"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Monday, April 15, 2019

If Naftali Bennett's career is over, he may deserve it

World Israel News has an analysis of now former Israeli government education minister Bennett's fortunes following the catastrophe of his "New Right" party, which did not make it over the threshold for the Knesset:
Those dreams may have ended with what is turning into his biggest misstep. In December, Mr. Bennett unceremoniously dropped the Jewish Home party, which he led, in order to found the New Right party.

The Jewish Home is still angry, justifiably so as Mr. Bennett left the party in disarray. In a sign bad blood still exists, senior Jewish Home members on election day disseminated video clips of Mr. Bennett four years ago telling voters to choose Jewish Home. Mr. Bennett complained to the Central Elections Committee, which ordered Jewish Home to cease and desist.

The Jewish Home party only survived the elections because it combined with still smaller religious-Zionist parties.

The bigger problem for Mr. Bennett is that he burned bridges with his national religious base, which is likely to view any political comeback by Mr. Bennett with a jaundiced eye after his shattering act of disloyalty.
More to the point, the voting public is furious because Bennett's laughable maneuver cost them thousands of votes at the ballot box:
Mr. Bennett had hoped the soldiers’ vote, which is counted later, would put him over the top. It did not. The New Right came up 1,461 votes short. No party has missed the threshold by such a small number.

The more important number is 138,491 — those who believed in the New Right and saw their votes wasted. They’ll think twice before signing onto any Bennett ticket in the future.
My sister is one of those people who had her vote wasted by a man whom I've come to view as an utter disgrace. To make matters worse, he even - at least initially - resorted to the classically cheap notion of trying to siphon voters from Likud, proving he lacked faith in his ability to convince voters on the left to try him out. After all the hard work Netanyahu did to get Jerusalem and the Golan Heights recognized by the US, and they return the favor by making it sound like he's suddenly going to turn traitor overnight?!? That was degrading. It goes without saying if Bennett hadn't split up, there might've been another seat or two won for the right-wing bloc, and he just had to ruin everything.

And while Ayelet Shaked may not be innocent in all these mistakes either, she did do a positive job as justice minister, and now Bennett cost her a Knesset seat too. She may be able to rejoin the Likud, where she once worked, and even work as a non-parliament minister, but it still doesn't excuse the damage Bennett's wrought. Therefore, I honestly think it best for him to retire, and his grave errors serve an important lesson why you don't just simply divide the right, period, and you also don't act desperate for a neighboring party's votes instead of convincing the other side of the spectrum to try your platform.

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