When highly regarded author-actress Alona Kimche used her Facebook page to call everyone who voted for right-wing parties “Neanderthals” and suggested that they drink some cyanide, she was expressing to some degree a prevalent attitude in Tel Aviv and other left-wing bastions. People there were stunned to learn that Likud leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had defeated Isaac Herzog and the Zionist Camp. Kimche later removed the remark, explaining that it was posted in “the heat of the moment,” but the sense of bitter disappointment will linger in those areas within Israeli society for a long time to come.
One spontaneous initiative from the left that has been trending across the Internet in the days since the election has been to point a finger at people living in the traditionally impoverished and peripheral development towns, which were built to house previous waves of immigrants, who voted for the Likud en masse. Many Internet users who have been spreading this message called for an end to donations and other signs of solidarity with the weaker sectors of the population identified with the right.
