The 22nd Knesset’s True Colors

At the Lighthouse, we have tried to let the people know that the Blue and White Alliance members are neither Zionists, nor centrists, but mere leftists and/or opportunists. And the voting bloc they represent and would form a government with (had it reached 61), is not a “Center-Left” bloc by any reasonable measure, as is reported, but a leftist if not far-left bloc.

Why the mislabeling? Simple, the media is dominated by leftist individuals, but the term is not popular. Blue and White tried desperately to distance itself from the term, and the media helped. As desperately as they ran to the left once the election is over to form their government.

The media can label the bloc “center-left”, but it cannot avoid naming its members.

• Blue and White
• Labor (Labor-Gesher)
• Meretz (Democratic Union)
• The Arab parties (Joint List)

These entities had 57 seats in the Knesset in the 21st Knesset, and pending final results, it seems they will have 57 give or take a seat, in the 22nd Knesset. They did not win this September Snap election, just like they did not win the previous one a few months ago, despite the reporting in the popular press.

Had they reached 61 rather than 57, Gantz would be the PM indeed, with the Arab parties or with another smaller party or two, who would join instead of them (on the threat that a Gantz government was a fait accompli, and “we would prefer for you to be a Minister, and have some influence for the sake of your constituents, rather than have the Arab parties join us.. you’re choice” as it goes). But with the Arab parties in the coalition or not, the leftist bloc wins when they reach 61 WITH the Arab parties.

In any event, to call the above club “center-left” is comical. Even if we accept Blue and White as being center-left (and if so the Likud should be labeled center-right), the other two Israeli parties are most certainly very left and not center anything, with Meretz of course at the gates of communism, and to them we must add the Arab parties who are, not leftists in their own right, but the extreme left in an Israeli frame of reference, much as I might be an extreme leftist if given the chance to vote for the Syrian government.

Left and Right in Israel are delineated first and foremost by security policies and policies vis-a-vis the Arabs, both those surrounding us and among us. Less so by economics, in which unfortunately leftists policies prevail across the parties (the Knesset is a group of 120 socialists that don’t exactly agree on how much land to give to the Arabs).

Leftists of course want to appease the Arab enemy to a greater extent, and cede to them ever increasing amounts of what Israel has the least of; land. Given the chance to opine on this matter, the Arabs agree with them of course.

The Blunt Results

The Israeli voters who actually consider themselves leftists, and therefore voted for an openly leftist party, amounted to a whopping 11 representatives out of the 120 Knesset members. The parties, which dominated Israeli politics for decades are virtually dead. And because the left has died as a popular term, the race is on to confuse and blur the lines. Those folks, which form the Israeli elite, have not gone anywhere, they just stopped calling themselves leftists so that the Israeli public will vote for them. The media is all too happy to lend a hand, journalists are among those few leftists still around as voters (and part of that same elite that has not gone anywhere), and they are the first to understand the term is not popular.

To get a leftist government into power, you have call it anything but.

Now to these mere 11, we can add the 33 allocated to the Blue and White alliance. The large mass of voters who previously voted for Labor and Meretz, dissatisfied with the left, but still not comfortable voting right (pun appropriate), have tended to flock to the trendy (and supposedly not leftist) party or alliance of the moment the last few years. Kadima, Shinui, the Zionist Camp, now Blue and White.

Well, they are up to 46, even with all those folks successfully fooled, that is far from 61 and a winning coalition. So of course we throw the Arab parties on there for good measure. They don’t believe in Israel, the Jewish state, her right to exist, her jurisdiction over our ancient homeland Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel), her security nor her prosperity, while they condone the maximum concessions possible from Israel to her enemies, foreign and domestic; well, look at that… perfect alignment with the Jewish left, the bloc is sound and viable!

And we arrive at our 57. Woe to us when these folks reach the 61, but thank Gd they reached only 57 or so, time and again, and even managed those numbers mostly due to the confused average Blue and White voter who would be shocked to read the above (but he won’t, and thus he remains the confused voter).

Worse yet, when we grant the actual self proclaimed Jewish leftists their 11 seats, we ignore that a significant part of their voters are Arabs as well. Arabs, noticing the above-explained perfect alignment of interests often vote for leftist Jewish parties rather than the Arab parties in order to strengthen parties they believe have a better chance of actually being in the ruling coalition. To a lesser extent, this is also true of Blue and White.

Taken together, we can see that the leftist bloc is nothing but the expression of Arab interests, by Arabs of course, by a small minority of Jewish leftists and a larger group of fooled voters who were ironically trying to distance themselves from the left and these principles. All together, still a minority of voters.

