That's it. Midnight. Netanyahu hasn't won the election. Instead the Knesset is voting now (2nd reading) for a re-run. First-ever Israeli election that didn't deliver a government. Shortest-serving Knesset ever.
— Anshel Pfeffer (@AnshelPfeffer) May 29, 2019
As I write this, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) is preparing to vote on a motion of dissolution. Basically Bibi has been unable to get enough commitments from the hard right parties to pass the 61 vote threshold to form a government. If he cannot reverse this in very short order – as in like RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!!!! – the President of Israel will either given Benny Gantz, who leads the centrist Kol viLavan/Blue and White Party, who got the next largest block of seats as Netanyahu’s Likud or the Knesset will be dissolved and new elections will be called. What has happened here is the Avigdor Liberman has been able to block Netanyahu. Bibi was so desperate he actually got the President to intervene in favor of his attempts to get to 61 votes by this evening, which is something that is also unprecedented done by the President.
5 An hour later Netanyahu used Trump's tweet to publicly slam his political opponent former minister of defense Avigdor Lieberman and to put public pressure on him to join the coalition. Kushner will arrive in Israel after the result of the coalition crisis will be determined
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) May 28, 2019
Things have been so nuts and Bibi is now perceived as so week that Aryeh Odeh, the Arab Member of Knesset that Bibi routinely uses as a foil and punching bag (think Secretary Clinton and shouts of Lock Her Up! Or AOC and shouts of Socialism!) openly mocked him on the floor of Knesset ahead of the vote:
Hilarious: @AyOdeh announces Netanyahu has contacted him and has even asked for his party's support: In return, he will end the Occupation, do away with Nation-State Law and even recognize the Nakbah. The Knesset breaks out in laughter. All see how really desperate Netanyahu is. pic.twitter.com/S0RNK3PbbS
— Louis Fishman (@Istanbultelaviv) May 29, 2019
None of this is, of course, true. Odeh was just openly and publicly mocking Netanyahu. Bibi’s downfall is the result of Bibi’s obsessive need to cover his own tuchas in relation to the criminal charges he is facing. His governing focus has been on passing legislation that depowers the Israeli High Court of Justice, which would both allow the Prime Minister and governing coalition in the Knesset to ignore it’s rulings on constitutionality of legislation and decisions, as well as provide him retroactive immunity because he’s prime minister. This was incredibly popular among his supporters and the extreme right parties he was courting, but that was about it. And there were protests.
Needless to say, none of these laws will now be proposed, let alone pass, before the new elections in September.
Israel is going to elections because Netanyahu insisted on forming a far-right gov't, because it is crucial for him to pass a law shielding himself from criminal prosecution, or at the very least, have "loyal" partners who won't leave the coalition once he's indicted
— Elizabeth Tsurkov (@Elizrael) May 29, 2019
The Palestinian parties in the Knesset are voting for going to new elections because they plan on unifying & expect to gain more seats this time. Their division into 2 lists angered Arab voters who stayed away from the polls (turnout among them was 49%).
— Elizabeth Tsurkov (@Elizrael) May 29, 2019
The question is now whether Gantz can either get enough votes in September, when the new elections are held, to form his own coalition government. And whether Likud is willing to ditch Bibi in order to join it. My professional view on this is that if Bibi goes, Likud will splinter and factionalize. Some will retain the name. Some will attempt to form a new party. This is actually what the two extremist Likudniks, Naftali Bennet and Ayalet Shaked who formed their own party, have been trying to accomplish. Being as, if not more, extreme than Netanyahu, but be younger and more telegenic. They were voted out of Knesset and their new party didn’t receive any seats in April’s election.
I also expect that if the Arab parties do better, as well as the center left to center parties, this will allow Gantz to form his unity coalition, peeling the closer to center Likudniks off and locking out the far right religious, nationalist, religious-nationalist, and settler parties, which all have a lot of overlap. This would be an excellent thing. Politically in Israel it would be like locking the Mike Pence, Steve King of Iowa, Mike Lee of Utah, and Ted Cruz of Texas wing of the GOP out of the US Congress.
Expect Bibi to do something really stupid in short order as he’s now a very wounded political animal, if not a terminally wounded one, trapped and fighting for what’s left of his political life and, most likely, his freedom.
This stand against Bibi’s elected authoritarianism may, in fact, be too little, too late, but Mazel Tov Israel!
