Published: 23 March 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Every few days, a new issue/scandal/revelation, in true flavour-of-the-moment style, dominates the agenda of these elections. So as the news cycle switches and turns, it’s easier to say what the elections are not about rather than what they are about.
These elections are not about any of the genuine issues facing Israel or Israelis. Even though the most recent report by the National Insurance Institute reveals that over 1.7 million Israelis live in poverty, these elections are not focused on the high cost of living, poverty or inequality. Or on affordable housing and failing public transportation. Or foreign workers, rising violence in Israeli society, or the religious-secular status quo. Not even on the rising tensions (again) on the border with Gaza.
And certainly not about the occupation.
None of the candidates have taken strong positions – and in some cases, any positions – on any of these issues. Even the parties that have issued clear platforms don’t really talk about them.
The leading candidates – four men in one party (Blue and White) and one in the other part (Likud) are doing their best to ensure that real issues don’t become issues in this campaign. Uniqlo-clad white men preening on windswept dunes, they point to far-off horizons and make vague promises about the future.
They are, accuses Eli Friedman, a research associate at the Forum for Regional Thinking, an Israeli think tank, little more than “empty signifiers,” who pose themselves to ensure that they represent whatever their constituencies want them to mean.
But behind hype and cynicism, these elections are actually crucial to Israel’s future character and the fate of its democracy. Behind the vacuous facade, these elections focus on Netanyahu and arithmetic.
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To Bibi or not to Bibi
Netanyahu has done all that he can to ensure that these elections are about him. And he’s succeeded.
In calling for early elections (which were originally scheduled for November, 2019), Netanyahu – who is universally referred to by his friendly, image-creating nickname, Bibi – knew that elections would provide the best offensive defence in his fight against the impending indictments against him on multiple counts of bribery and breach of trust.
Initially, it seemed to all that Netanyahu was unbeatable. He has not groomed a credible successor to his leadership, and no other party had a popular, attractive and, most importantly, winning leader.
But then, two parties – Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and a new party headed by former Chief of Staff Benny Ganz – merged to create the Blue and White Party, along with Moshe Bogie Ya’alon, also a former Chief of Staff, whose party, Telem, was not taking off in the polls.
To clinch the deal and burnish their security image even further, they added in Gabi Ashkenazi, another former chief of staff. And the polls revealed that, for the first time in many years and numerous election campaigns, Netanyahu is facing a credible threat.
In response, Netanyahu is leveraging his political persona as an embattled leader persecuted and victimised by the left, the elites, human rights organisations, the legal establishment, and the media. He has gathered his strongly committed, right-wing constituency, many of them on Israel geographical, political, and social periphery, who respond viscerally to his politics of resentment.
Using his office as a bully-pulpit and attacking wildly from all directions, he tries to demolish his opponents with false claims, fear-mongering, and divisive identity politics, issuing a warning.
It’s “Bibi or Tibi,” he repeats, a catchy campaign slogan that demonises Ahmad Tibi, a long-serving MK from the Arab Movement for Party change, whose party is running again. It’s another version of “My way or the highway.”
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In Netanyahu-ese, it’s a warning to the electorate: If you are not with me, you are nothing more than a weak “lefty” who colludes with Israel’s external and internal enemies to destroy the Jewish State.
To his opponents, Netanyahu represents all that is wrong with Israeli democracy and its electoral system and another term as Prime Minister would be little less than a catastrophe for the country and for the Jewish people. But once Netanyahu set the stage, the other parties have to play out their roles.
He is a master of negative politics and the other candidates have resorted to angrily attacking Netanyahu back, emphasising their own achievements by putting down Netanyahu’s. In response to “Bibi or Tibi” they answer, “Anyone but Bibi.”
Netanyahu’s ploy has worked – it’s all about him and this has made for an ugly, no-holds-barred election campaign. It will probably get uglier before it ends.
What do voters want the elections to be about?