The Largest Party

Naysayers may say.. that is all well and good Erik, only 11 so-called leftists, and the like, but the fact remains that Blue and White is the largest party. Doesn’t the largest party head the coalition?

Of course not, this is complete non-sense. On both counts.

Firstly, the largest party does not (necessarily) head the government. They may very well be in the opposition. And even if they are not in the opposition, the ruling coalition may agree to form such a coalition only when another party other than the largest heads it. The government is ruled and only ruled by a coalition of 61 or more Knesset members. A ruling coalition is always a majority coalition. The largest party is guaranteed to head the government, only when it alone has 61 or more seats (and manages to keep control of those MKs).

In fact, the moment a coalition no longer has the support of 61 or more of the Knesset members, it is toppled as we so often hear in parliamentary governments. Blue and White with 33 seats is very far from having a majority as is the Likud with 31 (final results pending). The couple of seats that one may be larger or smaller than the other is irreverent, especially when they are on opposing camps.

As I explained, the leftist voters, leftists, center-leftists, confused voters and Arabs all together, garnered 57 or so seats. The remaining 63 or so, are held by rightist parties. The right won the election and normally the largest of the Right wing parties would head the coalition. But any party can head the coalition who can gather the support of the majority for it.

So when considering opposing camps, the identity of the biggest party is quite irrelevant, and speaks more to the number of parties in each camp than anything else. For example, if we keep the votes the same but consider that all the leftists had merged (including the Arab parties) this alliance could have had a “party” of 57 seats, far larger than Gantz’ mere 33, and yet it could not rule nor name the Prime Minister. Thirty five MKs do not chose the Prime Minister, 61 or more do.

On the second count, there is even greater irony if not absurdity. Much like in the example above referring to a leftist “alliance” rather than party, Blue and White is not only not the largest party, but not even a political party! While the Likud is most certainly a party and it alone achieved the size of approximate parity with Blue and White, the same is not the case for the latter.

Voters that voted Likud voted for the Likud, one political party, firmly under Benjamin Netanyahu. Blue and White is a political alliance (which is a united voting list of two or more political parties) led by four famous figures who do not particularly like each other or agree with each other. Another well known alliance this election is the Joint List, which is a voting alliance of the independent Arab Parties. It is they, as a list, who will offer to join Blue and White in a ruling coalition.

Blue and White is an Alliance of:

• Israel Resilience (Benny Gantz)
  • Leftists. Other members include the likes of Avi Nissenkorn, Chairman of the Histadrut (Israel’s evil Labor Union) and lifetime member of the Labor Party until offered a ministerial seat by Gantz.
• Yesh Atid (Yair Lapid)
  • Pretenders of belief in free markets as opposed to leftist socialism, combined with an extremely and actual anti religious (meaning anti Jewish) agenda. Very leftists, claim Centre-Left
• Telem (Moshe ‘Boogie’ Ya’alon)
  • Center-Right. Originally started by Moshe Dayan in 1981! No idea how Boogie can tolerate these clowns.
• Gabi Ashkenazi as an independent.

That is right… Blue and White is made up of three independent parties, and a former IDF Chief of Staff as an additional independent member. All four of these top figures have a significant base of support and draw significant amount of votes. Would Gantz form a government, according to their alliance agreement, he would have to rotate the Prime Minister seat with Yair Lapid. None of these figures or parties on their own would have come close to the Likud.

So while the size of the largest party is not in itself important, though of course it often correlates with the head of the coalition, the Likud is actually the largest party currently in the Knesset. While the Likud originally began as a merger of right wing and free market parties back in the days of Menachem Begin (and in fact, “Likud” means “consolidation”), it has been a unified single party for decades and the largest single party for many years.

Largest Party Aside

If any further proof was needed of what was explained previously, Channel 13 and other outlets reported that Gantz had promised the Joint List (of Arab Parties) significant concessions including voiding or easing the so called Kamenitz Law. This set of laws passed in 2017 was an effort to curb the rampant illegal construction that Arabs routinely enjoy in Israel, on both sides of the Green Line. While strict building restrictions and codes are enforced in Jewish towns, villages and cities, Arab towns spread at alarming rates (as anyone who has traveled in Israel knows all too well) by simply building large homes on the “next piece of land” taking mountain after mountain in the north and endless acres in the Negev and the south.

