It's getting worse and worse. The range of political opinions broadcast on the Israeli media is a narrow, Extreme Left to Left of Center, which the broadcasters refer to as the "center." It's rare to see Likud members/supporters and even more rare to hear the view points of the Ichud Leumi, or even Avigdor Lieberman and followers.
But apparently, the public has "other sources" for its opinions, and the polls show that it doesn't matter which candidate Labor chooses, most want the Likud's Bibi.
Now, this isn't so simple, and that's simply because in Israel we don't vote for the Prime Minister. We vote for lists of Knesset Member hopefuls. They run as "political parties." Then after elections, the President generally asks the leader of the party which got the most seats, to "form a government." Then they officially start coalition negotiations between the parties, since no party gets over half the seats. Yes, it's worse than America's Electoral College!
So, that's another problem with the polls. The questions and the headlines are irrelevant to the reality of Israel's democracy.
The poll says that 54% of the people want Bibi, but only about 28% will vote Likud. That's because many Israelis don't expect to be voting for Prime Minister, but they vote for a specific party for ideological reasons. It's sort of like voting for someone to lobby for your cause.
Does this system on exist in Israel?
2 comments:
Your observation about the range of opinions broadcast, reminded me of a book I read ages ago. It was about the founding and early years of a certain kibbutz, written by a couple of the founders. At one point they described the lively political panel discussions carried out on evenings on the kibbutz. They extolled the wide range of opinions which were aired in these discussions. But I noticed that what the authors were essentially saying was, "See, we'd have speakers for the somewhat left-of-center viewpoint, and speakers for the more-emphatically-left viewpoint. But just to prove how wide-open we were to differing opinions -- we'd even include a speaker for the extreme left!" That, apparently, was their idea of "balance."
-- MAOZ
"ain chadash," as King Solomon wrote, "nothing's new." The "liberals" are the most reactionary.
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