The writer of this article) holds a degree in statistics and says there is no way Shaked will pass the threshold. Op-ed.
Oct 18, 2022,
Yair Lapid is a delightful man, far more genial than Netanyahu, and Benny Gantz is well-intentioned and good-looking. Nonetheless, if they continue to hold power, especially if that power is shared with their partners, Meretz and the likes of Ofer Kasif (the MK who said “Palestinians shooting IDF soldiers are like partisans fighting Nazis“), Israel’s fate will resemble a delicious chocolate cake baked for the holidays – it will disappear. Territorially.
This is why you, now reading this article, need to pay careful attention.
Yair Lapid is much nicer than the leaders of the grouchy, bristly Israeli right. But Israel’s right-wing bristly grouches are the very ones who are best at intuiting the mindset of Israel’s many enemies. Yair Lapid’s gray cells do not soak in this sort of knowledge. He cannot help lapsing back into the fond, friendly viewpoint that all human beings are inherently well-intentioned.
This is the core psychological difference between prudent conservatives on the Right and conciliatory liberals on the Left. This is why the Right is unattractive, but correct in its warnings and policies, whereas the Left is inspiring, personable, fulfilling to vote for, but misguided and dangerous. This is why coarse, boorish Churchill opposed Hitler, whereas cultured Chamberlain did not. Chamberlain was not an evil person – to the contrary, he was a gentleman, whereas Churchill was fat, rude, and ill-tempered. It is no coincidence that repulsive Churchill was the one to save the civilized world from Hitler – from the catastrophic problem that benign neglect by Europe’s distinguished Chamberlains had caused.
Some of us think we can vote for the left from time to time, because 80% of the issues that plague Israel are not in controversy between right and left – how to collect the garbage, how to care for Holocaust survivors, and so forth. Naftali Bennett originated this misleading theory.
In fact, the 20% of the issues which ARE in controversy between right and left mysteriously pop up the very instant the left comes to power. This is because Israel’s many enemies (remember them?) make sure to press forward with “their” deadly 20% of the issues, the instant that right-wing hands leave the helm.
This is why the give-away of territorial waters is mysteriously transpiring right now, during the left’s short term in power, to Hezbollah’s glee.
This is why the giveaway of Central Israel’s Golan Heights (the Homesh highlands) is poised to occur and needs only a nod from Gantz, which Gantz could give within days or hours after the election.
This is why the plan to set up a fully armed Palestinian Arab state next-door was suddenly revived and endorsed in the halls of the UN, during Lapid’s tiny power-window (to be continued?? beware of 1 November).
This is also why the Palestinian Arab land-grabbing machine is working at top speed at turning Israel’s front-line settlements in area C into doomed enclaves to render tiny Israel territorially defenseless, as Regavim has found out and reported over and over.
This is not to speak of the “excellent” work of Israel’s enemies in radicalizing Israeli Arabs, as we saw in our mixed cities in 2000.
None of these developments is co-incidential. Israel’s antisemitic enemies are neither illiterate nor stupid; they read the Israeli media and they know exactly who is in power and what can be obtained from them, if they move fast (which they do).
Here is where you, reading this article, need to pay careful attention. There are 3 ways you can inadvertently bring Israel’s Chamberlain-style left to power; you must avoid all three like the plague.
- The first is not to vote at all. I hope that any English-speaking reader knows that everyone must vote – including sick people, families sitting shiva, the handicapped, the elderly and people who are “not interested in politics”. Please make sure everyone you know intends to present themselves on D-day. It is a big mitzva to drive someone to the voting booth if she might otherwise not vote.
- The second is to vote for Benny Gantz. Benny Gantz’s most likely partners are the left – Meretz and the vociferous anti-Zionist parties. Is it possible Gantz might miraculously find someone else to tango with In theory, but the only way to be 100% certain or even 30% certain of a right-wing government, which must be your goal, is simply to cast a vote for the right-wing parties – Likud, Smotrich/Ben-Gvir, or the hareidi parties, UJT or Shas – whichever one you dislike the least.
