2005 is over. So is Israel’s 16th Knesset. So are more than a few of Israel’s minor parties – Shinui’s election chairman has resigned (something about getting no votes). End of the year roundup time.
Likud
Benjamin Netanyahu is pithy:
The statement is kind of a pun on Kadima, which means “to go forward” in Hebrew. We say kind of a pun, because puns aren’t supposed to hurt your brain when you hear them.
Having lost to Netanyahu in the Likud primary, Shalom is urging Likud members to unite behind his former opponent. That’s nice, but tensions between Netanyahu and Shalom aren’t going to be resolved with a couple of press releases – they’re already having spats over when to quit the election. Either way, Shalom is guaranteed the second slot on the Likud list.
Incidentally, we’re of course gratified that Likud’s new rules prevent criminals from running on the party list. We’re not sure that that rule could leave any party with 120 people to put on a Knesset election list, but with polls being what they are right now, that’s not really Likud’s problem. Speaking of the Likud election list – in what can only be an effort to prove correct the critics who say that Likud is becoming a marginal, far-right organization – Netanyahu is urging his supporters to put Uzi Landua as high as possible on that list. Nothing says “we’re sorry for forcing the Prime Minister with a 65% approval rate to collapse the government” like putting the guy who led the fight towards the top of your list.
Labor
Labor has also finally come up with a mall tested, focus-group confirmed election slogan – “Amir Peretz, because it’s about time. The Labor party.”. This proves one of two things. Either the Israeli voter responds only the most hackneyed, ‘please club me over the head’ slogans, or someone found a random sample of Israeli mall shoppers who were all, by coincidence, mildly moronic. Meanwhile, Peretz has issued a statement in which promises that he will “not target [Sharon's] corruption or his family”. Which is kind of like when we say “we don’t want to say that Peretz is a mobbed-up thug, but he ran a union filled with other, less successful, mobbed up thugs,” except we don’t have pretensions toward running a country. Although with 40% of former Labor voters leaving the party, Peretz better not have any of those pretensions either.
Kadima
Kadima’s election list is closer to being done than it was a day ago:
Finally, let’s all agree to put to bed this ‘Sharon is a liar’ meme in the new year. Channel One actually ran a story that said that Sharon is wildly popular because people think he’s a liar. The argument is that when the Right hears Sharon say Leftist things, they assume he’s lying to the Left and that when the Left hears Sharon say Rightist things, they assume he’s lying to the Right. We’re always reluctant to state the obvious, but people generally don’t like liars: so if everyone thought Sharon was a liar, they’d first assume that he was lying to them. Sharon is not the most straight-forward man, but there’s a difference between ‘lying’ and ‘changing your mind after 30 years of building settlements in Gaza’.
