Israel Elections Wrongfoot Usual Suspect Lefties
 | By Jonathan Hoffman
January 22, 2013 | Share |
http://cifwatch.com/2013/01/22/the-guardian-gets-it-wrong-exit-polls-ind...
And remember Jonathan Freedland's warning in the JC last Friday to those of us who opposed the Board's Oxfam tie-up:
On Tuesday Israel is set to elect what many believe will be the most right-wing government in the Jewish state’s history. That’s not just the view of usual suspect lefties. .... there are about to be many, many people opposed to the Israeli government... If we decide that we can only have contact with those who support the Israeli government ... we are about to become very lonely. For we will find that we have no one to talk to but ourselves.
http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/columnists/98741/this-about-more...
Looks like Mr Freedland was "crying wolf"...
What a shame the "usual suspect lefties" will not be able to say "I told you so!".
But I'm sure that won't stop them finding some other reason to vilify Israel.
COMMENTS
Wed, 01/23/2013 - 10:34 Rate this: -1 points | Well it looks like wimps latest BOD fiasco has equipped him with enough new vendettas to last him for decades. We have no idea what the make up of the next Israeli govt is going to be and if anyone got anything wrong it wasn't Jonathan Freedland it was the Israeli pollsters. Do make a big effort to be more grown up about these things. You could make a start by not sending us for analysis to the racist cesspit comic Cifwatch. |
Wed, 01/23/2013 - 10:44 Rate this: 0 points | The far right (Likud and Gordon Bennett's Habayit Hayehudi) can still set up a government with the fundamentalists (Shas, United Torah Judaism) with Lapid and what's left of Kadima serving as the fig-leaf. That's an 81-seat coalition. Big enough for Netanyahu to continue doing what he likes doing best - nothing. |
Wed, 01/23/2013 - 10:44 Rate this: 3 points | Jonathan - what a strange blog post... I think the Harriet Sherwood's view may well turn out to be prescient. Clearly, the jury is still out, but if Bibi does cobble together a 'broad' coalition, most equations have Habayit Hayehudi in the mix, in which case this will be "a more hawkish and pro-settler government" (even if Lapid does join). I was certainly encouraged by the results myself (being a tad more dovish than your good self) and the success of 'new politics' vs old, but talk of the right-bloc losing ground to the left-bloc is simply not applicable in Israel, where the centre left remains so fragmented and the 12 seats of the Arab parties do not form a natural alliance with the left in any event. Either way, the tone of your blog post is very strange and simply seems to be an attempt to bash Jonathan Freedland - a clear Zionist and friend of Israel. |
Wed, 01/23/2013 - 10:48 Rate this: 0 points | Gideon
You da man, Gideon |
Wed, 01/23/2013 - 13:59 Rate this: 0 points | You all should be gentle with Jonathan. He is hurting. |
Wed, 01/23/2013 - 15:34 Rate this: 0 points | Oh stop taking yourselves so seriously. Cop an ear-full of this beautiful rendition of a prayer |
Wed, 01/23/2013 - 15:59 Rate this: 0 points |
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Wed, 01/23/2013 - 16:44 Rate this: 1 point | Goldfish - A few amendments Labour and Meretz under their present respective leaderships are left wing not centre-left. I suggest you compare their platforms with Yesh Atid which while supporting a two state solution calls for the retention of the main settlement blocs and for an undivided Jerusalem which is why a number of Likud/Habayit Hayehudi supporters who I know and who do not support their more strident platforms voted for Lapid instead. Netanyanhu could well form a government with Lapid and I think he will. That will give him 50 MKs. Out of the rest he will consider Habait Hayehudi but they will have to tone down their demands considerably to be included. If they do that will be 61. Then I suggest he would not include either Meretz or Labour on ideological grounds. Remember you read it here first! |
Wed, 01/23/2013 - 18:55 Rate this: -1 points | http://rubinreports.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/israels-election-preliminary-... No Gideon. The story is not a 'lurch to the Right' as the lefty European Freedlandite Guardianista scaremongers warned. It's a move into the Centre. "Ha-Bayit ha-Yahudi Party received only about 10 percent of the vote which is usual for that sector. In comparison about one-third went to liberal or moderate left parties, and about one-quarter to centrist parties." Yesh Atid and Hatnua are both Centrist. Bennett's party may well splinter - perhaps soon - if as seems likely he insists on joining the coalition with Yesh Atid and Hatnua. |
Thu, 01/24/2013 - 11:04 Rate this: 1 point | Ohhhh lookie! Jonathan's got a new Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Grow-Concerned/316260135151583 |
Thu, 01/24/2013 - 14:29 Rate this: 0 points | Jonathan, why should everything in Israel be seen through the prism of an old fashioned left-right, hawk-dove paradigm? The vote for Yesh Atid is a move to Nimby-ism. The middle class just want to be able to be left alone and continue to drive their SUVs. And they don't want undesirables (anyone who's not them, in other words) in their neighbourhoods (gilded ghettos). As Allison Kaplan Sommer wrote in Haaretz: "Israelis sent a message that they want hope and change. They just can't figure out where to find it." |
Thu, 01/24/2013 - 14:32 Rate this: 0 points | Ever so slight amendment to the amendment of Mr/Ms Goldfish's chart. Labour and Meretz are part of the centre, as neither is hardly "left". The only real left wing party (that is non-sectoral - Jewish-Muslim-Christian-etc and social-democratic) in Israel is Hadash. Yesh Atid is classic centre right - capitalist, low tax-demanding, NIMBY-ist. Very "One-Nation" Tory, in fact. Likud and Habayit Hayehudi are ultra right wingers in favour of ethnic entitlement and superiority. Their mirror image are Balad and United Arab List-Taal, who demand the same but for different ethnics. The Orthodox are indeed Orthodox fundamentalists who care only for their immediate flock. That means money for yeshivot, military and other service exemptions, and subsidised housing for their families, but no one else. |
Thu, 01/24/2013 - 15:42 Rate this: 0 points | A taste of Yair Lapid from Jodi Rudoren of the New York Times
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Thu, 01/24/2013 - 15:51 Rate this: 0 points | [As Allison Kaplan Sommer wrote in Haaretz: "Israelis sent a message that they want hope and change. They just can't figure out where to find it."] I had to laugh at the phrase "hope and change" because it was used by the Obama campaign 4 years ago and mocked by his detractors. We've had commentators say "How's that hope and change working out for ya?". It must be pretty catchy. |
Thu, 01/24/2013 - 16:44 Rate this: 1 point |
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