- The third way to inadvertently crown Israel’s Chamberlain-style left is to vote for Ayelet Shaked. Ayelet Shaked is an exceptionally able and ideological leader, like Eli Yishai, Moshe Feiglin and many others. She was in fact Number One in the 2018 Mattot Arim parliamentary achievement report. However, if you look at uzit.co.il or themadad.com, you will see many surveys, all of which predict that all votes for Ayelet Shaked are going to be wasted.
There are simply not enough modern-religious Zionists, in life-style and in heart, in Efrat, Kfar Saba, Raanana, Givat Shmuel and Rehovot, to hand Ayelet 4 seats as opposed to 2 seats or even 3.
However, the approximately 2 seats that this sector can muster are the very votes which may nudge the right to victory, if cast for right wing parties which do pass the threshold, see list above.
In the past, wasted votes for Bennett and for Eli Yishai had predictable catastrophic results for Israel, and the same is slated to happen if Shaked is so misguided as to continue running, which I hope she does not.
All the claims of Shaked being “close to the electoral threshold” are incorrect, just as they were when voiced about Bennett and Eli Yishai.
For example, the recent report that if Netanyahu were to urge the public to vote for Shaked, her list would miraculously pass the electoral threshold is incorrect. What that poll showed was that ONE possible outcome, statistically, was Shaked getting 3.4% of the vote, and just squeaking by the electoral threshold of 3.25% by less than quarter of a percent (0.15%).
Anyone who (like the writer of this article) holds a degree in statistics knows that the low level of accuracy of polling does not even remotely justify relying on such a tiny possible win, because being quarter of a percent LESS THAN the electoral threshold is just as likely.
I am easy to find online and am pleased to make myself available personally to anyone in the voting public who has questions or concerns about this article or about Israel’s critical situation.
Susie Dym holds an academic degree in statistics from the Hebrew University and is the veteran spokesperson of Mattot Arim (mattot.arim@gmail.com).
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I agree with Peloni as regards the P.M.s influence to get Shaked enough voted to pass the threshold. It’s pure madness for him to “gamble” in the opposite direction.
His attacks on Shaked have only embittered her die-hard supporters, who, regardless of Dym’s statistical speculation, will vote for her no matter what.
And his malicious attacks on her, after her acknowledging her errors, left a bad taste in people who might not normally vote for her, to vow that they will. If the PM could reunite Ben Gvir and Smotrich AFTER they has dissolved and determined to campaign as 2 separate parties, it would be a small task to get extra votes for Jewish Home.,
AND, clearly, she is NOT a leftie, but the exact opposite -which her whole life’s actions show.
Dym’s claim here is that there are not enough Religious Zionists to go around and that Bibi does not have the power to encourage people to support Shaked in this race. I simply do not believe this is true. Shaked has certainly made many profound mistakes in this campaign and in the last one, which is why she is likely in need of Bibi’s support, but I do not believe that Bibi does not have the ability to draw what support is needed to Shaked’s flagging campaign.
Dym’s response is to cite a single poll which shows that with Bibi’s help, Shaked would barely make it over the threshold, and that the margin of success in this single poll, 0.15%, is meaningless with regards to the “low level of accuracy of polling”, as Dym fairly describes it. But this is the very point which Sebastien has been raising over several days, albeit not to demonstrate that Bibi’s support would not be enough, but to demonstrate that the polling between the two blocks is too close to call based on polling showing the Right winning one day and losing the next.
One advantage which Sebastien’s analysis has over that of Dym, is that Sebastien’s analysis utilizes many polls demonstrating the same alternating trend from multiple polls, while Dym’s analysis uses a single poll which could easily be wildly skewed from being able to be reproduced as it is a single data point. In other words, no reasonable argument can be assessed from a single poll, no matter what the results demonstrate, and Dym, as a statistician, should recognize this fact as fairly stated.
Hence, I dispute Dym’s perspective that this single data point demonstrably supports Shaked’s inability to pass the threshold, while also holding to the belief that Bibi has more authority among the Right than Dym seems to accept is likely.
Despite all of this, though, Bibi has shot his lot and we will see how well this campaign of division amongst the Right will advantage the Right in this election.
No doubt Gantz and his fellow Left wing advocates will have a better night’s rest knowing these divisions on the Right are not only left unsettled, but that they are actually increasing.