Inside Israel Today: A Look Back at the Israeli Election

you're listening to inside Israel today with your Hoffmann on the land of Israel Network hello and welcome to inside Israel today here in the Land of Israel network on the Land of Israel com where we're doing our first show after the election ladies and gentlemen it is really really happening we have finally made our way to the other end of April 9th and Israel still exists and the world has gone on from a political correspondent it was very hard to look ahead to anything happening after April 9th because so much was focused on that day and last week as you heard I made a point of doing my show a day early on April 8th where we ran my interview with Bennigan's who was the 12th and final of the dozen candidates from a dozen parties at least theoretically that I interviewed for my meet the candidates series and I thought now after the election ended what am I gonna do now am I gonna do a meet the MK series with the new Knesset members no I don't think so I might still but not at this point anyway am I going to interview people about how the election went I could have but no I decided not to because I haven't talked for real on this show in 12 weeks and that was kind of on purpose because I thought it was very important for the candidates to speak for themselves and you know I don't give political opinions on this show which I we have plenty of other show hosts on the Land of Israel Network who do i do give analysis and there is a difference between political opinions and analysis and now that the election is done and I'm not affecting any votes or anything with my analysis I think I feel a little bit more comfortable in going into what actually happened in this election and using this as a I guess a forum to vent so a lot of people have been asking me oh you must have been exhausted by this whole election and yes it is hard work but it wasn't harder than other elections have been and this was my seventh election for the Knesset that I was covering and it's really not a big deal anymore to be honest we split the parties at the beginning among the staff of The Jerusalem Post and my colleague Lahav Kharkov wanted to cover Likud so she did she covered parties on the right and I covered parties on the center-left and one after another the parties in the senator left disappeared you know initially I was covering a party of Moshe bogey alone but then I joined with one of my other parties of blue and white into for informing blue and white eventually I formed I was covering Yesha teed which also ended up joining together with the party of against I was covering a party called a he slyly which was formed by Adina Bar Shalom they ended up not running I was covering early levies Gesher party but she did everything possible to discourage the media from covering her she was very very uncooperative and not very nice as a person so I'm not surprised that she didn't even come close to crossing the electoral threshold so there was very little to cover with her which ended up leaving me with really only two parties at the end out of the six that I started with just blue and white and labour and since labour was falling apart at the seams it was fun to cover labor and blue and white and was it really fascinating to watch a party come from nothing and have to grow into a potential ruling party in a very short period of time for me psychologically this was this was a very interesting election to cover and really a joy the people at blue and white worked well with the media they were counting on a positive relationship with the media which Netanyahu doesn't have to be one of their advantages and so they made it easier for us to cover them that they made sure that I read it they had would be on Facebook in case we couldn't make it I made a point of being at almost all of them because I believe it I need to be in the field in order to tell people what's really going on I need to see it with my own eyes to see how these new politicians handle this new stress in their life and to see how the campaign strategists end up affecting what they do so I got to meet Ben against a couple years ago when he was just this free agent out there who was waiting for his purpose purposeful cooling-off period to end the likud past the law leave about ten years ago now requiring there to be a cooling-off period for generals as they leave the IDF knowing that former Chiefs of Staff of the Army are potential challengers for Netanyahu in the future and so I met Ben against back then and remembered being impressed by how he was uh very tall and humble and he were plaid which really gave him at this down-to-earth kind of feel and then I got to see him during the campaign as his strategists gradually took over his body and his soul I've seen this happen with politician after politician that I would get to know them before they entered politics and then see them afterward to see how much they stayed the same person ya're lipid I don't know what his views are after meeting with him before he entered politics and pretty much understanding him and then seeing him be taken over by mark Melman an American strategist and pollster who dis really decides what the Pete's opinions are enough Dali Bennett I got to know before he really under politics too and he stayed the same to his credit his views have always been what they were Benny I'm not sure what his views were before I don't know what his views are to this day him being an ideological free agent has its pluses and minuses he is unburdened and to put it in a positive way of having actual opinions about things but and then saying even after interviewing him well the negative is a lot of people want to know what their politicians actually believe in before they vote for them I'm not sure strategically how important that was in this election because been against got his votes not for what he believes in but for who he's not that he's not Netanyahu and this was an election that was partly a referendum on Netanyahu and whether people wanted him or didn't want him and the only alternative was blue and white and it was also partially an election over