What Was the Israeli Election Really About?
Akiva Eldar breaks down the meaning of Israel's election results and finds both a crisis of leadership and a crisis of faith in democracy.
“You’re a big shot,
"Nobody can outdo you,
"Mad about you,
"You’re the greatest of them all!”
(Sarit Hadad sang this to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Likud-Beiteinu campaign launch conference, Dec. 25, 2012.)
Don’t laugh at those words, and don’t discount their importance (Lyrics anonymous, translated by Yossi Gispan, Uzbek folk melody). This carefully selected song reflects the essence of the campaign run by the prime minister and his party, the ruling party. It succinctly summarizes Netanyahu’s and his partner, former Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman’s (or their American advisor, Arthur Finkelstein’s) response to the question that’s been left hanging: “What in the world was this election about?” To explain this point, it is more interesting to start with the question, “What wasn’t it about.” So, here goes:
It was not about socio-economic issues: The heroic effort of Labor Party leader Shelly Yachimovich to convince the public that the price of cottage cheese was more important than the threat posed by Iran, occupation, construction in East Jerusalem and the like (issues that will be addressed below) proved only very marginally successful. Even her attempt to lure the right and the settlers proved ineffective and, in the end, she was forced to zig-zag left in desperate pursuit of the lost votes from the left that fled from her party. The explanation of the resounding success of the chairman of Yesh Atid, Yair Lapid, cannot be found in his campaign slogan, “Where’s the money?”
Even the sensational revelation of the giant deficit of NIS 39 billion [$10 billion] in the budget and the economic austerity measures that must be taken as a result, and which we will all feel after the elections, did not threaten to push the Likud, headed by Netanyahu, from the top of the Champions League table. Even the implied criticism by Israel Bank Governor Stanley Fischer, the “Mr. Clean” of Israeli public life, of the prime minister’s unfettered fiscal policy did not change the picture.