Also, Jared’s Middle East Peace Plan is now dead before arrival. Not that it ever wasn’t. If they’re smart, and we know Jared isn’t, he won’t even announce it.
Bibi is now throwing a temper tantrum!
Netanyahu after the vote "the public in Israel decided a few weeks ago clearly and unequivocally that I will be prime minister and that Likud would form the government. Many of the parties said we will support Netanyahu (before the election) 60 out of the right-wing MKs did that"
— Anshel Pfeffer (@AnshelPfeffer) May 29, 2019
Netanyahu "Lieberman never intended to enter the government… He is dragging the country in to more months of election… Avigdor Lieberman is part of the left. He brings down right-wing governments" (some reporters now tittering at this)
— Anshel Pfeffer (@AnshelPfeffer) May 29, 2019
Netanyahu: "We will run a sharp and clear election campaign and we will win." Doesn't deny that he offered Labor to join the coalition. "I made every effort to form a stable government." That's it. Bibi looks shell-shocked.
— Anshel Pfeffer (@AnshelPfeffer) May 29, 2019
Open thread.
rikyrah
this is interesting. can’t wait to see how it plays out.
rotten, no good , racist muthaphucka.
no better for him.
Rob
I totally agree with rikyrah.
Too bad the election is in September.
MattF
It does seem that karma is being knife-edge sharp here, with Netanyahu getting precisely half the Knesset.
trollhattan
Ye gods that’s complicated. If Likud is shattered and Bibi is shoved in a corner (“Nobody puts B….”) then, good.
Does this have any potential for ratcheting back the current belligerence v. Iran?
Cheryl Rofer
I’m seeing people on Twitter expecting that Jared’s party in Bahrain will be a flop and we will never see the plan. If there is one.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
You forgot
Poland!fascist!And anti-Semitic, too, I guess, if Palestinians are considered to be Semites. (Which I guess is possible.)
ETA: Although I am cautiously optimistic, I won’t believe he’s out until two governments in a row are formed without him — and even then. Given enough time, Nixon probably could have been “rehabilitated”; who’s to say that Israeli voters are any less fucked-up than Americans?
Cheryl Rofer
FWIW. This is outside my wheelhouse.
Cheryl Rofer
SFAW
@trollhattan:
Good one.
Chip Daniels
“Nooo Mr. Wizard, I don’t wanna live in interesting times!!”
laura
What Rikyrah said.
Also, too, I would expect that Kushner will still proceed with the big reveal of his Middle East Peace Plan because that’s what a half-way Moran would do.
Major Major Major Major
Boy, he really does sound like Trump in those tweeted quotes, huh?
Mart
Everything Trump touches…
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: In the long term, maybe. In the short term, no. I expect Bibi will do something very, very, very stupid to try to save himself.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: That is my expectation as well. The economic plan never made sense. I keep meaning to do a post about it, but also keep getting side tracked by other things.
Kent
What was really fucking weird to me about this past Israeli election was that my evangelical former neighbors in Texas and my evangelical fundie relatives in Texas were both circulating the same pro-Netanyahu cheerleading memes on Facebook. For some reason he managed to capture the adoration of a bunch of the Christian-right in this country and I’m really not sure why. There are all these weird political back-channels in this country that most of us are unaware of.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: Bibi is one of the biggest anti-Soros megaphones out there. So he’s just plain old regular anti-Semitic too!
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I think all of that is solid analysis.
geg6
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
That is all.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Putin publicly mocked that shortly after Huckabee-Sander’s office released the information.
MattF
@Adam L Silverman: Ugh. The stupidest things I can think of involve Iran, and maybe Trump.
karen marie
@Kent: Fundies love them some tough guy who will hold Israel together long enough for the End Times. I’d say they deserve each other but there are too many bystanders who don’t deserve to suffer the fallout from the bullshit.
Yutsano
@Adam L Silverman: Launch a nuke at Iran? Not to speculate, it would be irresponsible to do.
germy
meanwhile…
Netanyahu’s Wife Agrees to Plead Guilty in Catering Case
https://www.wsj.com/articles/netanyahus-wife-agrees-to-plead-guilty-in-catering-case-11559153304
rikyrah
@Kent:
The Rapture.
The Rapture ???
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Yep. And Lieberman is about as much a leftist as AOC is a Republican.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: It’s all run through a central information clearing house. There is a rabbi in Israel who just passed away, who was basically one of the main conduits, if not the main conduit, between Bibi and the Christian Zionists. His daughter is now trying to consolidate her position as his replacement. One of my former teammates and his wife, who are evangelicals, fast every Wednesday in support of Israel. He likes to let me know they’re still doing that. They mean well, but I doubt anyone in Israel cares.
