Latest / Boots on the Ground / No Clear Path: Israel's Election Deadlock, Unity Government or Round Two? | Shaun & Ari ep 50

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No Clear Path: Israel's Election Deadlock, Unity Government or Round Two? | Shaun & Ari ep 50 · Boots on the Ground

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: We have almost defeated Hamas.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: We have almost defeated Hezbollah.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: We have done a pretty good job in Iran.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: All of those things are true, but that but it's not enough.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: If we're going to vote for somebody who has done all these things, finish the job.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: You've had, and all with all due respect, many years to finish the job, and every time you are stopped.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of Boots on the Ground, where we discuss Israel's war, politics, and identity.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: After a bit of hiatus, Ariana are back.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And in this episode, we'll catch up on what's happening in the Israeli elections, what it means, and where do we go from here.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: But first, a thank you to our partners at the Jerusalem Media Group and our sponsors, BeathereIsrael.com for all your events in Israel.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: BeTheERISrael.com provides live streaming services so your family and friends can join you from around the world virtually.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, like, share, and subscribe.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Ari, it's good to be back.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Good to have you back here, Sean.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a very busy couple of months.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've returned from reserve duty.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to have you back.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we've had a tumultuous and interesting election period in Israel, which we definitely need to speak about.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if we have a little bit of time, I'm sure we'll touch on the U.S.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: elections.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start with the Israeli elections.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: First, I think we need to speak about the lead up to the elections, some of the parties, and what the results are now.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that while while you were away, again, I was in reserve duty, you were you were deep at work and unable to record for a while, which is totally normal.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: We um I put out a few episodes dealing with the lead up to the election and talking about the different parties.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: I clearly had a very honest opinion of where and what my vote was going for and what parties I was supporting.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I think let's talk about more about what happens now.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like the results of the election are they're not here or there.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's not, again, the largest party technically wins, but no one side can easily form a coalition.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we have the issues of the extremely high voter turnout in the Arab community, which is both a blessing and a curse at the same time.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what we need to discuss more about it, because I think leading up to the election, like before every election, every every politician makes lots of promises that no one no one knows everyone knows they can't keep and knows it's just for show.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So let's look at the current situation.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, Netanyahu has once again emerged as the largest party, but based on the current considerations, him and his bloc are unable to cross the 61 Knesset threshold that is needed to form a majority.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, the opposition parties led by um by Isencott appear to have a majority, but that is only if they rely on the 1819 seats of the Arab parties, which creates all kinds of other problems for them.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you have no clear path.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, neither side which which comes down to what I was saying beforehand, what I think the result of the election is going to be.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's no clear path.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Neither the current coalition or the current opposition has a clear way of making a coalition to form a government, which is what's needed.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that leaves only two options.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Either we finally have some sort of what's called a memchalat ahdur, a unity government where you have a much broader coalition that includes parties from both the current opposition and the coalition, which would function for a short amount of time, but not really be able to, it would be fairly deadlocked on almost every major issue.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have the ability of having another round of elections, which probably won't give us significantly different results.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: The question is if they're a second round, maybe the parties will be able to form some sort of a coalition, recognizing that the only other option is to go to round three.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we had a similar situation going back five years ago, where we actually had three elections within a two-year period.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: The first two were inconclusive.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: The third one led to Naftali Bennett taking over with Yahair Lapid.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then we had a fourth election where Netanyahu swept in and led to his current position.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: So they again they formed a government after three rounds of elections, and that government was formed that brought together a conglomeration of parties that, while in theory they all opposed Netanyahu, that was the only thread of commonality that they shared.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So their their hate for Netanyahu and their what their interest to replace him was the only thing that kept them together.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: So the second they formed a coalition, that government barely functioned.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: It officially was on the books for 18 months, 19 months, something like that.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: But it didn't really accomplish anything because they could never really work together because they had no commonality of ideology or of purpose or policy in any real level.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So let's look at the current options we spoke about are based on two commonalities the way I see it.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And already there's starting to be a break here.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: The opposition bloc, and I'm putting aside the Arab-Israeli parties, which we definitely need to speak about, but that's a different issue.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: The opposition bloc ran on two major campaign issues.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: The first and foremost is replacing Netanyahu.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't matter whether it was Isencott, Bennett, Lapid, that or the Democrats under Yer Golan, that was their Lieberman.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: They were all right.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: That was their primary motivation is we want to replace Netanyahu.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: The differences between them varied very slightly.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: They all appeared to their own base.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: For example, Lieberman had his Russian base no matter what.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um the Democrats, the Democrat Party had their the the leftovers of the Labour and Meritz party, they would remain the same.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um yet uh Lapid and Bennett and Eisencott shared people who had waived for pretty much the last decade.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Their primary motivating is vote for us, we will replace Netanyahu.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: The second option, the second uh issue that they were running on is we need to deal with the Haredi draft issue.
