""If I were Lapid, I would start to worry. Because starting on election night at 10 p.m., the hourglass has turned. Day by day and minute by minute, Lapid is becoming less new. You will see how in just four years, they will say the most terrible of slanders about him in our election campaign: You are old politics!""
These things were written in this column immediately after the results of the previous elections were announced. It turns out I was wrong. Why four years? Less than two years have passed.
And this is the continuation of what was published here at the time: "Here's what's so disturbing about this huge number, 543,458 people who chose Lapid: Not his positions on the recruitment of yeshiva students and issues of religion and state (we've gone through Tommy, we'll go through Yair too), not his political opinions (what are they, actually?), what's worrying is the fact that hundreds of thousands of Israelis, the vast majority of whom by all accounts are intelligent, successful, educated, voted for nothing. They simply chose the famous and popular man they've loved all these years on television and in the newspaper.".
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A year and nine months have passed. Lapid has aged faster than expected, but what follows is no less surprising: The new messiah who replaces Lapid as a trend party with a sea of seats is a drab politician about whom all we know is that he lowered cell phone prices. If I had written this two years ago, you would have laughed.
By the way, it was very easy to find that column. Usually, to go back to things written in the previous elections, you need a good memory or a well-organized and filed archive. But this time it was really simple. Just flip through a few dozen columns back. In general, these elections that came so quickly ruined the romantic spirit of all the cuddlers.
Maybe it's just me, but whenever there's an election I always calculate how old I was at the time in the previous election, and where I voted, and how I felt. This time the answer to all these questions is: I was here. Almost nothing has changed. The nostalgia is gone.
On Monday at 10 p.m., I looked at the dispersed Knesset and came to a worn-out and trite conclusion: the media does not represent the people. Take a look at the plenary session from the sidelines. Look at the 120 elected representatives who reflect the wishes of the Israeli public, and you will understand the size of the gap: There are 31 seats for Likud-Beitu, that is, a quarter of all elected representatives.
Did a quarter of the media in Israel vote for the joint list of Netanyahu and Lieberman? There are 12 seats for the Jewish Home. Did a tenth of the journalists in the country put such a note on the ballot? So: 11 seats for Shasniks (do you know a senior commentator who voted for Shas?), seven for United Torah Judaism (as above), and by the way, there are also eight seats for Israeli Arabs in the outgoing Knesset who also do not receive a representation that is appropriate to their number in the population (bringing Hanin Zoabi to the studios is out of the question).
Meretz, on the other hand, has only six seats. How many seats does it have in the studios? I know that there is not a single reader that I need to convince that the public in Israel is more diverse, more right-wing, and more traditional than its media, but still, seeing this division physically, on Monday of this week, made me remember it again.
They say the new politics is happening on Facebook. Sometimes it seems like politicians don't use Facebook, but it uses them. I mean, they've always needed the public's love, but here they get it online, with clicks, and it's addictive.
They have long naturally placed their cell phones on the table when they come to be interviewed, it's nothing new, but recently you can see politicians who are simply texting while broadcasting.
Tzipi Livni, for example, sat in the studio of Channel 10's main edition while a lively discussion about the upcoming elections was going on around her, while she, deep inside the screen, was typing vigorously. It's true that both Bozhi and Yair were looking for her this week, but what's the point of a leader who can't even hold back three minutes of live broadcast without checking for comments?
This week's cellphone photo is also from the archive, and it hasn't gathered much dust either: I met Tzipi Livni (Likud, Kadima, HaNova, Labor Party) at the height of the previous election campaign on Friday afternoon, at the Vizhnitz Bakery in Bnei Brak. You can go through four parties in a few years, but you don't change a bakery that makes challah for Shabbat so quickly.
