Big surprise, as Tzipi Livny takes the slight lead in the 2009 Israeli elections. 99% percent of the votes have been counted and it seems like no one is expecting the remaining votes to sway the final results. What does this mean for the more progressive left? Well… At least we got a woman prime minister…
Indeed the voting of Tzipi Livny will mean no change for Israel. She’s already met with Avigdor Lieberman, and he has already announced he is open to suggestion. There are further intricacies with this, that quite frankly I’m not completely versed in its details. The gist of it, however, is that Livny will have a hard time putting together a coalition of 61 seats, in which case, the next runner up in the elections will take her place. In our case- Benjamin Netanyahu. (Read my last article to understand the implications.)
Main Stream Media Ignore the Left Again
I could go sentence for sentence and tell you exactly how much prejudice, stereotyping and irony there is, in this piece. The Labor party calling themselves "opposition". Or how detached Meretz is, when they don’t seem to realize that there are parties to the left of them, and that’s where their votes went. Or just the venomous "Leftists, as we know, are a people who like to be tormented", is a sentence that makes my blood boil. But I’m a radical-leftist and so not in it for the torment. Let’s move to positive things.
Trust the Israeli mainstream media to pronounce the Left dead, when, in reality, it’s growing. In a country where "center-Left" (Labor lead by Ehud Barak) is waging war and the "Left" (Meretz) is cheering on the slaughter, only a small portion of the population can truly call themselves Left. In Israel, these people vote Hadash.
Here’s a scrap of the latest poll from Ha’aretz:
If you completely disregard the preposterous claim that Labor is Left wing (I know I do), you can see Meretz, "the doves", have become a marginal party with only 3 sits, while Hadash (and Arab party Ra’am- Ta’al) actually has a lead on them with 4 sits.
Hadash is known to have connections with the Arab parties (it’s not always roses, but they did sign a D’Hondt agreement, which entitles them to each other’s votes that don’t make up a full sit), if they fight together on issues, they will be making up a total of 11 sits, and that’s better than the 7 they had last time. It’s that much more of an opposition to Liebermanian fascism, which is holding a scary 15 sits. I don’t know to say that Balad or Ra’am-Ta’al are looking out for my interests, but as long as there’s an "Arab problem" in Israel, there’s a civil rights problem in Israel.
So yeah, it’s a small victory, but at least tonight, I got my party hat on.
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