Like most voters, explains Professor Eran Halperin of the Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya, Israelis do not vote for proposed to solutions, but rather, according to a candidate’s analysis of a given situation. “If the voter accepts the analysis, then the candidate promoting that analysis becomes the obvious candidate, since, it is assumed, the analysis is the basis for the solution.”
Netanyahu, he notes, has had many years (he’s been in office for a total of more than 10 years) to convince the public that his analysis of the situation in Israel, with the Palestinians, and in the world, is correct. And his is an analysis based on despair, fear, and hatred.”
Which helps to explain why, even though polls show that many of his voters do not actually accept Netanyahu’s hard-line views, they continue to vote for him.
“Israeli society is divided, and these are identity politics," explains Professor Tamar Hermann of the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), a non-partisan think tank, and Open University. "Netanyahu’s voters see this as an issue of community, almost family. In contrast to the left, which is based on universalism, equality, human rights, and has distanced itself from instincts of belonging, Netanyahu talks about Jewish community and superiority. To many, that is like a comforting warm embrace.”
And yet, says Hermann, while some voters may seek out that warm embrace, most voters wish it would come with a dose of substance. In a poll conducted by the IDI in early March among both Jews and Arabs, Hermann found that, when asked about their primary concern in deciding whom to vote for, 26% of Jews and 24% of Arabs responded that they consider the parties’ positions on socio-economic issues, and especially the high-cost of living, to be their primary concern.
Another five percent of Jews and 15% of Arabs consider the parties’ performance on socio-economic issues during the term in the Knesset to be primary. In contrast, 19.5 percent of Jews and 11% of Arabs responded that who heads the party will determine whom they vote for. Hermann further notes that any significant event – such as a terrorist attack or an (unlikely) peace initiative from either the Palestinians or the Israelis could change voters’ positions.
Arithmetic politics
Ultimately, neither personalities nor nasty identity politics, lofty ideologies or socio-economic issues will determine who will lead the country. Israeli elections are about parliamentary blocs.
Members of Knesset are not elected directly, but rather as part of rosters of specific party lists. To gain a seat, a list must pass the qualifying electoral threshold, which is currently 3.25% of the votes cast, equivalent to about four seats in the 120-seat Knesset. To become prime minister, the party he represents must gain enough votes to have the best chance of forming a coalition of 61 or more seats.
Forty-seven parties are running in this election – although pollsters believe that “only” 15 of them have any real chance of crossing the threshold. That’s where the parliamentary blocs and come in. Hundreds of thousands of votes could be “wasted” on parties that don’t cross the threshold, damaging the Likud’s (Netanyahu’s) or White and Blue’s (Gantz) manoeuvrability in attempting to form a coalition with like-minded parties.
Reinforcing the negativity of the campaign, candidates are busier emphasising with whom they will NOT form a coalition (and thus create a political bloc) than with whom they would be willing. Israelis love polls, and pollsters and the media oblige them by issuing several polls a week.
In contrast to the left, which is based on universalism and has distanced itself from instincts of belonging, Netanyahu talks about Jewish community and superiority. To many, that is like a comforting warm embrace.
Currently, the race between Likud and White and Blue is close, flipping between them almost every day. But the polls are not only reflecting the voters’ preferences at a given moment, they are influencing them. Voters attempt to outguess each other by voting, or not voting, for a party according to whether they think (according to the polls) that it will pass the threshold, or not.
Some might prefer to vote for a small party but are afraid that they would be “wasting their vote” on a party that won’t cross the threshold; their vote, they worry, would actually contribute to strengthening the “other bloc.”
Others will “hold their noses” and vote for a party that they don’t even like that much, because, they believe, it is important that that party cross the threshold in order to strengthen the bloc they want to win.
Which may explain why there is so little commentary on the absence of Mizrahi’im and women on the slates of almost all the parties. Or about anything else, really, except “Bibi/anyone but Bibi.”
In the end, it might boil down to whether a majority of the public believes that Netanyahu, and Netanyahu alone, must continue to lead this country, or whether a majority believes that Netanyahu will lead this country to a catastrophe.
The results will apparently also depend on how well we learned our arithmetic when we were in grade school.
