Editor-in-chief: David Suissa
14 March, 2021
The electoral threshold of 3.25% seems to be the most important factor of Israel’s coming election. As many as five parties are close enough to the threshold to be considered “parties in doubt” by pollsters and voters. What would the voters do?
We asked the interviewees for their opinion on this statement: “To bring about a victory in the upcoming elections, it’s necessary to vote for one of the large parties and not for a small party, even if its positions fit mine better.” The public as a whole is divided: 47% disagree and 46% agree. The position on this matter depends, not surprisingly, on the size of the party the interviewee intends to vote for.
And of course, we have no way of knowing here what the cause is and what the outcome is. Does the blue-and-white voter seek justification for her actions, and therefore says one should go with the heart and not with the calculator. Or maybe the Blue and White voter is the one with the tendency to go with the heart in the first place. In other words: Are idealist voters attracted to small parties, or do small party voters disguise themselves as idealists.
In Spain, France, Belgium, and Italy, polls stop being published five, seven, 14, or 15 days prior to an election. In Israel, polls can run until three days before Election Day. The public and media’s addiction to polls and the fact that polls don’t only predict results, but create them, obligates us to decide on a longer poll-free period before we go to the polls.
Heading into Israel’s fourth election in two years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is hoping the success of his government’s COVID-19 vaccination programme will also serve as a political lifeline, reports Jeffrey Helller. Netanyahu’s vaccination push drew praise among Israelis interviewed on a Tel Aviv street, but will it be enough to persuade them to vote for “Bibi”?
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Thursday praised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “obsessive” efforts to secure a coronavirus vaccine deal for Israel… “He called me 30 times,” Bouria said of Netanyahu. Asked about Netanyahu’s frequent claim ahead of the March 23 elections that only he can bring vaccines to Israel, Bourla stressed his company signs supply contracts with states, not individual leaders.
All the talk about vaccines, and Netanyahu’s claim that only he can bring the tens of millions of vaccines Israel will need every year, is essentially asking the voters for credit. Give me credit, and you’ll see that eventually, things will be better.
There remain critics who worry that the surging optimism in Israel has more to do with the prime minister’s reelection campaign than with the current realities of the pandemic. Just a month ago, top Israeli experts were still warning that a fourth national lockdown was very possible, and that new COVID-19 mutations meant Israel likely wouldn’t reach herd immunity, despite the success of its vaccination campaign.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel has targeted at least a dozen vessels bound for Syria and mostly carrying Iranian oil out of concern that petroleum profits are funding extremism in the Middle East, U.S. and regional officials say, in a new front in the conflict between Israel and Iran. What do we know about these events?
Officials from the United States and Israel met by video conference Thursday to discuss the two countries’ security challenges in the Middle East, as well as the Biden administration’s plan to re-engage diplomacy with Iran on nuclear weapons. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and his Israeli counterpart, Meir Ben-Shabbat, took part in the first US-Israel bilateral security meeting since President Joe Biden took office in January.
Israel is highly likely to have been behind an attack in the Mediterranean this week that damaged an Iranian container ship, an Iranian investigator said on Saturday, Iran’s media reported… The incident came two weeks after an Israeli-owned ship the MV HELIOS RAY was hit by an explosion in the Gulf of Oman.
Risk Intelligence chief executive Hans Tino Hansen ranked the threat to ships from highest to lowest: Vessels directly supporting the Saudi war in Yemen, from Houthi attacks; Israeli or Iranian ships, targeted directly or indirectly; Saudi and UAE vessels, primarily tankers targeted by the Houthis; tankers from other countries moving Saudi or UAE oil and gas; other international vessels “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
Describing Israel not as a Jewish state, but as the Jewish state, wrote Michael Koplow, brings with it a different set of requirements. “Doing so means being open to all Jews, no matter the denomination, and accepting that being the Jewish state goes hand in hand with a commitment to worldwide Jewish pluralism”. What else is on the table in the ever relevant sphere of Israel-Diaspora relations?
We should start by redirecting our legacy organizations’ missions towards a unified approach to global Jewish peoplehood. Despite our appreciation for the great cultures of Diaspora Jewry, we must embrace Israel’s growing leadership as the nucleus of world Jewry and adjust our institutions to reflect that leadership. The Jewish Community Center movement, for example, must show far more contemporary Israeli and Hebrew productions and fewer reruns of Fiddler on the Roof on their stages. And Federations must integrate Israeli leadership into their systems, rather than just providing financial and political support.
The recent set of decisions by the Israeli government to limit entry to Israel only to returning Israeli citizens (first through the flawed mechanism of the exemption committee and then through numerical quotas and the requirement of self-quarantine) draw a clear line in the sand between Israeli citizens and Diaspora Jews, despite Israel’s standing as the Nation State of the Jewish People. In my opinion, this post-Zionist policy is a clear violation of one of our most fundamental legal obligations and a sharp departure from one of the consensual values of the entire Zionist enterprise.
Landing in Israel does not always lead to remaining happily in Israel. How can you be reasonably certain you’re ready to make the move and adjust successfully? There’s a way to find out. The new Aliyah Risk Calculator, designed for potential Western immigrant families with children, is available online at www.aliyahresearch.com.