This simus on the air probably indicates something deeper that was in this government: excessive frenzy. A few reforms, a few press conferences, a few enthusiastic declarations about "we came to change" and "something new is beginning," and how embarrassing all of this sounds now, when we're going to the polls again in less than two years. It seems to me that there's not a press release that any minister has issued in the collapsing government that doesn't include the word "revolution." As if the minister doesn't have ongoing policies or routine decisions. Everything has to be revolutionary.
There was also a lack of humility towards previous generations. When I listened to some of the new politicians, the feeling was that they had invented the wheel. That there was no economy and no education system before they rushed to come and redeem us from the old politics, and so they are now rushing to launch reform after reform.
So here comes the real reform: they go home.
There's something embarrassing about the search for stars ahead of the elections. From Miriam Peretz to Avi Luzon, everyone is being called upon these days to run for some party, or at least express support for it. Excuse me, but why does every party have to adorn itself with shiny, new names? A platform and ideology and performanceist Knesset members are no longer enough?
On the other hand, there is also something embarrassing about the complete lack of star search. While Kahlon, Bibi and Bennett are sweating it out searching for stars, in the Haredi parties you can almost always know that what has been is what will be. In the current Knesset, they actually took care of a new face, the esteemed MK Yaakov Asher, but what about the next Knesset? Get us excited. This week, a storm arose because of young Haredi women demanding to be elected. Let's start with young Haredi men.
And speaking of Haredi politics, it's not clear why they insist on working for Yair Lapid these days. After two years of evil spirit and incitement, he's finally going home, but Lapid's work, it turns out, continues to be done - by the Haredi. MK Litzman, for example, said this week that "with us, the clock will turn back.".
It is not clear whether he meant the cancellation of the extension of daylight saving time or changes to other laws, but that does not matter at all. Litzman is very experienced in matters of legislation and budgets, but less so in matters of public relations and interviews (and if you were wondering about his unique accent and unique Hebrew - I found out: he was born in Germany to parents of Polish descent and grew up in the United States).
So I don't know if he will star in United Torah Judaism's propaganda broadcasts, but he will certainly star in Yesh Atid's propaganda broadcasts. His quote will be heard over and over again. "With us the clock will turn back" is translated into Lapidit as "With us you will return to the Middle Ages," even if Litzman only wanted to talk about repealing the zero-VAT law and rolling back the housing market, or about repealing the thousands of reforms in education and returning the education system - which has become a summer camp - to a blessed routine. Haredim, be careful with your words.
And finally, many were shocked this week, and rightly so, by Manchum Barnea who quoted very harsh things supposedly said by Ayelet Shaked about the judicial system, without picking up the phone and hearing that there was no such thing. And he also wrote it explicitly: "I did not have time to check the things with Shaked." A few days later, Barnea himself apologized. That is to say, he clarified. Journalists are in no hurry to apologize.
For some reason, in all this turmoil, no one quoted the next paragraph in that column, for which Barnea so desperately needed a quote that was never said: "The polls currently indicate the strengthening of the Jewish Home among young people and soldiers. Even secular soldiers. The Jewish Home is the main beneficiary of the shift to the right, the result of the summer wars and the renewal of terrorist attacks.
""The Jewish Home is much more religious than these voters think, including religious coercion, and on its fringes much more extreme. Uri Ariel, Bennett's rival and partner, tried to force him this week to continue reserving seats for his friends, members of a national ultra-Orthodox group bordering on Kahanism... Bennett's dream is to be elected defense minister and then prime minister. The dreams of many of his friends are to start a world war over the Temple Mount, annex the territories, expel Arabs, eliminate the rule of law in the country and introduce halakhic laws there.".
You see? It's not that he didn't have time to find out. It's not that complicated to reach Shaked (we agreed that the MKs are available even during a broadcast, right?) And in general, Barnea's last trait is laziness. Even at the age of seventy, the man runs around with a notebook. But in this case, he simply didn't want to ruin his thesis about this dangerous ISIS party, the Jewish Home, with the facts.
I may be wrong, but I didn't have time to check things with Barnea.
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva''