• 6:42
  unknown: Right.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So those were the two major points.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the third major point was was the national investigation for the failures of October 7th.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So those were the thank you.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh good point.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So those were the three things they were running on.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: From Netanyahu's perspective, the best he could offer is stability and those guys are bad, trust me.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he that he ran a campaign that basically said that, but the reality is as someone who campaigned on the right, the feeling on of the parties that make up the current coalition was more everything is actually going fairly well.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: While we may not have completed anything, and we may not have achieved 100% success in any one thing we're working on, we've definitely accomplished an enormous amount, and they were looking for a renewed vote of confidence in their leadership.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it was uh Bitsal Smutlich and what he's done in Judean Samaria and expanding, you know, the Jewish presence and the infrastructure and making life better and safer for the residents of Judea and Samaria.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it was Itamar Bengvir and the reforms he did in the prisons and with the personal security, with expanding who qualifies and how you qualify for gun licenses.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Those are all successful.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it was the Likud in pushing through, again, we forget there, there are two major pieces of legislation of the judicial reform that passed that are coming into effect at the end of the year, like in this upcoming coalition, they come into effect, which is splitting the role of the attorney general and change, starting to change the makeup of the judicial selection committee.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Those are two pieces of legislation that they successfully passed on the judicial reform.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: So they were running on we've accomplished so much domestically.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: We've haven't defeated Hamas, but we've got them on their knees.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't defeated Hezbollah, but we've actually we've created real reality.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like those two things now are within the realm of manageable, and we can defeat them when we want to, like when it's convenient almost.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: We did attack Iran and start shifting the reality that we have vis-a-vis Israel and Iran.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: We've proven that we can easily withstand any assault that's brought upon us.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we've now that we've done a proof of concept, now we want a vote of renewed confidence for us to continue moving things in this direction.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's basically the campaign that Netanyahu and his block ran on.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it sounds good, but clearly enough people who would usually or have in supported Netanyahu in the past didn't feel that that was enough.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I not really, because when you look at don't look at percentages, you look at raw numbers of voters that voted.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: The current coalition block got approximately the plus minus the same number of raw number of votes as they got last time.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Just because of higher voter turnout, those votes now are devalued.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: The vote was inflated.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't significant.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking about maybe one seat worth of votes that left.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: The amount of inflation of the value of a vote.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, Netanyahu was unable to convince the majority of Israelis to support his side of the map.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: That is you're talking about raw numbers.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Netanyahu and his coalition, correct, despite what they what they accomplished, was unable to convince the majority of the Israelis to convince to support their actions.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of it is in exactly what you said.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: We st Netanyau is we started a process, we didn't finish it.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you l so for four years, you be you've been beginning a process, you left it unfinished.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: You were thrust into a war, and one of the problems that I'm seeing is we were thrust into the the greatest disaster of the country's history.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: As of now, not a single person has taken responsibility for what happened.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: What is worse is every single person who was in a leadership position has either resigned, been fired, and left to their own devices, or refuses to take responsibility and has continued in that same position.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that has left many people many people in the country, myself included, uneasy with allowing them to continue on the current trajectory.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing you said, which is important, yes, we have almost defeated Hamas, we have almost defeated Hezbollah, we have done a pretty good job in Iran.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: All of those things are true, but it's not enough.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: If we're going to vote for somebody who has done all these things, finish the job.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: You've had, and with all due respect, many years to finish the job, and every time you are stopped.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now the answer could be well, there's other pressures, there's international pressure, there's Trump.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: All of those things are true, and none of those things are going to change.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: If anything, they're now going to get worse because of the realities in the US.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think you're actually hitting on you're almost saying exactly what affected this election.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: In the end of the day, the the current the right-wing coalition that's currently governing Israel, that lost its majority, never was able to offer in this election a real vision, or at least a credible vision of where we're going.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: In the sense that we've we've moved everything in a direction, but no one party, including Hutanyao himself, has been able to present a vision of where he's taking us and where all of these efforts ultimately lead.