Israel general discussion

[danny]

Wow, was I wrong, Dannon is trying for leadership.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.625791

What major differences, if any, are there between Dannon and Feiglin anyway? I get the feeling that Dannon is more secularist, while Feiglin is basically Bayit Yehudi's outpost in Likud. Anything else?

Not at all, Dannon is closer to JH than Feiglin is. Dannon is a conventional very right wing. Feiglin is far more liberterian, he wants to privatise the school system and the land, would actually get rid of some of the religious laws and supports legalising marijuana.

[danny]

Yes,  that too.

[danny]

IIRC Shas and Jewish Home do not play well together, and Yesh Atid is a very poor fit for a coalition with Jewish Home.

Shas and JH would be fine together, and so would YA and JH, just like they are in a coalition right now. It's YA and Shas that wouldn't work.

  Does Netanyahu invite in Labor?

Yes.

[danny]

Do both Shas and UTJ get invited in, or just Shas? Shas gets them to just 61-62 seats; no way Bibi forms a government that small.

Any government that includes Shas is very likely to also include UTJ.

More importantly, what does labor say?

That's a much harder question, can't say right now.

[danny]

Geocartography is a joke pollster, don't treat it seriously.

[danny]

I changed the title so that we wouldn't need a duplicate and to be more like the threads for the other countries.

[danny]

since the issue of Syrian refugees has come up, a poll has been done about with very definitive results:

Do you support or oppose accepting refugees in Israel?

Oppose: 80%
Support: 11%
Don't know: 9%

Bibi is definitely with most Israelis on this issue.

[danny]

Anyone going to challenge Herzog. He can't win imo.

This is the Labour party, of course he will be challenged. Huldai seems almost certain, but there may be others.

[danny]

We have a change in the Knesset, Daniel Atar was chosen as the next head of the Jewish National Fund, and will be replaced by Yael Cohen Paran.

 Yael comes originally from the Green Movement, which unsuccessfully ran on its own in 2009, in 2013 it ran with Livni's Hatnuah with a representative of the party placed at number 13 (Hatnuah ended up with just 6 seats). In 2015 Yael was the representative of The Green Movement in Livnis party, which then merged with Labour to form the Zionist Union. Yael was placed at number 25 but the Zionist Union only got 24 seats, so she was left out until now.

Yael will presumably focus on environmental issues as that has always been what she dealt with so far. She was at one point the leader of the anti road 6 movement (which thankfully lost, road 6 is great).

[danny]

http://www.timesofisrael.com/sudanese-attacks-israeli-on-ethiopian-airlines-flight/

An Israeli citizen was attacked by a Sudanese Muslim on a flight after he learned the man was Jewish.  There doesn't seem to be much outrage or concern from the world at these attacks.  I can only imagine what the reaction would be if the roles were reversed.

I know anti-Semites are stupid but hating Jews and moving to Israel is pretty stupid even for a racist.

I'm not sure what this response has to do with story, the attacker was Sudanese and the flight was between Chad and Ethiopia.

[danny]

A new poll by Maagar Mochot:

Likud: 31
ZU: 20
Yesh Atid: 15
Joint List:13
Jewish Home: 9
Shas: 8
Yisrael Beitenu: 8
UTJ: 6
Meretz: 5
Kulanu: 5

[danny]

I think most non Arab Christians are immigrants from the former USSR, and I imagine they vote similarly to Jewish immigrants, with Likud and Beitenu doing well.

[danny]

Stop.

Not sure how you still manage to be surprised or disappointed when we disagree, when basically all our conversations are based on disagreement (and granted, some agreement)... I already told you I am a huge supporter of Feiglin.

There's disagreement and there's endorsing Zalman Moshe Fegelein's latest cult front.
EDIT: Also, what are these "recent developments" or should I be afraid to ask?

What is so bad about Feiglin? I'm not planning on voting for him, but I can appreciate that he is an independent thinker and tries to have a consistent world view even when I don't agree with him, and isn't content to have the convenient opinions about everything other then security/settlements.

[danny]

Stop.

Not sure how you still manage to be surprised or disappointed when we disagree, when basically all our conversations are based on disagreement (and granted, some agreement)... I already told you I am a huge supporter of Feiglin.

There's disagreement and there's endorsing Zalman Moshe Fegelein's latest cult front.
EDIT: Also, what are these "recent developments" or should I be afraid to ask?

What is so bad about Feiglin? I'm not planning on voting for him, but I can appreciate that he is an independent thinker and tries to have a consistent world view even when I don't agree with him, and isn't content to have the convenient opinions about everything other then security/settlements.

They say the same thing about Zoabi.