The article in part:

From a strictly legal and democratic point of view, where we ignore the war Israel has faced for her existence since 1948 and earlier, and ignore that while our enemies refuse to recognize or allow our very existence here, we allow them to vote for our leaders, one can say that this is simply political bargaining. Any law or group of laws can be negotiated by the Knesset members in order to form a coalition. If they want to, they can simply pass a law that every Knesset member who recommends Gantz gets a hundred thousand dollar check I suppose (though they would have to also vote to cancel a few other laws that make that problematic).

But considered from a reasonable, moral, patriotic, Zionist and common sense perspective, this if true looks nothing short of treason. And from a Ramatkal (Chief of Staff) no less!

While the media has hounded Bibi to no end about receiving cigars as gifts (in exchange for nothing of course), and spending too much of the national budget on ice cream for his Prime Minister’s residence, we have here a report of a former General and IDF Chief of Staff and current MK offering up the land of Israel, holy to us even before the last many decades when the blood of our fighters consecrated her as they fought to keep her safe and in our hands, to the very enemies those same fighters fought against, for their more pleasant and trouble-free seizure and illegal settlement in exchange for some votes to make him Prime Minister.

If this is not treason, I would need some time to conjure up a case which is, and yet will we have an investigation to verify or refute this report? Of course not. Will there be outcry and outrage? No. What there will be is the Arab parties joining our leftist general and his clowns on their desperate path to 61.

On to Lieberman

He remains, as we predicted before and during the election, the key. Some others may have seen that coming as well, as it was easy to see, by the math and his statements. What was not seen, is that those statements don’t make Avigdor Lieberman a leftist. And thus the left did not win the election, despite the constant reporting to the contrary.

My analysis here I believe has been so far proven quite correct. It is clear Lieberman has become obsessed with a unity government. As I predicted, he will not sit in the coalition I describe above, because the news and Blue and White may have fooled the voters, but they did not fool him. Lieberman can accept the likes of Blue and White, if there is no other choice, at the leftmost-end of a coalition. He will not sit with Labor, Meretz and the Arabs nor allow such a coalition to govern Israel. Lieberman may be wrong or right, but he is a man of principle.

He believes that Israel must stay clear of religious laws, and must impose “Zionist” principles on the state to everyone. His ideal coalition is one of non-Haredi (or Ultra-Orthodox as they are sometimes called in English), right wing parties. Since there are not enough seats of the kind, he would accept Blue and White as well. In addition, he sees this as a noble unity of mainstream Zionist Israelis… the middle of the road Israelis who believe in the state, and he is willing to sacrifice his own position in such a government (if Blue and White and Likud join, there is not much room left for Lieberman as far concessions or important Ministerial positions).

Ultimately since Blue and White as I have explained since election day, will not have the seats needed to form their leftist bloc ruling coalition, even with the Arab parties whom he has reportedly bribed. The most likely choice, is that Lieberman will join his traditional and natural allies in the right wing camp, in order to avoid a third election. The haredi parties, Lieberman and Netanyahu will come to an understanding in this scenario.

Another possibility is that Blue and White joins the government under a Bibi or at least a Likud leadership. Lieberman may or may not be part of this coalition (that he would be responsible for causing), but would likely not have an important position in it.

But perhaps the best scenario, so far not mentioned by the media in part due to the fact that to maintain their several misreportings, such as that Gantz won, the leftist bloc is centre-left, and the largest party is Blue and White, would be the breakup of this trendy Blue & White Alliance.

General Bogie Ya’alon, who was a brave fighter all his life, crossed the Suez under Danny Matt and Ariel Sharon, commanded the IDF to victory during the second Intifada, who was fired by nobly opposing the shameful 2005 Disengagement (and replaced with Yes-man Halutz and the rest of the “A-Team” who led us to disaster in the Second Lebanon War), and politically a man who though raised on a Kibbutz, grew to admit he erred in supporting the Oslo accords and join the Likud, and after a dispute with Netanyahu honorably revived Telem, a party established by Moshe Dayan when the more leftist factions of the Alignment expelled him due to his more hawkish views and support for Menachem Begin; Bogie who is my mefaked, as senior paratrooper in chief… has no place with these clowns and haters of Yidishkeit.

If Bogie takes Telem out of the leftist Alliance, and can take 5 or 6 MKS with him at the least, things look different. It may be possible to form a coalition with UTJ or Shas, but not necessarily both of them (lowering their bargaining power), and together with Lieberman, Yamina and the Likud, have a good and decent nationalist unity government. Even greater parts of the Blue and White Alliance may break apart. In order to avoid a third election, this is what may have to happen, and if the solidarity and loyalty of the Likud is tested against that of the Alliance, it will be no contest. Leftist know a lot of odd things, but not much about loyalty.