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you and I can infer as people who are involved politically, as people who watch the news, who read a lot, who follow the decisions that are going on, even what's not necessarily reported in the open media, and by serving in the military, we see the general direction where things are moving and we can infer what the end result is going to be.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: But no person in any political leadership position has ever said that out loud and has ever clearly stated what the end goal is and how we're going to achieve it.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: They're saying, listen, we're moving in the right direction, and we can all kind of infer on our own what that direction is.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas Gaudi Isenkot, Nina Fali Benet, Yarilapida, Viktor Lieberman, and Yav Golan, they're all offering a clear vision.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, do I think their vision is good?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do I think they're going to be able to accomplish it?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: But they're speaking very clearly to their voters, which inspires people to actually go out and vote.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: You're they're giving them something to vote for.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, again, I'm not buying what they're selling.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Not also because I don't agree with it.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: I also don't think they can accomplish it even if they wanted to, for real.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: That, but it's it gives people the confidence that they're voting for something and not just against something else, which is where we are today, which has also been the classical Netanyahu leadership, which is not not making any decision that avoiding every possible decision that's possible and pushing it off till later to see maybe you'll have more favorable terms in a month from now and a year from now.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: So the reality is that on every front, the the current coalition supporters, the current right in Israel, while they're definitely inspired that they don't want the left and the opposition to take over and you know turn back the clock and undo accomplishments that we've already made.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, there was nothing motivating them to say, Yada, let's do this.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's get out the vote.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Voter turnout in the places where the coalition has support were in general slightly lower than the rest of the country.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And like I was saying, the raw numbers, they didn't really lose that many voters, but the higher voter turnout means they needed to inspire people to come out and vote.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a and then we can look at that as you know, the higher voter turnout inflates inflates the value of the vote, which means now every vote is worth a little less.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: You have to get that many more votes, which is a problem that the right has is getting its supporters out because they're not inspiring them for where we're going with this.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Not only that, even any politician who tried, a little bit from within the parties, there were people lower down, not the heads of the parties, but lower down on the list that tried inspiring, they lose their credibility after four years.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, but you had the opportunity to do that and you did it.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: We have the opportunity, we had the ability, which we've proved, to continuously attack Iran, but there's always an excuse of why not.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: We clearly can defeat Hamas.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a question of determination, it's not a question of capability, but there's always an excuse of why not.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: We could defeat Hezbollah with a concerted effort as someone who would probably be the person whose shoulders that responsibility would fall on.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: We're definitely capable of it, but the determination on the political side isn't there.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: So the question is, is well, we know we're capable of it, and you had the opportunity, but you didn't do it.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: So even if you offered me that as a vision for the future, your credibility is kind of shot.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Which is why, and exactly like you said, fewer people were willing to trust Netanyahu and his coalition is if you were going to do something, do it.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Don't tell me what you're going to do, do it, and then tell me about it afterwards.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Which is also why I think that even if we go to a round two of an election right now, let's say we had, you know, instead of waiting the two months that officially on the books exists, or it's nine weeks that they can play coalition forming, you know, play games trying to form a coalition.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: We have a caretaker government until then, and then we go to another round of three months of elections.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Even after that election, unless someone starts changing the changing the script, we're gonna have the same results again.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll go into the technicalities of it in a minute.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: We we're speaking here a lot about security.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: There are two there there's the other aspect of the Haredi draft issue, which actually I think played a role more than we realize in a lot of other parties, um, ironically, within the Haredi parties themselves and within the opposition bloc.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now for many, many people, ourselves included, there has been the the issue of the Haredi draft has suddenly become, because of the war, been thrust in back into public discourse.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was waning for a while because many people believed that the army was sufficiently manned with enough manpower and soldiers to protect Israel's borders and defeat its enemies.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: We learnt in a very hard lesson that that was not true.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: We do not have the manpower to sustain our military needs.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Before we go on, we've had this conversation on the shoulder where where I don't I don't necessarily agree with that.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but that's it.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: I want to I do want to just for the sake of continuation for this part, I do want to reframe the Haredi draft issue in a broader way.