.
Skippy-san
It is important for you to remember how the Israeli system works. Even if the Zionist Union wins the most seats-President Reuvlin can decide that Likud has the better level of overall support and can task Netanyahu to form a government. He then will have 42 to days to do so. In 2009 Kadima had more seats, but Likud ws judged to have the better chance at creating a government. That’s how Bibi became Prime Minister. The President of Israel can ask for a unity government-but the parties have to agree, and they have already ruled that out. Don’t get too optimistic just yet.
The Blog Dahlia
@Cervantes:
LOL, you’re adorable when you’re bitchy. Don’t ever change, pumpkin.
Callisto
@Cervantes:
Given that your whole blog schtick is asking Socratic-style for other posters to explain themselves, your response to a simple question is remarkably petulant.
Chris
@pseudonymous in nc:
Makes them sound like the kind of people the other right wingers should be loathing, not courting.
sheldon
@JPL: If you are Israeli and don’t vote for Bibi, you are out of your mind. You will be fighting the terrorists right on top of you. Wake up.
Callisto
@Chris:
Parliamentary politics make especially strange bedfellows.
Bill Arnold
@sheldon:
Do Israelis use a form of “Wake up, sheeple” in their political discourse?
Cervantes
@sheldon:
Here’s a headline I hope you appreciate:
Appeared in yesterday’s Haaretz.
Elie
Rough times for Israel ahead. It’s their choice
Cervantes
@Bill Arnold:
Uri Avnery, the author of your article, is reliable (disclaimer: he’s also an old friend). Without commenting on his explanations (for lack of time), and without directly addressing your first question, I can nevertheless suggest the following:
Further:
And:
These excerpts are from “Old Values in the New Homeland: Political Attitudes of FSU Immigrants in Israel,” by Michael Philippov and Anna Knafelman (Department of Political Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and Israeli Democracy Institute). You can find the complete paper in Israel Affairs, 17:1, January 2011, pp. 38–54.
Bill Arnold
@Cervantes:
Thanks, that looks very interesting. Will try to get a copy (paying if need be).
Unrelated, I was surprised to see the detailed NYTimes article Friday (2015-03-13) on Israeli settlements. The hardcopy paper includes some maps over time. (JODI RUDOREN and JEREMY ASHKENAS, photos TOMAS MUNITA. And others.)
Cervantes
@Bill Arnold:
Yes, thanks, I saw the article. It’s a vast improvement over the usual thing, but it could easily be more accurate still. For example, compare the map “with dots [representing] Israeli settlements” to this one.
Related: I was reading a few days ago yet another comparison of the coverage one gets in the NYT and Haaretz. Holler if you want a citation or excerpt.
Also, if you still want the article by Philippov and Knafelman and cannot find it, let me know here.
Bill Arnold
@Cervantes:
[I obtained and read the Philippov and Knafelman article. The statistics are saddening.]
Cervantes
@Bill Arnold:
Could not agree more.