This week, Yamina leader Naftali Bennett had two moments of satisfaction that caused him to smile after a difficult time. The first was when he saw the results of a poll that asked respondents how certain they were about voting for various parties. Bennett didn't think his voters would turn out to be as steadfastly loyal as the poll numbers indicated they are. As someone who was burned once when he founded the New Right, which failed to make it past the minimum electoral threshold despite an impressive initial showing in the polls, the Yamina leader knows very well that it's not how many seats the polls give him, but how steady the voters are. To his surprise, 70% of respondents who said they would be voting for Yamina said "yes" when they were asked if they were certain.
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Not everyone can boast numbers like these. Gideon Sa'ar, for example, only enjoyed a 30% rate of "certain" voters in the poll. To be fair, the poll wasn't put out by someone who wanted to see Sa'ar do well. But if we look at the numbers, they show that Sa'ar's New Hope is more vulnerable than Yamina and that its lead, which is already quite small, could disappear.
The second moment that made Bennett grin was when Kan 11 News published its own poll. When the results came out, the people who have been attacking him for his ambiguity about joining a future government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu realized the advantages of keeping things undefined. While the other political players have grouped off into clearly defined camps, Bennett is still a free agent. Someone who can tip the scales. And as the poll showed, could decide the identity of the next prime minister. It doesn't matter how many seats he wins. As long as he can put one side over the critical 61 needed to form a government, he will be in a position to demand a seat in a rotation for prime minister.
If there is an opportunity for him to serve as prime minister, he does not intend to miss it. However, such opportunities are rare. Netanyahu will need him, but in most scenarios, the other side won't be able to form a government even with Bennett. Netanyahu, who is usually quicker than his opponents to grasp the situation, realized which way the wind was blowing and told Channel 20 that a rotation was not in the cards.
The pieces are starting to come together
Netanyahu is not losing hope in the vaccination campaign he launched and on which he is pinning most of his hopes. The beginning of the end of the lockdown and plans to open more sectors of the economy in the next few weeks have encouraged him. The numbers of new cases are starting to stabilize and the number of vaccinated Israelis is growing. After many problems and delays, his plan to open everything at the start of March and announce the fulfillment of his plan to get Israel back to everyday life should, he thinks, put him back on track toward electoral success and another term as prime minister. But it wasn't only COVID that went wrong for Netanyahu, it was also the matter of religious Zionist voters. It looked like they were already in his pocket. Bezalel Smotrich announced that Netanyahu wouldn't "manage him" and refused to answer calls from the prime minister and his advisors, but Netanyahu had a "remote control" he used to handle the maneuvers that were supposed to unite the various religious Zionist factions – Hagit Moshe, the newly-elected leader of Habayit Hayehudi.
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But it didn't end as he expected. When Netanyahu learned that Smotrich had gone behind Moshe's back and signed on for a joint ticket with Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu was furious. There were reports of shouting from the Prime Minister's Office.
Netanyahu is distancing himself from Otzma Yehudit because he knows that it's not only the left-wing camp that has a problem with the man and his positions, but also that many Likud supporters see him as an extremist. For most of them, their love for Netanyahu is stronger than their loathing for Otzma Yehudit. But there is a minority that thinks differently, and Netanyahu needs their support, as well.
If the right-wing opposition to Ben-Gvir is understandable, the vocal attacks from the Left are more than a little hypocritical. The strong desire of the main figures in the "Anyone but Bibi" camp to oust Netanyahu have caused them to ally themselves with the most radical, anti-Israeli elements in the Knesset and the Arab parties. So while they call Ben-Gvir a racist and unworthy of serving in the Knesset, they embrace people who support terrorists, encourage terrorism, and identify with the enemy in times of war.
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz, and others have deemed it appropriate to launch a Twitter assault against Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu, but as yet they have not found a way of expressing any strong condemnation of remarks by Ibtisam Mara'ana, No. 7 on the Labor list, who has mocked Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism and said, "I would wipe out Zichron Yaakov. Without killing. Let them go back to the United States or Poland." She said this in 2008 in an interview to Gefen Magazine. In the same interview, she told the Jewish interviewer that "You [Jews] are naturally frightened. You are a panicked people. Genetically afraid. It didn't start with the Holocaust and has nothing to do with Arabs. You are a terrible, materialistic, controlling people."
By failing to do so, members of the left-wing camp, which most media outlets in Israel openly support, reveal that racism, like the war on corruption, the war against the Haredim, and even liberal values like freedom of expression, aren't ideas worth fighting for, but merely political tools to be used when convenient and then discarded.