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it's not it's not just a manpower question, it's really the question of the relationship between the general population of the state of Israel and the Haredi community and rebalancing that relationship and and creating, I don't want to use the word equitable, but a a uh rebalancing that relationship to a way that both sides are comfortable with.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Both economically and on a national service.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I think you're being very diplomatic, and I appreciate that.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be less diplomatic and say the public perception is we do not have the manpower needed for the army.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: The burden of extra army service, and I don't like to use the word, but the burden of extra army service is falling on a very small pool of people who are called on to sacrifice over and over again, and I mean sacrifice financially, family life, and sometimes physically, we're called on over and over again, that same pool of people.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, a large chunk of society is perceived as taking a lot and offering nothing to alleviate the burden on that very small piece of the uh piece of the population that is doing military service over and over again.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, whether that is true or not, the way I have said it is a massive perception within the public at the moment.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that led many people to vote against Netanyahu's coalition, whose answer to that is we'll find a solution, kind of.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: But whenever the opportunity presented itself is we will continue down the same path of allowing one group of people to maintain the burden and another group of people to be alleviated of any type of burden and constantly receive benefits.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: That perception led many people to shy away from Netanyahu and either not turn out or vote for his opposition.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: But again, it's a perception.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think in reality, politics is the games of perception.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Again, policy and reality play an important part for a very small percentage of the population when they vote.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Perception is the name of the game in politics in the end of the day.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I understand what you're saying about the perception.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I still present the same question as more of one of the national relationship between two very separate parts of the population.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, I think most people would be totally fine with rearranging the arrangement so as that while they don't serve and they don't necessarily contribute on a very high capacity, contribute minimally to the economy, if we just removed all the financial benefits and the rejiggered the relationship where they're no longer a financial burden as well, a lot of people would be okay with that reality as well.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm saying in the end of the day, it's more about reconfiguring the relationship and less so only about the national service side of the conversation.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: That being said, though, the opposition, while they talked about it a lot, when you look at their plans of how to accomplish that, they're either wishful thinking at best, and will have demonstratively, as has this government has proven, by demonstrating what happens when you try to draft them by force, be extraordinarily detrimental to any accomplishments that have already been made.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: The Netanyahu coalition hasn't presented a viable third option either.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it's you're voting against the current situation while voting for something that has 0% chance of success, which this was, by the way, one of the biggest questions we dealt with as Amchai Israel, which was the party I was working with led by Ofra Winter, was one of the biggest questions we constantly had on the campaign, where we were able to point that the candidate who head our party as one of the few people in politics who has successfully changed the Khardi draft issue.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: He created two units within the army that are quote unquote ultra-orthodox friendly.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's drafted more people from that community to the army than any other person involved in politics and presented a real plan.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And part of the plans he wrote years ago are what created the Hashmonaim brigade in the army now.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it was kind of funny how on the right, you had a third option of a person who presented a real plan with the ability, with a proven ability to accomplish it.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the rest of the camp on the right kind of said, Oh no, we can't have any new players and we can't risk it.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a whole separate question for a different episode of why the party I worked with did not succeed in getting into the Knesset.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: We can do that in a different Episode.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that the reality is that on the right, the Khari draft issue was a lower priority than maintaining power.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Where on the right, the issue was is we're afraid of what will happen if the left comes into power.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we're willing to sacrifice this need to reconfigure this relationship for now, knowing that as we move forward, it's only going to get harder and harder because that population grows and grows and grows and gains more political power.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yet at the same time, we realize in this current election, they didn't really gain, even though their population grew, they didn't significantly gain in their political power because it looks like they're losing that cohesiveness.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: That cohesiveness amongst their own population is starting to break because they're living under a tremendous economic strain that's also not sustainable for their own community.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And they're also looking for solutions within themselves, even if it's not talked about publicly or on the leadership level yet, from the base up, from the very ground level of their own communities, they're realizing that they need to change things for themselves if they want to have more than the bare minimum in life.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: So what I want to do very quickly, I'm going to run through the technical processes now of the results of the elections and what it means going forward.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'll come back to exactly what you said about the ultra-orthodox parties because I think there's a a there's been an interesting development that I want to stick with.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the week after the elections, the Central Election Committee officially announces the election results, which are we all know.