Daphni Leef has destroyed MK Tzipi Livni. That was not the intention; that was not the goal. When a dozen young men and women put up tents on Rothschild Boulevard in mid-July, they did not think at all about the chairwoman of Kadima. When hundreds of thousands of young people marched in the streets on Saturday nights in summer, they were not waving signs that said “down with Kadima.” But life is amusing. It has its own mean sense of humor.
The social protest boosted MK Shelly Yachimovich. Shelly Yachimovich crushed Tzipi Livni. And the Yachimovich-Livni dynamic made Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even more powerful: It left him without a real rival who can undermine him and present an alternative. Thus, the cigar-smoker, who had everyone furious at him, ended up benefiting from that fury.
Instead of destroying Netanyahu, Daphni Leef built him up. Instead of bringing down industrial giants Nochi Dankner, Yitzhak Tshuva and Shari Arison, she brought down Tzipi Livni. The ironic political outcome of the summer revolution is a mortal blow to the head of the opposition and the transformation of the prime minister into a strong national leader.
Livni helped Leef destroy Livni. Over the past hundred days she made three major mistakes. The first was to do nothing while the Rothschild revolution was underway; she was detached from it. She recalled that the person who brought her into politics was Avigdor Lieberman, who had instructed her to privatize as much as she could as head of the Government Companies Authority. She remembered that she had indeed privatized and privatized and privatized. And so, when the public rose up against the ethos of privatization, she remained chilly. As an honest person, Livni stayed faithful to the religion of privatization and concentrated capitalism of Kadima. But in so doing, she proved that she does not listen to the voice of the people and the spirit of the times. She said nothing worthwhile in the face of the most important social action that has ever happened here. With her own two hands, Livni made herself irrelevant.
Her second mistake was to call on Netanyahu to attack Hamas in August 2011 after the bloody terror attack near Eilat. If her call had been heeded, Israel would have embarked on Operation Cast Lead 2. Soldiers would have killed and been killed in Gaza while missiles fell on Holon. The fragile alliance with Egypt would have been broken and the complex relations with Turkey would have become even more entangled. This time the peace camp understood the seriousness of the issue. It did not accept the positions of the person it had preferred over Meretz in the elections of 2009. It had had enough. Even leftists do not like to come out looking like chumps. And so, very quietly, the left lifted the mantle of protection that it knows how to lay on the shoulders of its darlings. Kadima’s leader is still being coddled, but it is not like it used to be. The teflon is scratched. The great white hope is no longer white and not as great as it was.
The third mistake was Gilad Shalit. Livni’s position on Shalit was reasoned and courageous. If she had stood up and publicly spoken her mind, many would have appreciated and respected her for it. But Livni remained silent before the swap and attacked it afterward. She lost out twice. On the one hand she is perceived as heartless and on the other hand as weak-hearted. There is no more affection, no more esteem, no more sympathy. The polls are in a nose-dive. Tzipora is destroyed.
Israel is the land of the comebacks and Livni might very well stage one. But in Kadima they are not waiting; they are sharpening their knives. When the party chairwoman no longer enjoys the charms of pollster Mina Tzemach, she also loses the charm she once had among members of her party. That is why the demand has now been heard to move up Kadima’s internal election, and the increased chances of Shaul Mofaz to win it.
Everything is still open but the situation is not simple. Livni can still shuffle the deck by joining Netanyahu at a late date and establishing a Zionist centrist government. She can also shuffle the cards by a late shake-up in Kadima and turn it into a real opposition. But if she does not offer a new way and a new message soon, she will face a threat of a new magnitude. The window of opportunity given her by Ariel Sharon, the media and the goddess of fortune is about to close.
Those polls will likely come down as the Shalit deal fades…Bibi faces significant opposition within his own party, which he has so far managed to quell, but if he shows any signs of weakness, it could be the end of him. I suspect rockets will start coming from Gaza again, fast and furious, and I guarantee some of the released animals will be behind that, as soon as that happens Likud’s poll numbers will drop…
Speak of the devil: New Polls out yesterday:
For what it’s worth:
Poll: Likud Up to 37 Knesset Seats
Channel 2 poll shows Likud with 10 seats more than it has now, Kadima plunging by 11.
I see your point, Yamit. Yes, the major blocs are the same, after “Kadima-Likud” and “Kadima-Labor” sort themselves back into their original parties.
I glanced at the article about Netanyahu’s “keeping mum” on Avigdor Lieberman’s verbal assaults on Abu Mazen, and thought to myself, “Ah, the old ‘Good cop, bad cop’ routine!” Lieberman, of course, played “bad cop” to make Bibi look better. Then I got to thinking of how Lieberman’s Israel Beiteinu party ever got into the government: It was because the “Nationalist Bloc” has such a small majority, they had to include parties, such as Beiteinu, that they otherwise would have excluded. If the “Nationalist Camp”, or “Right” gets a slightly greater majority than they have now, and is built upon a core of an even stronger Likud than we now have, Lieberman and Beiteinu could well be excluded: The “right” would then represent Likud, Shas, the Phohibitionists and the Anti-Masonic Party (In Israeli politics, you never know).
When it comes down to the individual voter, though, I don’t think things will change awfully much. If I were an Israeli and the election were held now, I would probably vote for Lieberman — the same one I would have voted for last election.
Bringing Kadima support down is one thing but if many Kadima supporters do not move to the Likud, that leaves the political blocks more or less in place. The real right wing parties must block a return of BB even if the opposition gets to form a coalition. With BB and likud running the show there is no credible or unified effective opposition. That’s why BB can implement the left’s program with no real internal opposition.
BB has taken most of the wind out of Kadima sails by performing not contrary to Kadima’s positions.
Livni’s problem, is that her party, “Kadima”, doesn’t stand for anything. The only reason Kadima has done as well as it has in the past, is that a significant percentage of the Israeli electorate also has stood for nothing. Adam Smith and Niccolò Machiavelli are not attractive gods to hold up for the people to follow, but, outside of the person of the living god Ariel Sharon, Kadima offered none other. Labor could tout Marx and Darwin who, while upholding the vanity of a self-made humanity, offered a hope of social justice, in Marx’s case, or, in the case of Darwin, “improvement” brought about by easy, effortless mutation. Likud, on the other hand, stood for the nobility of an ancient Jewish people, rooted in the land, and personified by the gods David and Moses. The minor parties also have their own minor deities. The only virtues Kadima has stood for have been capitalism (reflecting their Likud roots, and making them different from Labor) and brute force (represented by Ariel Sharon). Any connection the opportunistic politicians who joined Kadima may once have had, with the ancient and honorable Land of Israel, was severed at Gush Katif and repeated at Amona. Livni is not a “strong man” like Sharon, or even Olmert; and her capitalism is outclassed by that of Netanyahu. The true heart of Kadima lies in a hospital bed, struggling to recover from a stroke.
Yakimovich? I never even heard her name before last summer. In a party having, up until now, more chiefs than Indians, all of them considering themselves the indispensible saviors of Israel, the new blood has a unifying effect. Karl Marx with lipstick.
Israeli politics… yech! American politics is much simpler: We’re given two candidates, sometimes from the same Yale fraternity, and given the choice of Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum. If we find we’ve chosen unwisely, we get to alter Congress every two years as a countermeasure. The we have the chance to vote for Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dum Jr., or Mrs. Tweedle Dum, as the case may be. It gets the job done, of providing an occupant for the White House and, hanging chads permitting, we then get on with life. I guess which is better, depends on what you’re used to.