Israel general discussion

[Famous Mortimer]

Basically every Knesset for the last 10 years had the votes to legalize secular marriage but it didn't happen.

Not going to happen with gay marriage either.

[Famous Mortimer]

Who is still supporting The Movement at this point? What could possibly be their rationale?

[Famous Mortimer]

Yesh Atid are not left. They are libertarians. They are horrible.

[Famous Mortimer]

Yesh Atid stand for nothing except vague platitudes. They are terrible.

[Famous Mortimer]

Yesh Atid are not left. They are libertarians. They are horrible.

Yesh Atid might be described as Liberal or more accurately a party of non ideology sponsored by the rich and the old school establishment

Yesh Atid is essentially Yair Lapid's vehicle and nothing more.  It has no ideology. 

I think you overrate Yair Lapid's intelligence, he's ultimately the puppet not the puppeteer

Yep, trick some left-wingers into voting for a party that literally every serious commentator knew was going to support a Netanyahu government.

[Famous Mortimer]

The main difference during the campaign was that Hatnuah said several times unequivocally that they would never support a Netanyahu government (they did soften their language a few days before the election).

Yesh Atid basically planned to be in the Netanyahu government from the start. Although they did go back and fourth, making noise about whether or not they would allow Shas to be in government with them.

Right now, with them both in government, it's basically all personality.

[Famous Mortimer]

New poll, unsure by who:

18 [--] New Netanyahu Led Party

17 [20] Likud

16 [15] Labor

16 [12] Bayit Yehudi

11 [06] Meretz

10 [19] Yesh Atid

07 [07] Yahadut Hatorah/UTJ

05 [11] Yisrael Beitenu

05 [11] Shas

04 [06] Movement

04 [04] Hadash

04 [04] Ra’am-Ta’al

03 [03] Balad

00 [02] Kadima

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/176860#.Uun-mLS6obR

http://knessetjeremy.com/category/knesset/polls/

[Famous Mortimer]

Also, who would break away with Netanyahu?

I'm guessing Rubi Rivlin and Tzachi Hanegbi would be the only sure bets. Maybe Yisrael Katz? Livnat???

[Famous Mortimer]

Is Bibi pulling a Sharon a serious possibility?

It's being seriously talked about.

I personally doubt it will happen.

Whatever peace deal Netanyahu ends up signing is going to be so historically insignificant it will hardly justify the energy on either the pro- or anti-Netanyahu side.

[Famous Mortimer]

Not a poll but the extra-parliamentary Am Shalem (Whole Nation) party, which won 1.2% in the last election, merged with Likud. It previously looked like they were going to merge with The Jewish Home but their leader, former Shas MK Haim Amsalem, said The Jewish still took too hard a line on regulating conversions.

[Famous Mortimer]

Nothing. That's what Liberman has done. He's done nothing and that's why he can expect to lose a lot of support. He has has lost most of his hawkish supporters to Jewish Home and most of his secular supporters to Yesh Atid.

[Famous Mortimer]

Likud now has 20 MKs and Yesh Atid has 19.

There is speculation that in his capacity as Foreign Minister, Lieberman will appoint Likud MK Carmel Shama-Hacohen (who actually only became an MK like a week ago, replacing Ruby Rivlin, who became President) as Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. He would then be replaced by the next person on the Likud Betenyu list, who is from Yisrael Betenyu. That would mean Likud and Yesh Atid would be tied for 19 seats each.

[Famous Mortimer]

Jewish Home supporters would read Makor Rishon, the National Religious newspaper.

Arutz Sheva (Channel 7) is the National Religious news channel, which also has a pretty extensive English language website.

You can tell their orientation because they both call the West Bank "Judea and Samaria" that's a right-wing shibboleth, just like if an American news source says "Democrat Party".

The Jerusalem Post is centrist to soft left. It was aligned with Labor and then Kadima. As there really isn't a left-wing opposition anymore it's kind of just floating around. It defends Netanyahu pretty hard against the right-wing of Likud but other than that is kind of generic, neo-liberal, two state solution supporter. I'm talking about their English coverage of course, I can't read Hebrew.