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then they actually take a piece of paper with an envelope to the prime to the president's house, to Herzog's house.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: He opens the envelope, reads the official results.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's very it's very ceremonial.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then it is his role to meet with the heads of every party and ask them who they recommend to be the prime minister.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Again, very ceremonial, uh, because the heads of the party actually announce to the media before they even go to the meeting.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Once that is done, the president's role is then to look at the heads of the party, count up how many recommendations he has, and then based on that, and he actually has the prerogative.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: He can choose whether it's based on the amount of votes or his own initiative.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: He then chooses somebody, appoints somebody as his first pick to form a government coalition.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's based off of as the law is written, it's whoever has the highest likelihood of forming a coalition, which means it doesn't necessarily have to be the head of the biggest party, as has been shown in the past, because the head of the biggest party may have no ability to form a coalition, so he's looking at who has the ability to the highest likelihood of forming a coalition on the first try.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that then there is a uh period where three weeks.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: That person has three weeks to form a coalition.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: If he's able to come to a coalition agreement, put together enough rekness that that makes a 60 minimum 61 majority, we have a government.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: If not, after a three-week period, the that person then has well goes to the president, says, I am unable to, and the president can then offer him an extension.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Two more weeks.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: If the he doesn't ask for an extension or there is two more weeks, the president then asks, the next person in line says, Can you form a coalition?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he has three weeks to form a coalition.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: If he is unable to do it after three weeks, he comes back to the president.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: The president then says, Well, we don't have a coalition.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: The president then goes to the speaker of the Knesset, and the speaker of the Knesset announces the dissolving of the Knesset and new elections within 90 days.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: That is the technical process.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's very it's overly ceremonial for a country like Israel, which doesn't stand on ceremony.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's actually quite interesting.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's also given the modern era and the ability to communicate and move things faster.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's there's if you can't accomplish something in one week, you're not going to accomplish it in three weeks either.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: The amount of time, and it's really it's like it's like a lot of processes that are holed over from who from you know way back when that in theory, I think in the next Knesset, one of the first things they should do is shorten all the times on these things.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: A second round of elections, you don't need three months of electioneering again.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: We just had three months of electioneering.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Do it in 30 days.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: You have all the employees set up, you have the Central Elections Committee, you can literally just you're copy and pasting.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: You could be able to do it in 30 days.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Why make 90?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's that's the first thing I think that should be changed.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: The greatest irony of this is assume we do go to new elections, which is what uh where I'm leaning at the moment, but I I could be wrong, is we what essentially all we're doing is we're leaving the current government as it is in place for the next four and a half months.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now as a caretaker government, which again is another gray area of Israeli law, because Israeli law doesn't clearly define what and how a caretaker government is and what responsibilities they have and they don't.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been one of the major areas where the courts have once again overly involved themselves in the elected representatives' work with limiting their power in ways that doesn't really make any sense.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And right now, the caretaker government is in a very precarious position because we have a potential conflict with Iran on the horizon.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have a huge change in the American in the American electoral system.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got a uh the the question of a budget where at the end of a year and the beginning of a new year, we have budgetary issues.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of questions that the current caretaker government needs to deal with, but it's unclear what their authority to deal with it is.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: So again, but there also I want to look at it more as I think that a lot of this comes around the discussions of, oh no, we'll have another round of elections and that's terrible.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's not terrible.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think these fears get blown out of proportion.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Let's I can go through them one by one.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Whether we have to or need to or have the ability to attack Iran or not, I would from what I can tell, there's a pretty much a 90, 90, 90 plus percent consensus around this issue in Israel.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think if we ever have the opportunity to attack an enemy like Iran, I don't think anyone would really be against it.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: The army and the defense systems all function totally normal and fine, whether we have a functioning government, a dysfunctioning government, a caretaker government, I'm pretty sure the army would actually function better if we had no government.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: In the end of the day, those things, even there, I think that the reality is that if Netanyahu, as the caretaker prime minister, really wanted to build, you know, to solidify around the decision, he could bring the members of the current opposition into the room to make the decision with him, either as observers or as active members.