We may be on the verge of a sea-change; what it will be is far from clear
Why the dinosaurs? What’s about to become extinct?
Listen carefully to the audio of the very brief clip (below) from Saturday night’s protest, and you’ll hear, in part what you’ve been hearing all along. At the very, very end of the clip you hear the protesters—in what was for Jerusalem a massive protest, in Tel Aviv the numbers went from 120,000 to 180,000 on the eve of the Knesset’s returning from its recess—chanting what they’ve been chanting all along. De-Mo-Krat-Ya. You don’t need to speak a lot of Hebrew to know what that means.
But closer to the beginning of the clip, you’ll hear something very different. Listen carefully, and in the midst of the noise you’ll hear, several times, “Napil et ha-shilton”— we’re going to take down the government.
The protesters, who are showing no signs of fatigue in what will likely be a new season of protests and who-knows-what-else (they plan to shut the country down on Thursday), will no longer be satisfied with just pulling back on the judicial reform throttle. Like Levin and Rothman and those who unleashed the judicial reform plan, the opponents of the plan are also in no mood to compromise. They plan to block judicial reform altogether (even as President Herzog and Bibi insist they are working towards a compromise), and now, they want the government gone.
It’s not at all unlikely that within a year, they’ll get what they want. What would replace it? More on that below.
Trust the polls at your own peril. This is not to say, however, that the data collected is useless, but let us use the data cited by Gordis in his column and see how well it fits the facts we know to be real. The polling would have us believe that the Left and Right are each being defeated by Benny Gantz who, by the way, is clearly on the Left and not the center as many like to present him. It is important to note that the demand to support judicial reform came from the public as they recognized the unbridled control of the state by the Leftist High Court as well as the level of incompetence with which this Leftist High Court wields its power against the interest of Israel and the Israeli public. So if the polling is accurate, it would indicate the public have surrendered to the status quo – but does this polling fit the facts which we know to be true? Indeed, if the polls are accurate, then riddle me this: if the anti-judicial reform movement has grown so powerful and the secular Likud supporters are leaving the pro-Judicial Reform camp, who were the 600K plus people who showed up at the recent National Camp rally in support of Judicial Reform. Additionally, as the Leftist ‘center’ is being presented by the polls to have expanded with converts of the Right and the ‘Left’, the were only able to number somewhere near a third of this National Camp. Do recall further that the Leftist ‘center’ is , no doubt, still being funded by foreign sources which should not be expected to be limited to the US State Dept alone, so where are the swelling ranks of Gantz’ support depicted in the polls which are meant to shake our faith in the public’s support for judicial reform. Hence, if we are to gain anything from the polls Gordis cites, it is that they are out of sync with reality, and that they are likely so wide of the mark to move the public towards accepting their captured status under this incompetence ridden High Court. Indeed, data is just data and will usually tell you something, even if it is not related to the purpose for which the data was collected. For example, in this current situation, what these polls tell me is that their results, for whatever reason, are somewhat far afield from where the facts truly stand at the moment. So, as I stated, trust the polls at your own peril.
Rasmussen, Baris and other reputable pollsters have confessed of the difficulty associated with trying to prevent an overt bias from being introduced into any poll, as it is not only related to the subject being discussed, but the polling question and even the inflection of the pollster’s voice which can spread a poll wide of the truth, even when there is not any intent to do so…and then too, there is the issue of polls being conducted whose primary intent is to do so. Data is just data, but the rule of ‘garbage in’ equals ‘garbage out’ is always a related concern when trusting data as being accurate.
**Amended May 1, 2023 AT 8:43pm
What a smug, worthless article. Those who slobber with glee at the prospects of judicial reform failing are self-satisfied fools. They pride themselves on their skills in manipulating the public and out-maneuvering their opponents—and the country can go to hell for all they care. Anyone who can’t see who is really on the side of democracy in this power struggle is either a fool or a knave.