[Famous Mortimer]

Ariel Atias, one of the three leaders of Shas, resigned from the Knesset for no reason apparently.

[Famous Mortimer]

The leftiest English newspaper would be Times of Israel, Haaretz.com
I would call the Post centrist with a soft right tendency.

Regarding Makur Rishon, the elite/hardcore of the JH reads that the mass of voters probably read anything from Israel Hayum/Maariv/YH. By the way in an interesting twist of events Sheldon Edelson bought Makur Rishon recently and last week changed the entire board and editors.

Would it be far to say that people who were in the old NRP read Makur Rishon and most of the new supporters brought in by Bennett probably read Israel Hayum?

[Famous Mortimer]

New Knesset channel poll:

Likud: 30
Jewish Home: 18
Labour: 15
Yesh Atid: 10
Meretz: 10
Shas: 9
Yisrael Beitenu: 8
UTJ: 7
Hatnua: 4
RAAM TAAL: 3
Balad: 3
Hadash: 3

Do you think Hanin Zouabi's citizenship should be revoked?

Yes: 78% (it only lists the yes, I couldn't find how many said no/don't know).

War time polls are always right biased. I will wait for after the war we find out we lost 60+ troops for nothing, the blame game begins, and 2015 budget with the shock doctrine to pay for this war hits. I honestly think Bibi is done and dusted

If Bibi is done, who could possibly take over?

[Famous Mortimer]

3% for Lapid is terrible for him. Does that mean basically all the people who support Yesh Atid in the party poll are Netanyahu supporters?

[Famous Mortimer]

What happened to Hatnuah anyway? I quite liked Livni and it's sad to see her languishing near threshold level.

1 Yes Atid
2 Joining the Netanyahu government.

[Famous Mortimer]

Or she'll just merge with Labor.

[Famous Mortimer]

Minister of Internal Affairs and Likud number 2 Gideon Sa'ar has resigned the Knesset.

Rumor is, he is going to link up with former Likud MK Moshe Kahlon. Kahlor has been planning to set up his own party. The thing is though, Kahlon's gimmick is that he's economically "left-wing" and Sa'ar is a pretty generic conservative. Having him in the new party would take away its raison d'etre and pretty much make it just "Likud 2"

So that fact led to a new rumor, that Sa'ar and Kahlon are going to work together to topple Netanyahu as Likud leader.

Also worth noting, Netanyahu is planning to appoint Likud number 3 Gilad Erdan as ambassador to the UN.

If Sa'ar and Kahlon do end up forming their own party, it means Netanyahu will have basically gotten rid of anyone who could challenge him for leadership.

[Famous Mortimer]

Oh, and Sa'ar will be replaced in the Knesset by the next person on the Likud Beytenu list (even though Likud Beytenu doesn't exist anymore) who is a member of Yisrael Beytenu.

With that loss of a seat, Yesh Atid becomes the largest party in parliament.

[Famous Mortimer]

Balad is trying to unite the Arab parties to overcome the new threshold. If it does happen, it looks like it will just be Balad and the UAL. Hadash will stay out of it. If it doesn't happen, Balad will probably boycott.

[Famous Mortimer]

He would have to ally with the right because the left wouldn't have enough to put him over the top. They wouldn't even have enough to put him over the top before he took half of their votes away, so especially not after.

If you're asking who he would prefer to form a coalition with if the right and left blocs where 50/50 (which would never happen). Probably still the right. He was a Likud member for a long time. He even endorsed Likud after he resigned the Knesset.

[Famous Mortimer]

Vote on Monday on easing the process of conversion to Judaism.

It will probably fail. Livni has said she will leave the government if it does although there's a chance she'll stay anyway.

There's also a small chance it will actually pass.

Netanyahu is likely secretly hoping it fails so that he can maintain good relations with Shas and UTJ for future coalitions.

[Famous Mortimer]

Kahlon isn't left-wing but he also seems not to hate poor people. He's kind of like an Israeli Rick Santorum minus the obsession with gays.