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: I can't imagine any of them would disagree on attacking Iran if we have that ability or or the need or the opportunity arises for whatever constellation of intelligence available.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not an issue.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: On a budgetary issue, they can't pass the budget, and we follow the simple rule of one divided by 12.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Where we take the current budget, it gets divided by 12, all long-term projects are basically put on pause, and every ministry gets a 12th of the budget that was the last approved budget, and it functions like that.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Israel's functioned like that for in for over a year in the past, and it works.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: It actually prevents increased government spending because they can't make decisions to spend more money.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it it it helps in one way where it puts a break on government spending, which has gotten a little out of hand, and therefore it creates a forced reset almost.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: So when the next government comes in, you can't backspend money.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: They can't say, oh, well, now we'll we'll fund all these programs that we ran but we couldn't fund.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: They have to start moving forward, which means it cuts off a lot of the excess funding in government, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it prevents, it stalls things, it puts things on pause, programs that should have been happening don't happen, puts them on pause for a little while.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's really not that big of a deal.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: Vis-a-vis the relationship with the US government that doesn't get defined by one prime minister or who the Knesset makeup is in reality.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever happens in the American political system is gonna happen, is happening anyways.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is that we we don't live in a one-year, two-year window.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: In two years from now, the president's gonna change, the entire House of Representatives is gonna change, and the current reality in the American uh election is more a reflection and a referendum on the current American administration.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's not really a referendum on Israel.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's the reality.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: But getting back to it, I think there is, there was a third option that can avoid another election that is talked about a lot in the Israeli media.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: That I'm hopeful that it may work.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think realistically it will.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's been there's been basically two major campaigns going on right now in the Israeli media.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: And one is that it's time for a unity government without what they're calling the extremists, without the post-Zionists, without the anti-Zionists.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's saying let's leave Yar Golan and the post-Zionist parties out, let's leave the Arab anti-Zionist parties out, let's leave the Kharedi anti-Zionist parties out, and let's create a unity coalition in the middle, which is Ghadi Aizenkot on one side, Benjamin Tanyal on the other, and they each bring another party in, whether it's Pitsal Smotric and Naftali Bennett or Lieberman in there, and you bring what's called they call they're calling it the Brita Michel team, the the what would you call that in English?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um the what you say?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: The coalition of service.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: The coalition of service, the coalition of those that serve.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: All those parties represent the majority of a population that's serving in the army, and they can create a fairly stable and numbers-wise coalition that includes enough players to have you know 67 seats at that point.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: The question is gonna be do they love the country more than they hate BB?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if they're willing to work together, because Benjamin Netanyahu is still the largest party in that block, he should therefore be the prime minister.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: The question is if they can get over their hatred of Netanyahu and their need to replace him as prime minister and form a ruling coalition.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's been one big campaign.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I don't think it's really gonna work.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that government could actually function properly in the sense that it's gonna be a short-lived coalition, and all the members of that coalition are gonna be looking towards the next election and gonna be very careful to deliver on enough of their campaign promises and not break any of their major campaign promises, which they would all have to do in order to make that happen, in order to not damage their ability to get elected in the future.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: The other campaign that's been going on, which I find even more disturbing, I don't find that disturbing, I find that I find disturbing, is trying to make the Arab parties to normalize them as part of the ruling government and make them a normal, completely acceptable part of the Israeli political life.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't necessarily have anything against the Arab population in Israel as a whole, but the reality is that the parties that were elected and the members of the parties that are elected, they're not just anti-Zionists, they represent the jihadi ideals of taking over Israel and removing its Jewish character and destroying the state from within.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it identifies a huge problem that we have internally of a how these parties were allowed to run for Knesset in the first place, how people who disagree with the existence of Israel as a Jewish state are allowed to vote.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: These are all issues that it brought to the forefront that now no one's been willing to deal with for the last 40 years and been minimized.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is there's a huge campaign saying, no, the Arabs make up 20% of the Israeli population.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: They should have representation in the Knesset.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: They should, their members should be active members of the government.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the reality is that if 20% of your population wants to destroy your country from within, the the ideals we need to learn how to protect ourselves from these ideals.