West of the Rockies
Good. Another rightwing tin-plated dictator with delusions of grandeur goes down.
Sebastian
@MattF:
Nothing hurts more than a lifechanging victory escaped by the smallest of margins. There is a God because this is some Greek Mythology crass shit. He will go crazy.
Martin
Has Trump offered Kushner as PM yet?
Odie Hugh Manatee
Thanks, Adam! I read every word of it and I’m hoping Bibi goes down for the last time. Oh, since I read every word could you change “pealing” to “peeling”? OCD, ya kno… ;)
Sebastian
@Kent:
It’s the global right, dude. And Russia is pulling the strings and greasing the machine with money.
MomSense
@Kent:
The rapture won’t happen until the Israelites reclaim Jerusalem and the holy land. So there are a bunch of wacky loon christianists who want the end times to happen and that’s why they support whichever Israeli government will be most ruthless in removing every last Palestinian.
Adam L Silverman
@Odie Hugh Manatee: pawzehblee
Hilfy
Where is the Amazon link button? How can Cole get credit for purchases without it?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: Fundy Christians believe that Bibi will build the third temple, and that’s a condition for the end times.
Another Scott
Good, good.
More, “then suddenly”, please.
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
That would be my fear, and Bolton will be right there with a list of Things that are Stupid and Also Awesome to help out.
Roger Moore
@Kent:
Because Netanyahu has made an explicit alliance between Likud and the Republican Party. Anyone who’s a hard-core Republican will support Likud and Netanyahu because the see him as an extension of their own stuff.
MattF
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Tsk. It’s all so complicated. I’m suspecting it would end up with “Just kill them all and let God sort it out.”
Mart
@Kent: The Democratic party needs to send their interns to fundy churches to track their messaging. It is very well coordinated across the country. Be it abortion, transgenders in your daughters bathroom, Trumps court, or Israel – they all get the same message. And you can never change their minds as it is god’s will.
Butter emails!!!
@Mart: what would this do other than brainwash some poor interns?
Adam L Silverman
@Roger Moore: And you can thank Israel’s last two ambassadors the the US, both originally natural born US citizens – Oren and Dermer – for facilitating that. Dermer, before making aliyah and going to work for Bibi, was a petty GOP apparatchik in south Florida.
zhena gogolia
@Hilfy:
I had the same question a few moons ago. No answer that I know of.
Sayne
What’s the over/under on the number of bombs Bibi will drop on Gaza to try to save himself in the coming weeks?
Adam L Silverman
This is brutal. And much of it could have Netanyahu replaced with Trump and still read accurately:
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-netanyahu-s-darkest-deepest-fear-just-came-true-1.7303674
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
I think the blame lies squarely on Bibi. He didn’t have to appoint Republican apparatchiks as ambassador to the US; he did it as part of a deliberate strategy of forming a Republican/Likud alliance.
rikyrah
Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) Tweeted:
I confess I’m stunned. Bibi couldn’t thread this needle. But Bibi always threads the needle. It’s the iron law of 21st c ISR politics. Think this wasn’t really abt Liberman or Haredi demands. Key players cld sense death on Bibi & wldnt bargain things away to get on sinking ship. https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1133853235289165824?s=17
Adam L Silverman
@Mart: @Butter emails!!!: It goes beyond that. Republican and movement conservative messaging is coordinated by several groups, usually working with awareness of what they others are doing as there’s overlap of the individuals and organizations involved with each one, that includes the RNC, the White House comms office, and the PACs and campaign comms people supporting the President’s reelection. They meet weekly, they coordinate messaging, and they disseminate talking points and recommendations for engagement. The Democrats and their broad center left to left of center coalition do nothing even remotely like this. And it has made all the political difference in the world.
Grover Norquist runs one of these. As does Ginni Thomas, wife of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. There are, the last time I counted around half a dozen of them coordinating messaging and comms.
Cameron
I thought that’s why DeSantis and the FL Cabinet were over there, so they could sign up and give Bibi a majority.
