It would not be entirely unrealistic to assume that even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's biggest supporters broke a sweat following the much-publicized incident in Kiryat Shmona, where he lost his cool and shut down local resident Orna Peretz who had interrupted his speech, telling her, "You're boring us."
This confrontation could likely have been damaging to Netanyahu. But the Left, with its predictable reaction, exaggerated the importance of the event for its own cynical ends. It also skipped over the fact that by the time Netanyahu reacted to Peretz, the woman had already interrupted Netanyahu's remarks several times, and this as he was eulogizing his good friend, Yaakov Weinroth, who had died hours earlier.
Incredibly frustrated at their inability to turn this incident into a symbol of Netanyahu's obtuseness and arbitrariness, some of those tut-tutting on the Left and in the media resorted to doing what they have always done: patronizing.
Peretz quickly went from being some kind of tortured saint to a common right-wing baboon. Why? Because although she had been humiliated by the prime minister, she would continue to vote for the mind-controlling emperor in the next elections. With his usual bluntness, Hadashot News reporter Ilan Lukatch blasted Peretz on Twitter.
"Bibi [Netanyahu] could have gotten off the stage and spat in Orna Peretz's face and then told the air force to bomb her home, and she still would vote for him in the coming elections. After a few years of the right-wing government laughing in the face of the periphery and transferring their budget to the settlements, again and again, they go back to kissing the hand that slapped them."
In his revolting tweet, Lukatch exposed not only the all-too-familiar racism of the Left but also his incredible ignorance and prejudice when it comes to voting patterns.
True, Netanyahu won a majority of votes in almost all of the periphery communities. But unlike what has been portrayed in the media, his great victory in 2015 was not only thanks to cities in Israel's north, like Kiryat Shmona, but rather thanks to the largest cities in the country. Likud garnered the most votes in seven out of Israel's 10 largest cities. Even if we were to combine the total number of votes Netanyahu received from his "minions" in Afula, Kiryat Shmona, Sderot, Netivot, Yeruham and Dimona, we would not reach the number of votes he got in either Petach Tikva, Netanya, Holon or Beersheba. If you ask Lukatch, though, these cities are populated by herds of unintelligent voters.
And what about the cities where Netanyahu did not earn a majority of the vote? There, as always, the Center-Left received the most votes. In the 2009 elections, the Meretz, Labor and Kadima parties took some 52% of the vote in Tel Aviv. In the last two elections, with the entrance of the Yesh Atid party to the political contest, support for the Center-Left rose to 58%. These parties also garnered the most votes in Haifa, receiving 37% of the vote in 2015, up from 33% in 2009. But it turns out that it is precisely these places where the calm, critical voters who delve deep into campaign platforms reside. It is only by chance that they make the same decisions time after time.
The same is true of the unsurprising victory of the Labor party and the Left in the kibbutzim and moshavim in the periphery. The Likud has never come close to making any real inroads in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, adjacent to Sderot, or in Beit Hillel or Kfar Blum, which neighbor Kiryat Shmona.
These statistical facts do not prevent the malcontent gang on the Left from continuing to belittle Orna Peretz and her neighbors. They refuse to accept a reality in which a majority of citizens in the center, the north and the south hold a worldview different to their own. Condescension, ignorance and racism will not change reality in their favor.
