“Polls are like perfume, you can smell, but never taste” said the late Shimon Peres — meaning that while polls prevent politicians from being blindsided by events, they are not a certain predictor of election results. Today’s polls indicate that the power of the Israeli Zionist left has been in serious decline. From a peak…
Keeping track of the myriad players in Israel’s election on Tuesday can be dizzying, even though we’ve seen this movie before, as this is the Jewish state’s fourth balloting in less than two years. For confused Americans who want to follow along but are unsure how to understand all of the major players — what’s…
After three elections in less than a year changed neither Israel’s prime minister or the generally conservative and religious makeup of its government, Israeli voters head back to the ballot box on Tuesday for yet another referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership. This time, Netanyahu’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic will be a central issue, and…
When Gilad Erdan was growing up in the port city of Ashkelon, his mother predicted that one day he would become Israel’s state comptroller because he was always giving orders on what needed to be fixed at school. He got an early start in politics and by 26 became an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin…
What do the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the climate crisis have in common? The answer is troubling: neither of these existential issues is on the political agenda of the current election campaign in Israel. Israeli voters have left the climate crisis to the good care of foreign leaders. And they’ve let their own leaders sweep the…
Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox coalition partners have ratcheted up their election campaigns with incendiary material comparing Reform Jews to dogs and xenophobic ads warning that African asylum seekers would convert to Judaism. The video, circulated on Wednesday by the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, depicted dogs wearing ritual items like kippot, tallit, and tefillin, along with…
The campaign of Gideon Sa’ar, the conservative rival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, announced on Tuesday that it had suspended its cooperation with four American political strategists affiliated with the Lincoln Project less than a month after they were hired. “Due to financial considerations, the contract with the consultants is under review, and in…
The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations is planning to host Zoom calls in the coming weeks where the leading candidates for prime minister in Israel’s March 23 elections will speak directly to the top leaders of the group’s 53 member organizations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to accept the invitation, a…
