Meet The New Israeli Boss

Actually not the same as the old boss- the Israeli elections seem likely to end with an even crazier government. First, the number of seats now held by the three largest parties:

Kadima- 28
Likud- 27
Yisrael Beiteinu- 15

A quick refresher: Kadima has been in charge for the last few years. It was formed by Ariel Sharon after he suffered a dramatic burst of conscience and realized that Likud is awful back in ‘05. Sadly he pretty much instantly fell into a coma after that, and the party leadership since then has done their best to make his old war criminal spirit happy. It should be noted that when the press refers to them as centrist, it means Kadima only wants to kill most of the Palestinians, instead of the entire population.

Next up, Likud. They’re a proper right-wing party, with a bunch of fantastic policies like claiming the right to colonize the West Bank. Naturally stances like this don’t endear them to the Palestinians, who then give Likud lots of excuses to bomb, smash, shoot, and in other ways cause them injurious harm. Which then makes even more Palestinians angry, who then act on that and enable even more acts of retribution from Israel and thus help keep the area in the endless cycle of lopsided violence that's been a constant feature of the region since the foundation of Israel.

Finishing third is Yisrael Beiteinu, a truly great party. Ultranationalists with a proud ten year history of being extremist psychopaths, they’re headed by ex-bouncer Avigdor Lieberman. Name sound familiar? If you aren’t thinking of the shitty American politician known as Lieberman you might be familiar with his comments about the best way to release Palestinian prisoners from a few years ago: “It would be better to drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that's the lowest point in the world.” Sounds bloodthirsty, but things like that must play well with some Israeli voting bloc- involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre was just one of Sharon’s stepping stones on the way to becoming a prime minister.

So what do these seat numbers means? The Knesset has 120 seats, so there’s going to have to be some serious coalition-building before anyone can take charge. The dismaying thing is that despite having a (one seat) lead, Kadima may actually be put in the back seat by a far-right alliance. Meanwhile, how did more reasonable parties perform? Meretz and Hadash both captured three each, which seems to suggest that “give peace a chance” is a far less popular slogan than “oppress Palestine every day.”

In closing, a question for Yisrael Beiteinu and Avigdor Lieberman: Does your plan to make Arab Israelis take loyalty tests and swear their allegiance to Israel go far enough? Might be helpful to have some sort of visible marker making it obvious who they are, maybe a crescent and star in the form of a patch on their clothing or tattoo? Just something to consider before you potentially end up as an important part of the ruling coalition.