Israel Perspectives: Feeling 'Right' at Home: Assorted Israel / Election Thoughts

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Assorted Israel / Election Thoughts

1) When exactly did the lives of "Palestinians" become more precious than those of Jews living in the Jewish State?

Despite terror warnings, Israel to open Karni crossing

(For a recent post of mine on how Israel should respond to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, click here).

2) Many of the political parties, as well as the Israeli media, are billing the upcoming elections as a referendum (over borders, the character of the State of Israel, and the approach that will be taken in dealing with the "Palestinians" and Hamas...).

Yes, it is a referendum

If that's the case, if / when the parties on the national / religious right form the next government, will the media accept the "will of the people" and stop inciting against the religious and the right, as well as encouraging continued retreat and appeasement in the face of Arab terror and begin advocating on behalf of the policies and ideology of the right?

My hunch is that just as Ariel Sharon didn't honor the results of the Likud referendum that were against the expulsion of 10,000 Jews from Gush Katif, Gaza and the northern Shomron, I imagine that the media will reject any election results that are not consistent with their progressive, liberal, secular, anti-Jewish State worldview - as they are clearly more enlightened than "the people" and as such must speak out as the voice of reason and guide the nation.

3) I personally have nothing against Baruch Marzel and Hazit or Michael Kleiner and Herut, but the chances of them and their parties getting into the Knesset in the upcoming elections are not very good, and there is the potential, between the two of them, to waste 100,000 +/- votes that would otherwise go to established right wing parties (3-4 Knesset seats).

Anyone who believes that 3-4 seats more on the right won't make a difference is fooling themselves. Oslo was passed by a single vote in the Knesset, and who is to say that there won't be additional votes in the upcoming Knesset that won't be decided by a handful of votes (or even worse, that the right ends up with 58 seats, and is unable to form the next government).

Consider the following:

Votes Received by parties that failed to meet threshold - 2003

[The qualifying threshold is now 2%]

28 January 2003 elections: The qualifying threshold (1.5%) from all valid votes is 47,226 votes.

36,202 Herut

When Kleiner and Marzel ran together, and the threshold was only 1.5%, they came up 11,000 votes short. In the upcoming elections, the electoral threshold needed to enter the Knesset is 2% (approx. 70,000 votes) and with Marzel and Kleiner running separately, the votes just aren't there.

Chaval.

4) Not to be a prophet of doom, but I imagine that the study: "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" under the auspices of Harvard University - John F. Kennedy School of Government is keeping many members of the American Jewish community at night.

And if it's not, it should.

There are winds of change blowing through the United States. All one needs to do is look at how Israel is portrayed on University campuses throughout the United States (by top professors) and one can imagine how future policy makers and leaders in the US will relate to the Jewish State (and to Jews).

5) I can only imagine what the State of Israel and the state of the Jewish people would be like today if we invested half the amount of energy towards strengthening our connection to our Heritage, to our Land and to our People, as we did towards hating ourselves and trying to uproot our very right to exist.

7 Comments:

(a little more accurate analysis follows. Please remember that Marzel has over 57,000 signed vote committments, already last week)

The Jerusalem Post Errs Again

It has again been reported by The Jerusalem Post that 80,000 votes are required to reach the 2% electoral threshold. This is a pernicious error, which I have tried to correct, to no avail.

The number of votes required to reach the threshold depends on the number of valid votes cast in the election. If The Jerusalem Post figure of 80,000 were correct, 4,000,000 votes would have to be cast in the March 28 election. The voter turnout, however, is not likely to be much more than 3,000,000, in which case only, 60,000 votes will be needed to reach the threshold.

As I previously reported, consider the January 28, 2003 election:

Valid votes …………. …… … 3,148,364 (69% of roughly 4,526,000 registered voters )

Qualifying threshold (1.5%)… …. 47,226 votes

Notice that 47,226 is exactly 1.5% of the 3,148,364 valid votes.

Notice, too, that some 1,377,636 registered voters did not vote!

Now, in view of the current crop of apathetic but also alienated voters, the percentage of voters may drop from 69% to about 67%. If so, then, despite the increase in population since the last election, the voter turnout for next week’s election may be less than that of 2003—in which case roughly 60,000 votes may be sufficient to break the threshold.

