{"id":99488,"date":"2022-11-04T17:05:42","date_gmt":"2022-11-04T15:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=99488"},"modified":"2022-11-04T16:57:37","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T14:57:37","slug":"07-05-82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=99488","title":{"rendered":"Is Itamar Ben-Gvir the real winner of Israel’s elections?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Is Itamar Ben-Gvir the real winner of Israel’s elections?<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

AMOTZ ASA-EL<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
MIDDLE ISRAEL: Activist, rabble-rouser and lawyer Itamar Ben-Gvir, is the politician who outsmarted Benjamin Netanyahu himself<\/strong>.<\/h5>\n

\n.
\nHead of the Otzma Yehudit Party MK Itamar Ben-Gvir speaks to supporters as the results of the Israeli elections are announced, at the party’s campaign headquarters in Jerusalem, November 1, 2022. \/ (photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL\/FLASH90)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Napoleon would have thus joined the pundits who crowned Itamar Ben-Gvir as our latest election\u2019s winner. Chaos, the veteran provocateur\u2019s claim to fame, is where the Jewish state has just arrived, and it has the 46-year-old zealot\u2019s name written all over it.<\/span><\/p>\n

As an activist, Ben-Gvir played tag with cops; as a rabble-rouser he provoked street fights; and as a lawyer, he dashed to any Jewish terrorist\u2019s defense, all of which proved useful when he morphed into the politician who outsmarted Benjamin Netanyahu himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Promising a restoration of \u201cpersonal security,\u201d Ben-Gvir decried last year\u2019s Israeli Arab violence in Arab-Jewish towns like Acre, Ramle and Lod, as well as Bedouin Israelis\u2019 burglaries, robberies and protection rackets in the South. Both scourges brewed under Netanyahu\u2019s watch, and Ben-Gvir knew he was attacking the man who will soon be his boss.<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem, from Ben-Gvir\u2019s viewpoint, is that he will now have to assume an executive office and actually get things done. Before that, he will have to negotiate his path to the booty he craves, a task that will require delicate bargaining opposite the man who now sees in him as a personal rival.<\/span><\/p>\n

Netanyahu\u2019s aim will be to bury Ben-Gvir in a ministry where he will be marginalized \u2013 tourism, agriculture or maybe religious affairs. Netanyahu will be assisted in this by others who feel threatened by Ben-Gvir, from the latter\u2019s ticket-mate Bezalel Smotrich to Shas leader Arye Deri. Somewhere between his appointment and its aftermath, the limits of Ben-Gvir\u2019s success will become apparent, as will his failure to control the chaos from which he has emerged.<\/span><\/p>\n

Napoleon, for his part, after understanding who more than anyone else benefits from that same chaos, would have crowned Netanyahu as this election\u2019s winner. He would be wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben-Gvir is the winner. Who are Israel’s losers?<\/span>
\nNETANYAHU HAS just avoided his career\u2019s unceremonious end. At 73, another inconclusive result would have resulted in Netanyahu\u2019s removal by his own party. His victory seems ever sweeter when one considers this contest\u2019s many losers.<\/span><\/p>\n

No, Yair Lapid is not among the losers, considering that his electorate grew by 40%. The big loser is Benny Gantz, whose two moves \u2013 teaming up with Justice Minister Gideon Sa\u2019ar and recruiting Lt.-Gen. (res.) Gadi Eizenkot \u2013 delivered no results, as the configuration\u2019s combined 14 seats in the outgoing Knesset failed to grow, and in fact shrank.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eizenkot is a loser in his own right, having had sufficient time to formulate ideas and plans that would reflect a vision concerning the country\u2019s problems and direction. Alas, like so many generals before him, he failed to discuss social, economic, constitutional, structural and cultural issues, sticking instead to defense and foreign affairs, thus failing to understand what troubles voters and how elections are won.<\/span><\/p>\n

Losers were also the parties that inverted this attitude, most notably former accountant general Yaron Zelekha\u2019s New Economic Party, and MK Abir Kara\u2019s Economic Freedom Party, both of whom failed to enter the Knesset. The two\u2019s alarmist suggestions that the Israeli economy is in deep crisis are factually unfounded, and now also proved electoral non-starters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Netanyahu initially also tried to play this card, but unlike this pair he quickly understood people realized the economy was fine, certainly when compared to the rest of the world, and thus abandoned this theme, displaying the kind of agility a politician out to control chaos must possess.<\/span><\/p>\n

This list of losers is besides this election\u2019s biggest loser: Ayelet Shaked.<\/span><\/p>\n

At this writing, several parties are teetering on the brink of the electoral threshold, but Shaked is not even near it. The charismatic electrical engineer who for several years was seen as a potential prime minister now collapsed because her quest \u2013 to present a nicer right-wing party \u2013 lacked an explanation of what she found wrong with Likud and because she did not present any original ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Having served as Netanyahu\u2019s bureau chief before falling from grace and abandoning him, Shaked\u2019s downfall is to many of Netanyahu\u2019s groupies the sweetest proof that he is back on the saddle, in full control of his battlefield\u2019s chaos, and thus this election\u2019s big winner. He isn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

NETANYAHU\u2019S FIRST act as the reinstalled prime minister will seem to most people esoteric and harmless, as he will heed ultra-Orthodoxy\u2019s demand to cancel the outgoing government\u2019s religious reforms. Making new immigrants\u2019 conversion harder and restoring thousands of party hacks to state-paid positions as kashrut supervisors in restaurants are the kind of currency he pays happily and generously.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, this will be but a subplot in a tragedy dominated by three reactionary coalition partners, who collectively defy the Israeli majority\u2019s liberalism, patriotism and feminism.<\/span><\/p>\n

There will be very few women in the next coalition, and some of its members will be self-declared homophobes. Three of its four parties\u2019 leaders will be men who made a mockery of their own military service through assorted draft-dodging arrangements. This background will not prevent their demanding, and obtaining, key ministries.<\/span><\/p>\n

United Torah Judaism leader Yitzhak Goldknopf already said he wants to be finance minister, a statement no ultra-Orthodox politician ever previously made. His chances of getting this position are low, but someone else with an equally sectarian agenda \u2013 possibly Arye Deri \u2013 may well get to clutch the national chest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, if Ben-Gvir lands the Public Security Ministry, he can be counted on to bring into this sensitive agency\u2019s corridors the chaos that is its enemy and his expertise.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is all besides what will happen in the Justice Ministry, where the assault on the judiciary that the Right has been demanding for years will now be launched across a broad front, in broad daylight.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that is when this election\u2019s real winner \u2013 chaos \u2013 will emerge all by itself atop the political podium: unopposed, unabashed and uncontrolled.<\/span><\/p>\n

www.MiddleIsrael.net<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The writer, a Hartman Institute fellow<\/strong>, is the author of the bestselling Mitzad Ha\u2019ivelet Ha\u2019yehudi (The Jewish March of Folly, Yediot Sefarim, 2019), a revisionist history of the Jewish people\u2019s political leadership.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em>
\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion’68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.
\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:
\n<\/em>webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Itamar Ben-Gvir the real winner of Israel’s elections? AMOTZ ASA-EL MIDDLE ISRAEL: Activist, rabble-rouser and lawyer Itamar Ben-Gvir, is the politician who outsmarted Benjamin Netanyahu himself. . Head of the Otzma Yehudit Party MK Itamar Ben-Gvir speaks to supporters as the results of the Israeli elections are announced, at the party’s campaign headquarters in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99488"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99518,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99488\/revisions\/99518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}