Elections are coming up in Israel
Can Netanyahu pull it off again?
Trump has endorsed him, and Israel is one of the few countries where that would seem to be a plus. The elections are on October 27, and as usual, they promise to be complicated because of the challenges of forming a coalition government no matter who wins:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed concern over the possibility of failing to win the upcoming election during an interview with Radio North on Sunday.
“We need to make sure we win. I am not certain of my victory, and I am very worried,” he said.
Netanyahu also addressed the possibility that he might fail to form the next government. Asked whether he would retire from politics if he lost, Netanyahu replied, “No, I will not retire from politics.”
Netanyahu alPso criticized his political rivals, including Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, and Avigdor Liberman, claiming that a government led by them would depend on the support of Arab parties.
Polls – for what they’re worth – generally say that Eisenkot leads. But in the sort of parliamentary system Israel has, that’s not necessarily all that important:
With just nine days left until the election, Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party has maintained a consistent lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud in four recent election polls, but neither political bloc comes close to securing the 61 seats needed for a Knesset majority, according to surveys published by Maariv, Channel 13, Kan News, and Channel 12.
The four surveys paint an almost identical picture: the Zionist opposition averages 51.25 seats, compared with 51 for Netanyahu’s bloc, a virtual tie that leaves the Arab parties and smaller factions hovering around the electoral threshold in key positions ahead of election day.
Netanyahu has held the position of prime minister longer than anyone in Israel’s history: from 1996 to 1999, from 2009 to 2021, and from 2022 till now. So I would never count him out. He’s seventy-six years old at present, but that doesn’t seem such an advanced age these days for a head of state.
Benny Gantz dropped out today in what I take it has been a precipitous fall from a higher popularity. Israeli politics are opaque enough without bringing rigged (yet useful!) opinion surveys into the picture.
The global left hates Netanyahu partly because he’s pro-Israel and not globalist, partly because he’s effective, but there’s another reason. It has a parallel with RIchard Nixon.
Something I myself didn’t realize until I was well into adulthood, because the event occurred before my time, is that the Establishment hated Nixon to a considerable degree because of Alger Hiss.
Netanyahu, likewise, has been hated in part because he played a significant role in turning the Israeli economy away from the kibbutzim. It’s often forgotten today that Zionism was a lefty cause in the early 20C, and early Israel had a strongly socialist economic bent.
Netanyahu was not solely responsible for the change, but he presided over a lot of it, and the global Left has never forgiven him, or Israel, for it.
True, but it was Nixon’s reference to Checkers that really got their goat…
(Republicans are not allowed to be sentimental…)
He has a problem with part of his coalition in that the Haredie guys mostly refuse to serve in the military.
And he needs to get the Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria under control. Even Mike Huckabee acknowledges there is an issue there with the lawlessness. It’s not a good look..
I say this as an avid supporter of Israel.
Jon baker,
The “Settlers” are not the problem.
The homeless “Hilltop Youth” are. Kids from the cities with no parental direction, moving to Shomron and acting like juvenile deliquents.
I like the 51.25 & 51 seats, but I recall there are 150 seats, which I don’t see referenced here. And it’s important.
I’m getting Bennet stuff on X, and he’s mostly attacking Bibi and blaming all problems on him — the usual issue of out of power politicians blaming the current one in power for everything bad.
It will be close, but I suspect the demographic shift of Jews remains supportive of Bibi, while the Israeli Arabs (more than Arab Israelis) support others.
The coalition problems of Israel remain a reason to prefer a US wo Big Party system where the factions fight inside the parties for coalition power, and voters choose which coalition they support, rather than coalitions forming after the voting — where the small (almost always extremist) parties get far more influence as minor partners in the coalition, but able to break it at any time.
(When in the US I was an active Libertarian and thought a proportional representation govt would be better. I now think it’s more democrat, and worse because of it.)
120 seats.
Netanyahu’s 77th birthday is tomorrow. Eleven other men held the office of prime minister between 1948 and 2009. During the mandatory period, the chief executive function was split between the president of the Jewish National Council and the director of the Jewish Agency, positions held by eight different men (one of them later prime minister). Of these 18, only two held a consequential public office when they were more advanced in age than Bibi is today. The rest had shuffled off into retirement, or into positions outside of electoral politics, into ceremonial positions, into the role of gadfly (Ben Gurion), or into the grave. The minor exceptions were Ariel Sharon, who was just shy of 78 when he was cut down by a catastrophic stroke, and Shimon Peres, who was 79 and change when he departed the foreign ministry in 2002. Bibi has been an obtrusive public figure in Israel for 42 years, a cabinet minister for 27 of the last 38 years, the chief exponent of Revisionist Zionism as boss of Likud for 27 of the last 33 years, prime minister for 19 of the last 30 years. It’s his time.
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One avenue to assembling a government would be a grand coalition consisting of the Eisenkrot bloc, Likud, Yisrael Beitanu, and the Bennett-Lapid bloc. That leaves the religious parties, the residue of the Jewish left, and the Arab interest parties in opposition.
that the Establishment hated Nixon to a considerable degree because of Alger Hiss.
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Faculty members, State Department cookie pushers, and red haze nuisances like Corliss Lamont, perhaps.
1. Don’t trust the polls, which tilt heavily Left here as in the US.
2. Eisenkot is on record as looking favorably on a revival of “the 2 state solution”. Just don’t call it Oslo. He would be a disaster.
3. There are several splinter parties on the Right that could siphon off just enough protest votes to throw this election to the Left – which would be a disaster for us and the region.
4. There are credible rumors and video clips with hard-left people like Ehud Barak talking about “civil unrest”. This is not so far-fetched: the summer before the October 7 massacre, the Israeli Left started cranking up the civil unrest with “conscientious objectors” and Lefties in banking and other industries talking like a junta…. now, like the Lefties in the US, they are even more desparate.
There are several splinter parties on the Right that could siphon off just enough protest votes to throw this election to the Left – which would be a disaster for us and the region.
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How is ‘the left’ defined in your mind and how are ‘splinter parties’ defined? The omnibus which has the Labor Party and the components of Meretz in its pedigree is expected to collar 8 seats. The Arab parties are expected to take 13 seats; all of them are antagonists, but not all are leftists. Bennett seems like a political chameleon whose party is a personal fan club or patronage formation. Yesh Atid is after fifteen years imploding demographically and has seemed more social-liberal than leftist. Eisenkrot seems nothing like an occidental leftist; it’s peculiar how Benny Gantz base of support melted away underneath him.
Israel Update w/Gadi Taub going solo as Mike is away. Elections, bogus polling and Iran war prominent in the news: https://youtu.be/sWWvvJ4NHwY