right and left and benny ganses attempt as his strategist set out for him to say there is no right or left anymore didn't entirely work Netanyahu made a point of saying on the very first day of when the campaign heated up when Bennigan's entered politics I don't care how the left arranges it sits mandates divides up its seats from then on nothing made a point of in graining in the heads of the people that been against is from the left especially when he ended up merging together with the Isle of paid and so Benny had strategist who were pushing him in very different directions he had a strategist named Ronan Sewer who was with him from day one of the campaign who said he had to be attacking Netanyahu said you need to be focusing on security issues because you're a former chief of staff of the IDF and here a Rockefeller in Tel Aviv and we aren't entirely secure and then he had strategists especially after yeshuati joined who were telling him do not attack Netanyahu whatever you do you're ready on a strategist name you al-bakr before that who was already saying it and then when he I should join it became the rule and Casilla team took over the campaign you basically can't attack Netanyahu in a serious kind of way because the whole point is to win voters away from Lee could that's the way you can win the election if you actually get people to move over from the center-right block to the center-left block and Netanyahu is all-powerful in the eyes of the center-right voter and there's just no point in in even trying to dent that armor was what those strategists set up I don't know in retrospect who was right and you had three former Chiefs of Staff of the IDF two days before the election Shalom ofes came in and endorsed been against - then you had four Chiefs of Staff of the idea of who all say we can keep you just as secure if not safer than Netanyahu while also being clean we didn't hear that message so much during the campaign they focused on the corruption it didn't make an impact they didn't focus on security there was one day they called a press conference where they started off by showing some numbers of rockets and other things launched from Gaza and then he changed the subject after a minute and then it ended up being that no one wrote about that from the press conference you also had leaks and the leaks have apparently come from the strategist fighting each other and maybe even taking a revenge and that's a problem when you have too many people involved behind the scenes in the campaign that doesn't end up working and so it could very well be that that blue and white was over strategized the strategy that they decided on was to focus on becoming the largest party because they knew they could not become the largest block the right block is significantly higher than the center left block in Israel and ended up winning 65 255 so their only chance really was to get more votes than they could now as we're sitting here Likud got more votes does that mean that liquid got more seats as we're sitting here the tentative numbers showed that the Likud has 36 seats and blue and white has 35 but the final results will be released on Wednesday and my sources tell me that actually liquid is going down one because of more ultra-orthodox votes that were recorded incorrectly and the United Torah Judaism ultra-orthodox party is getting one more seat at the expensively could eat sock pin Druce who was interviewed here on inside israel today of whose parents are from Boston and from Cleveland will apparently be in the Knesset at the expense of number 36 oddly could list a meet Halevi a representative of Cleveland in the Knesset ladies and gentlemen and you can't get them into the World Series yet you can get them into the Knesset the Likud would go down to 35 which means it's a tie right no it's not a tie blue and white one because the likud as part of their attempt to make sure that votes on the right would not be wasted gave the 28th spot on the Likud list to Rabbi le ben de Haan a member of Knesset from by the UD whose allegiance Romanians to by dudy which is now part of the union of right-wing parties and so sorry but it will end up being 35 seats for blue and white and 34 Furley could and so in the retrospect this strategy to get more seats was the right strategy they were counting though uh none winning by more than one they were counting and winning by four or five because then that could show the president hey look this is a significant factor you have to be taking into account and one that's not even one I won't really cut it and Wednesday night at 8 p.m. Rivlin is supposed to appoint Netanyahu formally to form a government perhaps if the liquid had succeeded even better in its a now strategy of robbing votes from his satellite parties and driven another party or two under the electoral threshold then blue and white actually would have gotten three four more seats in liquid which is what their strategists aim to do so that was the strategy of blue and white and now that really segues us into the strategy of Lee could so Lily could in past years has used brilliant strategists like our own show vivre multi Morel this time around their strategist was an experienced fellow named Benjamin Netanyahu you know that there were people who worked for him there was a guy in a know over in bar there were young people truly Einhorn Netanyahu's strategist a campaign guy there was a John McLaughlin the pollster from America was involved a spokesman unit on or if his son yeah Netanyahu played more of a role than ever before but everyone Italy could says the decisions were made by Netanyahu himself that he really really did everyone like hood says that the decisions were really made by Netanyahu himself that he really did run that campaign and so what would did what wasn't in Yahoo strategy well to attack his three rivals in a smart way three rivals am I talking about Ganz Lapidus and bogey alone no I'm talking about a V hi mandible it the Attorney General about many Gantz and about the president and each one of them he found a way to attack so the way that he attacked the Attorney General was to focus on him a lot at the