Whenever I visit Israel, I like to catch late night TV and get a sense of what is going on in the country through that lens. As I wrote two weeks ago, I had just arrived in Israel with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CoP) mission fresh from our meeting with the pope in Rome. Lior Shein, the Israeli equivalent of Conan O’Brien, did a sketch in response to the news about Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism incidents in the world. The comedic bit suggested that Jesus was actually the result of Mary’s teen pregnancy, she then left the baby at a soccer stadium where the Cana’an All-Stars were playing, someone took the baby to Bethlehem and the rest is history. I thought it was clever and went to sleep.
Later the next day, Christian groups protested the sketch as “deeply offensive” and said it threatened the pope’s visit to Israel. In response, Channel 10, which airs the show, along with Shein, apologized; by the time I left Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert eventually apologized as well. How often do Jon Stewart satiric episodes create an international affair? In Israel, it seems, a joke is no laughing matter, and now to another, more significant event that did not leave Israelis in a particularly good mood.
As Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CoP) mission participants, the recent Israeli elections were “stormy, emotional, personal and indecisive.” His words are instructive and provide a starting point to a review of the campaign and results.
The election campaign kicked off before the war in Gaza and was focused on clean government, represented by Kadima Party leader Tzippi Livni, and change, represented by Likud’s Benyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. Following the war, the campaign was all about security, to the benefit of Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s Labor Party. The last few days of the campaign were entirely personal, with Livni stressing that only she could “stop Netanyahu” while she made her first direct appeal to women voters. At this point, wavering voters were not considering issues but rather who they “liked more” between Livni, Netanyahu, Barak and Avigdor Lieberman (more on him later). The voters provided Livni with a one-mandate edge over Netanyahu; Barak and Lieberman both lost ground and no party even managed to collect 25% of the total seats in the Knesset. As you have no doubt followed through the news media, based upon the leanings of the various new Knesset factions, Israeli president Shimon Peres gave Netanyahu the opportunity to establish a government and the horse trading began. So far, it has not been easy sledding for the once and future prime minister.
The main reason is that Livni is actually sticking to her principles. CoP mission members were provided with a sneak preview of what was to come when both top vote-getters addressed us a few days after the election. Tzippi, as Israelis refer to her, stated unequivocally that she proposed to lead a government committed to “two states for two peoples.” When it was the Likud party leader’s turn, a questioner pointed out that the past three American presidents and the past three Israeli prime ministers had all endorsed the two state solution. He asked Bibi whether he would like to use this opportunity to join the other statesmen; he declined to do so, and chose to spoke more vaguely about “forging a workable peace with those Palestinian neighbors who want to live in peace through rapid economic growth and bolstering PA police forces.”
Subsequent to those speeches, Bibi has offered Kadima the moon in terms of ministry portfolios and input into other platform issues, but he has refused to commit to continuing the current government’s two state strategy. As a result, despite pressure from some of her top Kadima lieutenants, Livni says she is heading to the opposition.
Bibi is now pursuing the Labor Party as a coalition partner in hopes of avoiding a narrow, right-wing government, but will also most likely come up empty-handed. The Labor Party is licking its wounds after a serious defeat at the polls, and it seems that most of the party believes that they must now go to the opposition to rebuild and reorganize. While Barak continues to meet with Netanyahu, multiple party leaders and activists spoke to me about “getting back to their social democratic roots” and creating a true “left of center alternative.” They realize that joining successive right and center governments over the past decade damaged the party, even if the individual ministers performed well and contributed to the greater good. There could be additional developments soon; stay tuned to this channel.
Assuming Labor does not join his government, Bibi will find himself with a government of right wing, settler and ultra-orthodox partners……and then there is Avigdor Lieberman and his “Israel is our Home” party. This is a man who ran a fear-mongering campaign calling for a loyalty oath for all citizens, pointing his menacing finger at the Arab citizens of Israel. He also spoke of transferring densely Arab-populated areas within the state of Israel to a Palestinian entity as a way of achieving two states for two peoples. In addition, he hopes to help the 300,000 Russian immigrants who can’t prove Jewish bloodlines and thus can’t marry in Israel with calls for civil marriage. If successful, this would result in a significant change in the “religion-state status quo” enshrined since the days of David Ben-Gurion. This campaign pledge puts him in direct confrontation with the potential religious coalition partners.
When Lieberman spoke to the CoP, he began his audition for the American Jewish community. Stressing the importance of combating the threat from Iran, he suggested that the Palestinian issue should take a back seat. Significantly, he didn’t mention any of his three signature issues in his opening comments. In response to a question about the loyalty oath, he immediately expressed the need for compromise in the interests of establishing a government and allowed that he wouldn’t push the issue. Interestingly, he did not back down on the civil marriage issue when given the same opportunity. Avi Dichter, Minister for Internal Security, separately told mission participants that Lieberman’s population transfer proposal is “nonsense,” that he has “never met an Israeli Arab who wants to move to the West Bank” and that “the state cannot move even one Israeli citizen against his will.”
I am not suggesting that we take the Lieberman phenomenon lightly. The host of the Israeli Meet the Press television program, Dana Weiss, told the Jewish Agency Board of Governors that Lieberman ran a “racist campaign” and that the press was giving him too easy a time in their coverage. Yitzhak “Bougie” Herzog, Minister of Welfare and Social Services, told the CoP that “Lieberman is leading us to the abyss of hatred.” Judging from his post-election lack of interest in his centerpiece issue, one can only ask whether it was an election ploy to broaden his appeal beyond his Russian audience or whether he will actually pursue such legislation in the Knesset. Watch for more on this in future posts.
In part two of this report next week I will address:
Is there a collision coming between Israel and the United States around the peace process?
Has Israeli society moved to the right and what are left-of-center Israelis thinking?
What is the impact of the world financial crisis on Israel?
What do Israeli experts say about the Iranian threat?
There is never a dull moment in the Promised Land.