Wouldn’t it be in Israel’s best interest to replace this stupefying system of Proportional Representation with some form of constituency elections, which will be found in 74 out of 75 democratic countries, at least 18 of which are smaller in size and population than Israel?

Wouldn’t it be better if you elected a representative accountable to you rather than be compelled to vote for an anonymous party list whose candidates—like Shimon Peres—can ignore you with impunity for fifty years?

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Hazit

By Anonymous, at Sun Mar 26, 04:30:00 PM GMT+2

I'd like to comment further, that with over 25,000 votes necessary to generate a Knesset seat, and factoring the plethora of parties across the political spectrum, the odds of "wasted votes" giving even a single seat to the Left are mathematically remote.

Vote, Vote Right, but don't use the "wasted vote" fear as an excuse not to vote one's Conscience! Vote for the ONLY party with a comprehensive and consequent program for REGIME CHANGE! - HAZIT.

By Anonymous, at Sun Mar 26, 04:35:00 PM GMT+2

Ze’ev,

I’ll be blunt, I and most people that have said they are voting Marzel would perhaps not vote otherwise (well I would, but other people not). We are fed up that the rules of the game are so blatantly ignored, manipulated and distorted and we really feel disenfranchised with the system.

Disengagement was voted on last time. It was a referendum. It was the central battle in the last election between Mitzna and Sharon. And Disengagement lost. And yet it was still implemented – despite there being a “Right-wing” majority in the Knesset, because so many individuals voted against their party’s designated platform (like the Prime Minister and Olmert) that they were voted in on.

I also recall that Rabin openly bought Oslo’s missing votes to make it pass.

I don’t think that an extra vote or 2 for the Right can or would make a difference when the players cheat.

Certainly it won’t when your partners (forget the NRP, I mean Likud and Shas) ultimately lack your same convictions and motivations.

By JoeSettler, at Sun Mar 26, 04:56:00 PM GMT+2

tiburon, were you quoting Paul Eidelberg or signing off as Paul Eidelberg in the above post?

By Anonymous, at Sun Mar 26, 11:15:00 PM GMT+2

orange and black: - the former. That's ok, yes? Thought that might be clear.

You'll not see his factual analysis in the Jerusalem Post, much less Al-Haaretz. Don't construe that as 'justification' - none is necessary. (PE believes strongly that the best way to shake loose the Old Regime is to broadcast the facts of the grotesque dysfunction of the IG Electoral/Judicial System in every possible forum, perhaps especially in the US, but in any case - for what good it might do - in Israel.)

By Anonymous, at Mon Mar 27, 01:53:00 AM GMT+2

Ze'ev,

I am slightly confused - when you claimed that there were some Jews who were "trying to uproot our very right to exist", you linked to an article about a Meretz visit to Jaffa, which in no way was about uprooting Israel's right to exist. In fact, the Meretz activists were going to protest the attempts by two racist parties to change the nature of Israeli democracy, which for many Israelis is a fundamental part of the underpinning of our right to exist. After all - Zionism is the desire for the Jewish people to rule themselves (i.e, rule by the people - democracy). Your desire to turn Israel into a theocracy would actually return us the Galut, where the people were ruled by the Christian governments from without and by the rabbis within their ghettos. Why did the Orhtodox reject Zionism? Because they rightly saw it as a desire to break their rule over the common Jewish people. And still true Zionism will overcome your theocratic racist attempts to destroy the essence of Israel as a democracy.

AS for the lives of Palestinians being more precious than that of Jews - i do not think anyone has suggested that as a reason for the border crossing to be open. I would suggest that actually you are the one who believes Palestinian lives are less precious than Jewish ones - hence your support for a party which glorifies acts of terrorism against Palestinians. (what happened to B'tzelem elokim?)

By Anonymous, at Mon Mar 27, 11:22:00 AM GMT+2

The Harvard paper is not as scary as you may think. David Duke said that this paper validates everything he's been saying. The Harvard people have been distancing themselves from him. Apparrently left wing Jew haters dont like right wing Jew haters.

By Anonymous, at Mon Mar 27, 03:38:00 PM GMT+2