Ok, so what is your problem with Feiglin beyond your general problem with right wing Israelis?

[danny]

Ok, so what is your problem with Feiglin beyond your general problem with right wing Israelis?

Well, there's the fact that he manages to seamlessly bind theocratic principles with hyperliberarian economics, more so than literally any other figure in Israel that I can think of.
I also get a vibe of genuine nastiness from him (and no I don't get this feeling from all or even most Israeli right-wingers, even those from the more... theocratic end).
I'm also pretty sure he's a closet Kahanist (didn't he work with them back in the day?)

Feiglin is less theocratic than you would expect from a religious right winger, he opposes all kinds of religious laws that are supported even by Likud, much less BY.
Nastiness is very subjective so I can't really argue with that, but he seems like a genuinely nice guy to me.
Feiglin doesn't keep his opinions in the closet, and they don't really match Kahane's. Of course sometimes the opinions match and maybe there was some cooperation that I'm not aware of (this was before my time). But if this is your criteria to be against him, then you should be even more worried with BY, their number 2 sat in the same party with openly Kahannist Ben Ari pretty recently.

[danny]

Yeah it's hard to imagine Regev as PM. I suppose it would be pretty funny, but it's still a bad idea.

[danny]

a) Still no one has put up any evidence that torture actually took place.

It doesn't seem necessary, no one is really denying that torture is taking place, at most there is a disagreement on how severe the torture is. The real debate is between those who are against the torture and those who support it.

[danny]

a) Still no one has put up any evidence that torture actually took place.

It doesn't seem necessary, no one is really denying that torture is taking place, at most there is a disagreement on how severe the torture is. The real debate is between those who are against the torture and those who support it.

Shin Bet has, and continues to vociferously deny torture took place.
http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/327965/israels-shin-bet-denies-torturing-duma-suspects/

I read that response, and nowhere in it do they actually deny any torture, they just make vague claims of other people lying about something. This statement is entirely consistent with torture, if they wanted to deny torture they could have just done that.

[danny]

A Poll of Israelis about the US presidential election:
Clinton: 41%
Trump: 14%
Cruz: 7%
Sanders: 5%
Rubio: 4%
No Opinion: 29%

obviously, it's mostly about name recognition at this point.

[danny]

It was recently revealed that Bernie Sanders volunteered at Kibbutz Sha'ar Ha'amakim in his youth, so I thought I would check their voting in the last election:
ZU: 55.3%
Meretz: 34.2%
Yesh Atid: 6.7%
Kulanu: 1.4%
Green Leaf: 0.9%
Likud: 0.7%

Yeah, not very surprising.

[danny]

It was actually once a "capital" kibbutz for Hashomer Hatzair and Mapam and a strong Meretz voting hub. But like many Kibutzim of Mapam it drifted strongly toward Labour. There are still some very left wing Mapam Kibutzim out there but the general trend had been toward Labour. During the 60's though...it was hard to the left and they still held strong Marxist-Leninist views and USSR links.

Also, since this was revealed it caused quite a stir. The Sanders campaign did some tremendous efforts to conceal the identity of the Kibutz he was in (and his brother even flat out lied). Many conspiracy theories sprung as Sanders also divorced his first wife after they left...some suggested checking to see who was born some 9 months later

Very odd that he would try to conceal that, I don't see why that Kibbutz would matter over another.

[danny]

New poll from Maariv:

Likud: 27
Yesh Atid: 18
ZU: 15
Joint List: 12
Jewish Home: 12
Yisrael Beitenu: 10
Shas: 7
UTJ: 6
Kulanu: 6
Meretz: 6

[danny]

Channel one poll:

Likud: 25
Yesh Atid: 21
ZU: 15
Joint List: 13
Jewish Home: 12
Yisrael Beitenu: 8
UTJ: 7
Shas: 7
Meretz: 6
Kulanu: 6

The biggest change being the collapse of ZU (Herzog has been terrible) with the lost votes being gained by Lapid.

[danny]

Are there any places where I can look up polling since the last election? Wikipedia doesn't seem to have anything.

The last one that I know of from march 9:

Channel one poll:

Likud: 25
Yesh Atid: 21
ZU: 15
Joint List: 13
Jewish Home: 12
Yisrael Beitenu: 8
UTJ: 7
Shas: 7
Meretz: 6
Kulanu: 6

The biggest change being the collapse of ZU (Herzog has been terrible) with the lost votes being gained by Lapid.

[danny]

New poll from channel 10:

Likud: 25
YA: 20
JL: 14
ZU: 13
JH: 12
YB: 9
Kulanu: 9
Shas: 6
UTJ: 6
Meretz: 6