| The Israeli Elections: Do I go with my heart? |
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Julian Resnick on the potential outcome of the Israeli elections. A few months ago I watched, filled with envy, on the day of the US presidential elections as my group from Birmingham, Alabama were able to greet their new president knowing that their vote for him or for his opponent had directly affected the outcome of the presidential race. I fantasised about how wonderful it must be to be able to vote for someone and know that you are choosing a clear outcome and not the beginning of a cattle market.
Tomorrow, together with millions of my fellow Israelis I will be setting out to vote, after my morning with a group of journalists from England, for... the truth is, I have not yet decided. Why are we finding it so difficult to decide right now? There are so many questions involved, but the basic one for me is, am I going to vote for someone or against someone. About 30% of Israelis, I would claim the thoughtful 30%, are mindful of the endless combinations of possible outcomes of the votes we cast. If we vote for the small party we really agree with, are we casting our votes away to the delight of the candidates we most, I suppose it must be right to say, despise, as they watch our naive and noble voting patterns allow them to take control of our future with their fantasies of replicating the behaviour of Putin in Chechnya or of Heider in Austria. If I could, if this were not an election in Israel with our life and death issues, but say in Liechtenstein, I would probably vote tomorrow for the Meimad/Green party with its great combination of a Jewish soul, social philosophy with respect to care for the weakest in society, respect for human liberties and its strong ecological platform; or I might vote for Meretz with its clear position on responsible and progressive Zionism, its social democratic economics and its clear stand on the two state solution. But, I am haunted by the following possibilities: the possibility of my vote being wasted; of Bibi Netanyahu coming in with a strong right wing coalition which I am convinced will be an absolute disaster for us (besides what it would mean for the Palestinians and for Israeli Arabs); of the major coalition partner being Avigdor Lieberman, who has to be identified for who he is: a bullying fascist of the most evil kind, who will gleefully work at destroying the years of painful work of maintaining a commitment to democracy under the most difficult circumstances. So do I tomorrow try to do what 30% of Israelis will probably do, vote against parties and not for parties? do I vote Labour, even though Barak is so hard to stomach? Do I vote Livni in spite of Shaul Mofaz with his less than palatable stand on Human Rights especially when it comes to Arabs? Or do I go with my heart? |
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