very beginning of the campaign to try to make it look illegitimate like this the investigations were continuing after the election started to make it look like he wasn't being given a fair case that the indictments against him pending a hearing would be announced before the election whereas the hearing where he gives his side of the story is only after the election and Nancy now talked about these investigations so much that when the indictment pending a hearing in three different cases including one for bribery was announced everybody had already formed an opinion there was no news there that really surprised anyone and that allowed Netanyahu actually emerge from it unscathed politically his party didn't end up going down in the polls the second attack was on Gantz we're already from the beginning Netanyahu is painting him as a leftist and it's Ben Netanyahu who was engrained in the mind in the minds of Israelis that that leftist is a slur worse than traitor and been against who is if he has opinions they're probably more Center than left he's not merits ok merit is left he's not there it doesn't matter Netanyahu made clear that if the people are voting for been against they're endorsing the left he also allowed there to be untrue things about many gains that are repeated enough times and it that been against went to an event with Hamas people that his wife worked for Maxim watch and NGO that makes IDF soldiers look bad that been against had on his phone from Iran perhaps things cheating on his wife who knows and that if he can't protect his cell phone and how can he protect a country that his business went bankrupt which is sort of true but like so many high-tech companies don't end up continuing it and it wasn't actually bankruptcy it was just deciding to conclude their work unsuccessfully in developing their product it's not the same there were over and over and over again things ingrained in the minds of the public that were not actually true that if you repeat enough people have no choice but to believe it he also Netanyahu very smartly focused on yalla peed because been against in order to get this merger with lipids people and get the boost that he needed from that to build himself up as a ruling party needed to give in to lipids demands for a rotation in the Prime Minister's office if they won not even half and half it was supposed to be two years and eight months for Ganz and then Lapita would have gotten two years and four months which really ended up being probably nothing so yet every time Netanyahu anyone Likud referred to the blue and white party they referred to them as Lapita and Gantz so people would have ingrained in their mind wait a second I'm voting for the peed four Prime sir I don't see him as a prime minister Garen says former chief of staff the idea if I see him as a former apartment as a future Prime Minister perhaps about not Lapine and so Netanyahu's strategy ended up being smart and his concluding strategy to rob the satellite party's okay Netanyahu did not give an interview to the mainstream Israeli media for four years since the last election until he was about to leave for AIPAC in Washington he showed up Saturday night unannounced basically and in channel 2 channel 12 it's called now headquarters it in navale on on the way between Jerusalem and the airport and there he gave a fighting interview for a more than half an hour and in the last week of the election he gave an interview to almost every media outlet in Israel the Eretz net there at satire show even showed him giving an interview to Kofi Coe who is a monkey character that children watch last time and when he did the same thing in 2015 when I covered him and he gave an interview to The Jerusalem Post to me that time he Eretz nadara even showed him giving an interview to hello kitty so I guess he's advanced from Hello Kitty to Kofi Coe from cat to monkey so Netanyahu he in these interviews over and over and over again Lapita and Ganz the PTIN ganz left left left I can keep you secure don't trust them it worked it really got into the minds of the people and until then he hadn't really been attacking his satellite parties here he really did hear he may said if you don't vote really could then the peat and gas are going to take over meaning if you vote for Bennett Lapita and Ganz are going to take over so it worked the Bennett did not end up crossing the electoral threshold the Likud went up from 30 seats to 36 right now 35 tomorrow 34 in real life that veers us in another segue to the new right party of Naphtali Bennett and the yellow chick head as we're sitting here it is still technically possible for them in the recount going on right now to cross the electoral threshold it's not gonna happen ladies and gentlemen they're not in and why did that happen well number one people don't like people that go against their party they're people they built themselves up their invite you D in this religious Zionist party for years they were the leaders and to defect on the eve of an election was seen as disloyal as really not nice and so people went back there voters stayed loyal to the party even without these charismatic leaders who they saw as turncoats they ran a campaign that wasn't serious saying that Naftali Bennett wasn't was going to be Defense Minister there's never any chance of that happening and they kept them talking about it that a yellow cheek head would remain the Justice Minister could have happened but talking about incessantly that's not what people really vote on having a an ad that was about the fascism perfume I don't think people really understood that ad and made them look not serious and didn't win the many votes they could have ran the strategy that they actually reformed on to be a party that is the bridge between a religious and secular on the right that's what they said they were forming the party to do they weren't they did try to take away the votes from the religious Zionist from their party that they left which they said they weren't going to they were supposed to take votes away from we could or even from against they didn't really make an effort to take votes away from them they