Some Thoughts After Israel's Latest Election by Aaron Hecht

On Tuesday morning, which was election day here in Israel, I had a special problem. It was the first election I'd be voting in where it wouldn't be possible to take a cute picture of my children helping me vote, because they've "been there and done that" and it's not exciting for them anymore and they didn't want to. Happily, my furry little four legged daughter (or as some might say, my "dog") is still eager to go with me wherever I go and do whatever I have planned for us to do together. But when there's long lines of people waiting to vote, everyone is impatient and no one has time to let a guy take a picture, so if one wants to take such a picture, one must try to go vote at a time when there won't be a lot of people there impatiently waiting in line.

In order to ensure the success of my mission, I thought it best to go vote as early as possible, and the polls opened at 7AM, so I was dressed and out the door by 7:12 AM and I got to the polls (which are at the school where my sons attend, just a short walk from our apartment) at 7:19AM.

But here's where my plans began to fall apart.

Y'see, although it was the crack of dawn, and people had all day to vote, and the traditional thing is to sleep in on election day and take one's time getting to the polls since they're open until 10PM and there's no rush, on Tuesday morning, at 7:19AM, the halls of the school where I'd be casting my ballot were already filled with people. It wasn't a "large crowd" but it was way more than I'd ever seen before at the polls so early in the morning. Right then, at that moment, I knew this election would be different from all other elections, and there would be lots of surprises when it came time to start counting the ballots.

In the meantime, my daughter was a big hit with my fellow citizens, especially the people who had brought their children, who are all probably now bugging their parents to let them have a dog (dogs are VERY good for the emotional development of a child, in case no one ever told you that). In the end, a lady who lives in my building who was there to vote took the picture for us and no one expressed any impatience. But the lines were already getting long as I left the school at 7:32 AM, and I went home to tell my wife that this election would NOT be going the way all the pollsters had said it would.

She replied by saying "okay" and then putting her head back down on the pillow and going back to sleep.

She's very calm and not easily alarmed, which is one of the reasons I married her, so she could balance me out.

Later in the morning, she took our youngest son to go with her to vote, and a good time was had by all.

As the day progressed, I got several assignments to write things for different clients (a freelancer NEVER gets paid time off) and even if I didn't need to for work, I would have checked in on the news sites regularly to see the results as they came in. As I had thought would be the case after seeing the early morning crowds at my own polling place, the turnout was much higher than anyone had been expecting. I knew that this would throw off the math and that some of the parties which had been hovering just over the electoral threshold of 3.25% wouldn't be making it into the Knesset.

Now, a few days have passed, most of the dust has cleared and t looks like we've got some final results.

The bloc of parties led by incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has 53 seats, the bloc led by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot which was hoping to depose Netanyahu and usher in a new era in Israeli politics has 48 seats and the two Arab parties have 19 seats, more than they've ever had before.

Regular readers of this blog have almost certainly seen or heard a fair amount of commentary about all this, but in case you haven't, here's a video from my friend Barry Segal in which he tells us how it is. Don't worry about the grim look on his face in the video thumbnail, he was just trying to be serious and that's how it turned out.

My own thoughts as I prepare for the first Shabbat after the Israeli elections and the last Shabbat before America's mid-term elections next week is that these results are definitely not what I was predicting and they're VERY sub-optimal. I mean, literally NO ONE got what they wanted out of this election, and we'll probably have to have another election in a few weeks which may or may not produce a result which will lead to the formation of a stable governing coalition.

Now is a REALLY bad time for Israel to not have a stable governing coalition, because we're probably going back to war with Iran before the end of the year.

Another thought I have it that is WAS, (sadly) predictable that there would be accusations of foul play when the Arab parties got the largest number of seats they ever got in an Israeli election because the Arab public (which is 20% of Israel's population, in case no one ever told you that) voted in numbers they'd never voted in before.

The narrative I'm seeing being pushed by Netanyahu-friendly influencers (what we used to call "talking heads") is that Qatar sent a bunch of money to Israeli Arab community leaders so they could use it to bribe Arab citizens to vote.

There are just two things I'll say about that.

First, there is ZERO evidence at this point to indicate that there's any truth whatsoever to this narrative, and the people making these accusations know it, but they're talking about it as if it's self-evidently true.

Second, even if it IS true, Israeli political parties, especially Likud, have been taking enormous amounts of money from Jewish and more recently Christian donors in America and Europe for decades and making no secret of it. If you ever read Ariel Sharon's memoirs, he tells the story about how he spent months in America raising money to help set up the Likud Party back in the mid-1970s. That pattern of fund-raising continues to this day.

So, for Likud and their friends to now start bemoaning "foreign influence" in Israel's elections is deeply dishonest and almost comically absurd.

As a bonus, one of Netanyahu's top aides is currently under investigation for taking money from Qatar in order to try and improve that country's image in Israel. It's difficult to believe Netanyahu himself was unaware of this, so again, for him to now be accusing Qatar and the Arab parties of trying to "steal the election" is pretty rich.

I know there are some Christian Zionist supporters of Israel who are joining in this deeply dishonest effort on the part of Likud and its allies to peddle the narrative that the Arab parties "stole the election" by having the audacity to mobilize large numbers of their voters to come to the polls. If you're reading this and you're one of those people saying this, you need to repent and you need to stop doing that.

In a more general sense, I believe it is LONG past time for Christian Zionists to stop blindly and unconditionally supporting Benjamin Netanyahu. He is NOT always right, and he is DEFINITELY not always righteous. He is also not immortal, and he just turned 77 years old earlier this month. He's had at least three surgeries that we know of in the past two years and he's also undergone treatments for cancer. Even if he keeps winning elections, he is NOT going to live forever, and we have GOT to start making plans for the day after.

Speaking of plans, it'll be weeks before we know for sure who will be the next Prime Minister of Israel but it'll be just a few more days before we know who will control the US Congress for the next two years, so buckle up brothers and sisters, we've got plenty of turbulence ahead.