Adam L Silverman
@Roger Moore: No argument here and I’m not trying to deny that this was a deliberate strategy created by Bibi and then facilitated by Oren and Dermer. As well as others within the US.
chopper
bibi has a big chink in his armor (due to his needing to shore up direct political support to oppose his ass getting thrown in jail) and lieberman knows it, and has taken full advantage.
i am surprised, i assumed lieberman would have just extorted a bunch of concessions. but he went all the way. wonder why.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: We’ll have to wait until September. If the Israeli attorney general indicts him before the election, which is, I think, what the timelines of the investigations seem to be pointing to, he’s done. If he’s able to forestall those, campaign on a conspiracy to bring him down and weaken/destroy Israel, then he may yet survive. There will be no middle ground here. He will either emerge in September with the electoral mandate to form a government, and therefore be essentially untouchable, or he is done. There will be no limping along, weakened, but still politically viable middle ground.
Jay
@Butter emails!!!:
If the Fundi God Botherers are playing politics from the pulpit, their tax exempt status can be pulled.
There’s a Prosperity Gospel winger in big big trouble in CA, for tax fraud.
Adam L Silverman
@Cameron: Because DeSantis had never even heard of Ariel University until they agreed to give him an award because Sheldon Adelson was paying them to do so. And paying for the travel of DeSantis and everyone else who traveled with him.
Bill Arnold
@Major Major Major Major:
He even has an idiot son active on Twitter:
Netanyahu’s son makes waves dabbling in foreign policy – The prime minister’s 27-year-old offspring, Yair, uses Twitter to lambaste other countries and their leaders, express support for far-right European politician and scold those he deems insufficiently supportive of Israel
(also)
Those (neo-)fascists are all “friends of Israel”.
B. Netanyahu broke the US-Israel relationship by aggressively making it partisan, siding actively with a minority US party. (that happens to be abusing minority rule, alas.) His son isn’t helping matters.
Adam L Silverman
@chopper: Lieberman, for all that he has long been rumored to be the Bratva’s man in the Israeli government, and therefore Putin’s catspaw, has very, very sharp political instincts.
Mary G
I was watching the countdown on my Twitter feed. Once it expired, a ton of laughing and mocking broke out. It seemed like good news, but I couldn’t be sure until Adam explained it. Sounds excellent. Twitler must be furious “those people” disobeyed him and showed that his endorsements are of no use or possibly even harmful. Forecast for a series of unhinged tweets tonight or tomorrow morning is excellent.
Also, too, something happened today that I would have thought impossible. I go to Real Clear Politics to see the job performance and favorability ratings and to see what the right wing press is saying without having to read any of it. (Today it’s Mueller’s testimony PROVES that the Deep State conspired to hurt Dear Leader in the election.)
But I digress. A while after the election, they added Nancy SMASH’s favorability rating right below Twitler, for distraction. He’d be 9 or 10 points down, and she’d be 32 or 38 points down. She’s been coming up slowly and for the first time, today they were TIED at -12.0 each. This is YOOGE. I’ve never seen anything like it. They don’t dare put up the turtle’s terrible scores.
So today was a very good day. ❤??????
NotMax
Any comment, Adam, on Russia and China’s arm in arm boycott of Jared’s upcoming Bribery R Us ‘summit?’
debbie
@MattF:
Always, always. No one escapes the Law of the Universe, ever.
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks. I guess I should have known that already, but I didn’t.
I’ve said it more than a couple times: Bibi should get down on his knees, every fucking night, and thank God that Yoni died at Entebbe. Because without that, he’d be nowhere.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
This isn’t Rabbi Schmuley, is it?
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
That was an enjoyable read, thanks.
Roger Moore
@Jay:
Theoretically yes. Practically no. The chances of the IRS investigating a right-wing church for partisan campaigning and successfully pulling their tax exempt status is negligible.
debbie
@rikyrah:
He got overconfident and cocky. It’s always overreach with these guys. //
rikyrah
@Adam L Silverman:
Brutal ??
SFAW
@Bill Arnold:
If I hadn’t known what this post was about, I would have thought they were talking about the Traitor-in-Chief.
Well, “turds of a feather fock (their countries) together” and all that, I guess.
Baud
No “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” jokes?
I’m disappointed.
opiejeanne
@Adam L Silverman: Why did Putin mock that announcement? I don’t understand.
NotMax
@SFAW
Time was it seemed that Ted Koppel had Netanyahu on Nightline every other night. That near constant exposure, shall we say, burnished Bibi’s escutcheon.
Jay
@Roger Moore:
“Theoretically yes. Practically no. The chances of the IRS investigating a right-wing church for partisan campaigning and successfully pulling their tax exempt status is negligible.”
