Blue and White ignored Israeli Arab vote at own peril

Soon after news stations released their exit polls and the actual results began trickling in on April 9 indicating that the right-wing bloc had won Israel's legislative elections, Labor Knesset member Shelly Yachimovich offered some impractical advice to Benny Gantz, chairman of the Blue and White party. With the sadness from Labor's stunning defeat visible on her face during an interview with Channel 12, Yachimovich said that if she were in Gantz’s position, she would go knocking on the Arabs’ doors to apologize and ask for their support.

The idea that Arab voters have no firm ideological position and that they could be easily moved by a simple apology testifies more than anything else to the fact that even the left-wing parties have a condescending attitude toward Israeli Arabs, yet still expect their parties to bail them out when they are in trouble.

In line with the famous adage that “the camel can’t see the hump on its back,” both Yachimovich and the Blue and White were busy scavenging for votes almost everywhere, except among the Arabs. Gantz and the members of his list treated the Arab vote as if they had it in their pocket, though only in the sense that the Arabs help them block Benjamin Netanyahu's path to a coalition and then stay out of the government while thanking the left.

The Blue and White's leaders fell into a trap Netanyahu set for them and paid for it with failure at the polls. The party was formed through a series of mergers intended to create an alliance strong enough to seriously challenge the Likud. Netanyahu countered with one of his old, familiar tricks: fear mongering targeting the Israel Arab population. In a speech delivered Feb. 21 right after Yair Lapid, from Yesh Atid, and Gantz, from Israel Resilience, consolidated their parties, Netanyahu accused Blue and White leaders of “relying on Arab parties who not only don't recognize the State of Israel, but want to destroy it.” His ploy worked.