Jeremy's Knesset Insider has the final polls for Israel's election Tuesday. According to the average, Likud wins 33 seats, the Blue and Whites 32. The big winner may be Avigdor Liberman and Israel Betinyu with 8 seats. That would make him king maker. With Liberman the left block could theoretically form a coalition, were they to invite the Arab parties into the government.
To chip away at Liberman's support, Bibi has been touting annexation of Judea/Samaria and war with Hamas.
Remember, nobody but Labour (due to get shellacked once more) and Meretz (Quislings) cares about 'peace'. The big issues are security and the religious clash. The Haredi control Israel's religious life but barely work and are exempt from the military.
Bastards.
Still, we expect Stroock's law about elections to hold, whereby polls underestimate conservative support/turnout by a few points.
Avigdor Liberman, who scuttled Bibi's attempts to form a government, may come out the big winner in next week's election. Here's a poll showing his Israel Beitenu party winning nine seats, and here's another showing him winning 10.
Liberman's big sticking point is ending Haredi privilege in Israel, something this blog can get behind. The Times of Israel has a great writeup of the man:
Liberman has long relied on support from Israelis who, like him, have roots in the former Soviet Union, but polls show the ex-defense minister has widened his appeal recently, making him a potential kingmaker in the September 17 elections.
They may be Israelis, they may be Jews, but these people are still RUSSIAN. Which means they look at Palestinian problem and wonder why not crush beneath treads of tank. Lierberman has long called for harsher measures against the Palestinians.
The ToI quotes a citizen:
Yermononok said Liberman “is the only one who fights the special treatment the ultra-Orthodox get” from the state — echoing a common complaint from secular Israelis. They “don’t work, don’t serve in the army, receive child benefits and all sorts of discounts in transportation, municipal taxes and education,” the former nurse said. “Other Israelis, including the Russians, work like crazy, pay their taxes and send their children to combat units."
No friend of Bibi and the Haredi, hmmm...maybe he makes a deal with Ganz and the Blue and Whites?
Two new polls at Jeremy's Knesset Insider show that this September's Knesset elections will leave Israel more or less where it stands now, politically.
We're still counting on the Stroock Rule, or Will's Rule, or whatever we called it, and assuming the right is under-polling a bit.
Meanwhile Drudge links to a France24 report in which an Israeli minister brags about killing Iranians:
An Israeli minister boasted Sunday that his country was the only one that "has been killing Iranians", after tensions between Britain and Iran rose in the Gulf. Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi's comments to public radio were a reference to Israeli strikes in neighbouring Syria against Iranian and Hezbollah military targets. But they came after Iran seized a British-flagged tanker on Friday, adding to tensions between Washington and Tehran linked to a 2015 nuclear deal. Hanegbi accused Iran, Israel's main enemy, of seeking to create "chaos" and "harm freedom of navigation." Asked if he feared that Israel would not receive the backing of the United States in the case of a conflict with Iran, Hanegbi suggested that Tehran would avoid such a scenario."Israel is the only country in the world that has been killing Iranians for two years," he said. "We strike the Iranians hundreds of times in Syria. Sometimes we acknowledge it and sometimes foreign reports reveal it." He added that the Iranians "understand that Israel means business."
Tough talk from the Israelis always gives us the warm fuzzies.
The Israeli campaign in Syria is going to make a hell of a book one day.
We believe that the Iranians believe that an attack on Israel would be a bad idea. So they look tough by pestering the weakling Brits.
Sounds to us like a case for Palmerston, as the British used to say. Theresa May is not Palmerston. And so Britain's almost ritualistic post-war humiliation continues....
Speaking of books about clandestine Israeli military ops...(in Sudan)
Here's a great website that lists all the latest Israeli election polls. Reader(s) will see that the cake seems to be baked.
Likud and the Blue and Whites are circling each other like the Sharks and the Jets. One poll shows Bibi up a seat another shows Ganz up a seat.
For a couple of years we've noted that polls underestimate conservative vote percentages, not just in Israel but in the whole English speaking world. If that still holds true then Bibi is in fantastic shape.
It's a tight race between Bibi and Gantz, but overall the right bloc wins between 60-65 seats.
We get more Bibi, more Bibi, more Bibi....