were only robbing their own party and it looked even worse and a lot of people want there to be a party that bridges between the religious and the secular but they didn't even talk about that during the campaign that it wasn't their focus at all and that's too bad they ended up being robbed of their final votes by Netanyahu in the last few days of the election campaign and the lesson from that is sometimes don't take a layover you know I'm flying a lot coming up I'm gonna have a lot of lay overs and I'm terrified that I'm gonna end up missing lectures but when you're flying between certain cities in America and you're limited in time you have to have lay overs and this new right party was a layover a yellow chick had enough Tully Bennett's both see themselves as future prime ministers of Israel to be a prime minister of israel you have to come from leak wood or some party in the center-left that destroys labor and they couldn't go straight to lea could because of the negative relationship with the Netanyahu family primarily Sarah Sarah Netanyahu as strong animosity for both yell at and Naphtali so they had to stop over and they got stuck and the stop over it happens that really brings us to Moshe Feiglin Sparty that did not cross the electoral threshold either he for a long time was seen as this meteor who was shooting up he could only keep on going up and would be the anti-politician party put it a creative people on his list like you la del per The Economist like I'm I'm solemn the rabbi that is all about making ultra-orthodox jewelry less extreme and making Judaism itself more palatable to the secular people like Roni drawer who we interviewed on inside Israel today who is all about taking away the extreme laws that have made Israel of feminists to the point of hurting both women and men especially in cases of divorce who she was about helping men through the laws of this country right now that make the situation extremely hard for divorced men and she was the only voice on that issue that desperately needs to be run by someone and nope in the end people were voting about falen and when Fagan looked like a serious candidate then they were going to vote for him in the last couple days of the election he gave an interview to the satire show on a Wynette that showed him slapping a bare foot and that really really hurt him he people couldn't imagine themselves voting for a guy to slaps feet on TV and they started to say okay this guy he he was saying that the party's about a lot more than cannabis that it's about a libertarian agenda that that's a legitimate agenda that people supported but in the end between that and Netanyahu's campaign to take votes away from the satellite parties people ended up going back till he could wear Moshe Feiglin came from and so Netanyahu's attempt to rob a satellite party of the votes was successful it wasn't successful with us well Bettina there are still enough Russian immigrants apparently not only old people that want to have a party that represents them and I think it's a beautiful thing that immigrants to this country want to be taken care of I was at lieberman's event last night and there was a lot of energy there and there are plenty of young people there too not just old people they have deputy mayor's all over the country this party's real it's not evaporating tomorrow or the next day and it makes Anglos in this country immigrants from english-speaking countries a jealous of the Russian immigrants who still have a party and Italy could in the past had people like you to click English speakers Carolyn Glick did not cross the electoral threshold with new right so who's going to represent us in the Knesset the only American citizen who's going to be entering the Knesset as far as I know that I could be told something differently there there are two there is hilly Tropper from blue and white whose parents made Ollie off from New York 50 years ago and whose English apparently is not good enough for an English interview so it shows how much he is a representative English speakers when I told him he's gonna be have to be the next Michael Oren he said you can't do that and pitru interests who we interviewed here on this show is the only other American citizen and who's going to be making it to the Knesset apparently and so I don't know if either of them could really be that Michael Oren if anyone can it's Sharon Haskell who is Israeli through and through though she was born in Canada and lived in Australia for a while and when she entered the Knesset for the first time I don't think she fully understood the need for there to be an Anglo representative and now she totally gets it I've taught her a lot about what she has to do and I'm gonna continue to make sure she takes that role someone has to so yes Lee Berman's party not going anywhere Moshe Coughlin's party running under the slogan that we're the same right ended up being a smart thing in the end there are a lot of people there who couldn't stand it in yeah but I wanted to vote for a party on the right and at least had him and that was enough to give him the four seat minimum to make it into the Knesset and he's apparently now going to be joining Lee could because you can't really do very much with four seats and then he can be a serious candidate for Prime Minister and Lee could for the future there's a union of right-wing parties I didn't really follow them very much on this election campaign about the very fact that they still exist after enough dolly Bennett and the yellow chick had left them for dead is very impressive and more power to them and Netanyahu viously helped them a lot by making sure that you'd have three parties running together so they wouldn't fall below the electoral threshold and also getting le shy from the former Schatz Chairman to quit the race so there wouldn't be a competition for votes on the right from him either and so they ended up with five seats and they will put pressure on Netanyahu from the right will they unlike other parties in the past they were part of coalition's actually not permit there to be negotiations with the Palestinians I don't think so maybe if Itamar Ben Greer