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's a problem that America is dealing with right now with the influx of Muslim progressive ideology into their the base of their electorate.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: And this has been the eternal problem of democracies, how you protect yourself, how you maintain your liberties and your free speech and your free association and your freedom of religion, but still maintain a protection for your core ideals so that you don't destroy yourself from within.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this has been a problem that every democracy has faced in history, and now we're facing it here in Israel.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I I was gonna touch on all of those issues.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I have to be honest, a lot of people raised alarm.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: How can it be that there are so many seats?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: How did the Arab parties suddenly get so many seats?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there's talks about uh uh fraud and electioneering.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is they're all legal voters.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: It not only is legal voters, the we're the Arab population makes up between 17 to 20 percent of this country.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: That is the they now represent the legitimate number of seats in the Knesset.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: That those are their representatives.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we can discuss anti-Zionism, post-Zionism, um the uh the the the uh the extreme Islamic aspect of it, the communist aspect, all of these things are legitimate.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: But as of now, Israel calls itself a democracy.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: That, and like you said, we're now grow Israel is maturing as a state after 75 years, we're facing the exact same challenges that are happening, that is happening in Europe, that is happening in the US, that is happening in South America.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: You call yourself a democracy, but you have all of these competing ideologies, some of them may even be anti-democratic within your system, and you cannot come along and say, in the name of democracy, we are going to be anti-democratic.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's the thing.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a challenge that the countries need to face.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I actually, on one hand, I actually think is it's a good thing that it has come to where it is today.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: For the simple fact is it is now in our face.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: It is a challenge, it has created a situation that we need to acknowledge.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it is a bad thing, I'm not saying it is a problem.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying it has now come to the public's attention and we need to acknowledge the situation.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: What we do from here, that's a different question.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: But this is the reality we are in.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: We have avoided and even lied to ourselves for so long, and now it is here.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a chat, this is something we need to deal with one way or the other.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: At the very least, start acknowledging we have a huge chunk of the population that has now exercised their democratic right to choose a large amount of representatives that represent them.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what does that mean for the future of Israel?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: There are many things we need to acknowledge.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm gonna take a step back because I think we're gonna we've spoken this, we've spoken enough about this particular topic.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go back to uh what I said earlier about the technical aspect and the ceremony of selecting the head of the oppos the head of the prime minister.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Something that I noticed that kind of went un unspoken about is it was almost understood that who which parties the uh the right-wing parties would choose Netanyahu, the opposition parties chose Gazi uh Ghadi Eisencart, but there was one major exception.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, sorry, there were two major exceptions.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: The one was one of the Arab parties said they're not going to recommend anyone, which was understood.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: But a strange thing was the United Torah Judaism Party, the Haredi Ashkenazi party, also didn't recommend anyone.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this party has been part of the Netanyahu Netanyahu's um coalition forever.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, they were also part of Rabin's coalition before that.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they're also part they're they're yeah, keep going.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that they didn't say they're on Netanyahu's camp was very interesting because while they didn't take a side, it is so clear to anyone that Gaudi Isencott, one we just said about it, one of his major things was the Haredi draft.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Whether he's going to implement it or he can implement it is a different question.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: But we have the the one of the Haredi parties, in essence, not supporting Netanyahu, he's clearly on his side.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I don't think that's necessarily what you can learn from it.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's there's two major implications of that statement.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: And when the head of the party makes that statement publicly, he's talking to both Gaudi Eisencote and to Netanyahu.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: He was telling Gaudi Eisenquote, listen, make me an offer, and I'm happy to join your side.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because in the end of the day, it's all about resources for his constituency.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: That is what drives the Khari political decision making.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's whoever will give me more resources for my constituency, and that's it.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's the beginning end of their ideology.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a message to Gaudi Eisenquote and the current opposition saying, listen, make us an offer and we'll see if we can make it work.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: But it's more importantly, it's a message to Netanyahu saying that listen, you think I'm in your pocket, but I'm willing to play both sides, and my price for me to join your coalition just got even higher.