The odds of Bad Boris Liar getting charged, were extremely long.
There is no quit in try,
J R in WV
@Cheryl Rofer:
Perhaps someone should show Bibi the slogan “Everything Trump touches dies!” Maybe he won’t love hugging Trump after hearing that?~!!
Or, maybe, since Bibi is a rotten, racist, fascist war criminal, maybe we should keep that factoid to ourselves!!! AND Anti-semite, because he hates the Arab brothers and sisters in Palestine and Israel, I love that, it’s the cold truth!
cain
@Adam L Silverman:
Putin is having such a good time right now.
cain
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Why would he do such a thing if it means the end of Israel? Meh.
chopper
@Adam L Silverman:
i’m aware. i assume that he sensed a good opportunity. he better hope it works, for his sake.
Adam L Silverman
@opiejeanne: I don’t know, just caught a quick headline earlier today.
Jay
@opiejeanne:
@cain:
@Adam L Silverman:
Because Nickolai’s one job at that meeting is to say “nyet”?
zzyzx
@cain: The thing the Fundies can never understand about Jews is that few of us care about that sort of trapping anymore. I went to Hebrew school for over a decade and I can promise you I didn’t hear one word about a desire to build the temple.
We’ve become practical over the years and with a lack of focus on the afterlife, Judiasm has largely become a group of traditions to improve our lives, help others, and respect heritage. When you have a group of people who worship out of a fear of their God who will torture them forever if they don’t say the right magic words, the idea of a religion where God is largely irrelevant to the deal is beyond them.
So they focus on the few ultra religious Jews that are there and try to pretend that that’s what the rest of us are like but never can get how most Jews would gladly forsake the temple being built if it meant an end to prejudice.
Cameron
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. I really hadn’t seen much information on this visit, although I did think it a bit strange that they all had to go all the way to Israel for a cabinet meeting when they could just have stayed in Tallahassee. Haven’t lived in FL all that long, after many years in PA – I must say that I find the openness of the corruption here to be quite refreshing.
Dan B
@Adam L Silverman: It’s below the radar of the MSM and many progressive orgs that the Right has figured out how to get the Christianists, the Dominionists, the drown in the bathtub, the Chamber of Commerce, the Federalists, and a host of others to coordinate their messaging. It started with the Southern Strategy and has grown, because it works to build power.
The progressive Left has every group, Women’s rights, minorities, immigrants, unions, LGBT, environmentalists, etc. trying to get their groups messaging out because it is the most important. The forest gets lost for the trees.
When the Right is coming for immigrants and trans it’s because they haven’t gotten to all of us yet.
Adam, thanks for pointing out the media / messaging tactics!
Kent
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s weird because these are not normally political people who are always posting MAGA crap on Facebook. They are the types who post recipes and cat videos and occasional bible verse meme pablum. So the pro Netanyahu Facebook stuff was sort of out of the blue and the first overtly political stuff I saw from either of them. I knew the fundies were pro-Israel. That’s pretty obvious. I wasn’t aware that they were so overtly pro-Netanyahu and actually cheerleading an Israeli election result.
Like I was saying. There are whole undercurrents of political media in this country that is funneling this stuff to the rubes pretty much un-noticed by the larger society. Makes you wonder what other crap is being fed to them.
Karen
@Kent: Christian Zionists. End of Days when Jews like me are slaughtered to bring on Jesus.
BRobin
@geg6: And hahahaha too!
That is enough for now.
Procopius
Reading while drinking my first cup of coffee. I don’t think I’m going to get better news than this today.
Roger Moore
@cain:
Jews don’t subscribe to Evangelical Christian eschatology.
Roger Moore
@zzyzx:
One of the drawbacks of Christianity’s focus on the afterlife is that it provides a ready made excuse to ignore injustice in this life.
suffragettecity
Aww poor poor hypocrite Adelson. May his money evaporate.
Do
Not
Like
Him
At
All
burnspbesq
Lieberman actually scares me more than Bibi.
Is that a rational position?
NotMax
@suffragettecity
Old Yiddish saying:
May you make a lot of money. And have to spend it all on doctors.
;)
Ivan X
@zzyzx: Nice post. Seconded.
rb
@Roger Moore: It’s the reason for said focus. Textbook social control: oh don’t worry about this massive injustice, it’ll be rectified when we’re dead. Simple, insane, terribly effective.