would have made it into the Knesset from the farthest right Jewish force party no it's my unit maybe he wouldn't have agreed to be part of a coalition that talks to the Palestinians uh I think if the Trump plan moves forward the policy of the unit of right-wing party is going to be the same that the by dudy and other right-wing parties had in the past which is it's okay to talk if you give anything up we won't let it happen but it's alright to talk that is all the parties on the right that made it in theirs alter Orthodox parties of course Shas had a a woman spokeswoman they ran a lot on the image of rabbi ovadia yosef their spiritual mentor and not only stayed alive after people thought they might be falling below the threshold but strengthened themselves to eight seats very impressively ru Derry their leader who might be running his last election campaign because of his own criminal investigations really needs to be credited with a lot of success as does his strategist avi Lerner and who lives in Beit Shemesh and leave not the spokeswoman so I guess there are plenty of people in Israel who will still vote for a party because of their rabbi who is no longer with us I guess that works and United Torah Judaism which also strengthened apparently to eight seats from six they also they got their people United and that was their key to their success and more power to them well that leaves us only with the left right so uh on the left you have merits which was lucky to make it in with four seats they tried to merge with labor I'll be God by the leader of labor was not interested and they ran a campaign saying that you can't have an upheaval without merits meaning you can't unseat Netanyahu without voting for merits it's not true you could very well have a people by voting for blue and white and so it was not a smart campaign they're very lucky to still be alive that leaves us with only one party left and that is a Labor Party okay throughout the campaign there were people who said the Labor Party is running the smartest campaign their ads are very good they're right to focus on their team on all their ads they had a picture of their top six candidates on I'll be gob I on the number two the general that he brought in tal Russo on the young is socio-economic activists it sexually and Stav Shaffir and on the veteran former Labor Party had to focus on socio-economic issues as well Amir Peretz and Shelley yeah um ovitch those six candidates that they had in all their ads those are the only six who got in maybe if they would have put me around me finally who's a been a guest here on inside Israel today they're number seven candidate in the ads maybe she would have gotten in maybe if they would have put an over bar-lev who himself is a former high ranking IDF officer was number eight on the list maybe that he would have gotten in and number nine Rebbe tal sueda a lawyer who was an exemplary parliamentarian in the outgoing Knesset the Jaime Ellen the Gaza periphery who was number 10 their young secretary general around Harmonia was number 11 and yeah I think the young religious Zionist candidates who is about making Judaism look more relaxed being there if they would put all 12 maybe that would have helped but it was really a self-fulfilling prophecy that they put six people on their ads and they got six people in but with all due respect the fault does not go to tell Russo to stop Shaffir did some elite Amir Peretz or even to Shelia homo which goes to God by himself the strategy could be right all along this strategy to paint Netanyahu as a racist and try to get votes away from the right to the left this strategy of saying that they won't join it in yahoo's government and therefore try to get votes away from people that want Nancy now to not be Prime Minister anymore those strategies could have technically worked but those votes of people that agreed with those points of view could not go to labor because people did not like gaavai if people didn't want Netanyahu they voted for blue and white if people thought that Netanyahu was a racist then they voted for another party in on the right and we're talking racist against Authority Jews here not against Arabs the way they bet two or workset in America and that's something that only better O'Rourke said nobody here said that so if anything that strategy of labor may be kept Colin alive and because people that thought Netanyahu was a racist against fired him moved from Likud to Coughlin's party to cool ah new so labor did a lot to take votes away from itself and other parties and shuffle the cards of other parties but did very little to actually win votes for themselves and it was really doomed to begin with the moment that they elected avi gob I on July 4th 2017 a guy with so little charisma a guy who turns off so many people a guy who was not friendly a guy who even though he went from rags to riches is not an inspiring person is that a likeable person they couldn't have possibly won it couldn't have possibly even done much better than they did and so they should be lucky to even have the six seats that they did and I remember the day that Labour elected its list I got interviewed there by a crew from al-jazeera across from the polling stage and they said is the left dead is labour dead and the answer is no the left and labour they just need better leadership and the good news for them is that almost any human being is better leadership in Abu Dhabi so that is the insider's look at all the parties except for the Arab parties and you know the hadashah party and the ROM united arab emirate are you today united arab list - ballade they managed to stay alive - despite the boycotts that there were in the Arab sector that were mad not it is real for passing the Jewish nation say law but at the Arab members of Knesset for not serving them very well they should be very happy with the six and four seats that the two parties got now that's all of them that's what happened during the election thank you for listening to me rant over here inside Israel today and a Happy Passover from here bye-bye experience the best-kept 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