My writing of any particular week’s blog post can be plotted as a specific point on a three-axis graph. The x-axis represents how many topics I have to choose from; the y-axis represents how difficult I find it to choose a topic; the z-axis represents the ease with which I write the post, once I have decided on a topic. Broadly speaking, if x=0 or x>3, then y>5. In other words, if I can’t think of a single topic, or of I can think of several topics, choosing one is difficult. Also broadly speaking, the larger y is, the larger z is. In other words, if it takes me a long time to decide on a topic, then it will take me a long time to write my post.
But not this week! This week, there is only one topic: Israel’s general election. As I write, polling opened over three hours ago. By the time you read this, the polls will have been closed for at least ten hours, and probably considerably more.
Which is why, uncharacteristically, even though I knew last Tuesday what I was going to have to write about this Tuesday, I still have absolutely no idea what to write. Predicting the future is not an easy thing, especially when it hasn’t happened yet. Making a prediction whose inaccuracy will be evident by the time most of my followers read it is an especially thankless task.
However, as James Joyce’s remembered rhyme about corporal punishment in schools goes:
It can’t be helped;
It must be done.
So down with your breeches
And out with your bum.
Throughout the weeks of what, for want of a better word, I shall call this election campaign, we have been told that this election is of tremendous significance: phrases like ‘a critical hinge election’ and ‘the most consequential election in Israel’s history’ have been bandied about. However, these words do not describe what, from where I’m standing, the campaign has, for the most part, looked like. It has rather been, by and large, a tired rehash of what we grew only too used to in the six election campaigns we suffered through between September 2019 and November 2022.
Amid the blitz of character assassination attempts, dire warnings of the consequences of voting for a particular party, the reduction of positions to cheap slogans, scare-mongering, it has not been easy to discern any discussion of policies. One commentator pointed out that, since no single party is going to achieve a simple majority of the vote, and, therefore, of the Knesset seats, a coalition government is inevitable, and, for that reason, when deciding which party to vote for, the question to ask is not: ‘What does this party stand for?’ but, rather, ‘Who is this party prepared, and who is it not prepared, to sit in the government with?’ and to cast your vote for the party whose potential choice of partners you are most comfortable with.
Singling out a worst offender in the trivialisation and sloganeering of the campaign is not difficult. The Likud campaign has been predictably simplistic and misrepresenting, and I have no doubt that some time this afternoon it will also play its traditional scare-mongering card, with an announcement that ‘the Left’ (and/or possibly ‘the Arabs’) are turning out in vast numbers and Likud is in danger of being defeated. The slogan which they chose to end their campaign with was ‘The Right or Palestine’ (which rhymes in Hebrew), a lie so egregious as to be embarrassing.
The fact is that, on matters of external security and the relationship with the Palestinians, there is very little daylight between Likud and the three or four mainstream parties to its left. Indeed, in terms of security, the labels ‘right’ and ‘left’ have little meaning in the Israel of 2026. This is, in fairness, not true of the far right and far left parties, but the security consensus spans a wide range of parties (not always in their slogans, but rather in their actions).
—– o 0 o —–
It is now seven hours later – 5:20PM – and the two things we know are that the promised/threatened rain has started to fall, and that the voting rate by 4PM was 55.7%, 12% higher than in any previous election at that hour. Of course, these two facts may be linked; it is possible that people voted early to beat the rain. It is also possible that the estimated 67,000+ Israelis who flew back from abroad specifically to vote voted early, or that the 640,000 first-time voters also got up early to vote (although in my experience, that age group does not include many early risers).
I had more or less decided that I was not going to be tempted into a prediction, which is, let’s face it, a mug’s game. However, I’m going to stick my neck out. I still believe, as I have throughout the campaign, that the greatest likelihood is not only that neither major party (Netanyahu’s Likud and Eisenkot’s Yashar) will win an absolute majority (and that is, I will admit, not so much a prediction as a statement of the obvious), but also that neither of the natural blocs that form around those two parties will win an absolute majority – 61 seats.
However, the size of the turnout suggests to me that the opposition parties may perform well. In addition, Naftali Bennett’s personal grassroots campaign has been very lively and very much focussed on the issues. He has participated in countless local meetings, fielding specific questions and providing detailed answers. I believe that his performance in this campaign may win him a surprisingly large vote. I complained earlier about the staleness of this campaign. My comments don’t apply to Bennett.
And there I think I will leave it, with my neck stuck out right over where the guillotine is liable to fall. Sometime in the next couple of days, I will know whether to expect the blood-curdling sound of the metal sliding down towards me. Depending on the degree of humiliation, you may or may not hear from me next Wednesday, and, even if you do, today’s offering may be my last attempt at political comment for a very long time.
One final observation. Despite the flippancy of my tone in this week’s post, I do not take lightly the astonishing fact that 7,300,000 Israelis have the right today to exercise their vote and play their part in determining the direction that this incredible country will take over the next four years. Not many generations ago, our forebears would have found it very difficult to believe what is taking place throughout the country today. Both in the sweep of Jewish history, and in the sweep of the Middle East, free and fair elections, with universal suffrage, are a precious rarity that we take for granted or dismiss as trivial at our peril.