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because now I'm recognizing and I'm stating publicly that without me, you don't have a coalition.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: So he's basically by saying that out loud, he's messaging both sides saying, my price just went up.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing is I think that we're the reality is that when we look at it, we think of the Kharedi draft issue as the number one issue for the current opposition.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where a lot of people get it wrong.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the number one issue for the current opposition is replacing Netanyahu.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: And they are willing to sacrifice the Kharedi draft issue and give what the Kharedi parties whatever they need to join their coalition in order to replace Netanyahu.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: And they look at it as once we replace Netanyahu, then we can worry about everything else and a future government.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: But first we have to get him out of office and kind of move on.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because without without replacing him, we can't heal as a nation.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because somehow he's the beginning and end of all of our problems.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't give him that much credit.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think he's the beginning and end of all of our problems.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think he definitely has caused some of them.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: I definitely think he's solved some of them.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: And he has, you know, we have to give him credit for the good and the bad.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is, is replacing Netanyahu doesn't just magically fix everything.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the way the opposition looks at it, and they're definitely willing to sacrifice Kharedi enlistment right now for replacing BB right now.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's where I think we're gonna have to leave it now, and exactly that point.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the ideal is for many people, is exactly what you spoke about previously: this unity government where you have Netanyahu, Isencott, someone from the right, someone from the left sitting together and actually making a unity government.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: I can't see that happening.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: I really don't see that happening for two things.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: One, like you've just said, there is too much at stake.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Too many people voted specifically.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let's replace Netanyahu.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: That is what too many people voted for.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's what too many people ran on.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Replacing Netanyahu, not joining him.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the second is something that I'm gonna say is actually more slightly sinister.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: The Haredi, the ultra-orthodox Haredi Party, UTJ, uh, are playing a political game.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're a very shrewd, smart political actor.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Gadi Eisencott is new to politics.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's appears to be a very decent person.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's not shrewd, and I don't think he is politically aware enough to be able to play politics the way it needs to be played at the moment.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I think he can be sure of is if he joins Netanyahu in any type of configuration or coalition, he will get swallowed up and destroyed.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: Every single outside person that has joined Netanyahu in some type of unity or anything for the betterment of the country.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Just recently, Benny Gans, the former head of the opposition, in the name of the betterment of the country, joined Netanyahu after October 7th.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: He is he was chewed up and made so politically irrelevant that he didn't even run in the current election.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: And Gadi Eisencott is looking at that and saying, maybe for the betterment of the country, I can say that, but I will be abandoning a lot of the people who voted for me, and I will end my political career because Nathaniel will politically steamroll me.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Which is why I see the idea of a coalition government is uh between the right and left is not going to happen.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the the beauty is within the next six weeks, we'll have an answer.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll either, in six weeks of talking about this that we have coming up now, we will either have a functioning coalition or we'll be back in elections and we'll be able to know what's going to happen.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the bottom line is the most important question we have, whether it's for our elected officials to be asking themselves or us as the people of Israel to be asking us, what's more important for us?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: Do we love Israel more than we hate Bibi?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: And do we love Israel more than we hate any other specific sector of society?
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the message that we need to move forward.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: Whether we create some sort of a coalition or we go back into elections, that's what we need to be asking ourselves is what our priorities are moving forward and what's more important to us.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: And do we love the state of Israel and the people of Israel more than we hate any one political entity?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: I like all that.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to add one more thing from my point of view is I think the people of the state of Israel, the citizens, the electorate, the voters, the people who live here, we are a lot stronger and much more unified than our political leadership.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: We get things done.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll be okay.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for joining us.
• 44:26
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• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: For all your events in Israel, BeTheirIsrael.com provides live streaming services so your friends and family can join you virtually from around the world.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: And remember like, share, and subscribe.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Israel Chai.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Israel Chai.