Israeli voters may choose Buji over Bibi

 By Rabbi Dow Marmur

JERUSALEM–A cartoon in last Friday’s Ha’aretz shows a narrow hilly road with two cars facing each other that cannot pass each other. The one going uphill is driven by Isaac (Buji) Herzog, the leader of the newly minted Zionist Camp, an amalgam of his Labour and Tzipi Livni’s Hat’nua. The other is going down with Prime Minister Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu at the wheel. The caption reads: Uphill has right of way!

That’s indeed the feeling among liberals whom Ha’aretz promotes. But the Jerusalem Post, which is to the right of Ha’aretz, also reports that Buji has a three-mandate lead over Bibi. It’s, of course, too early to predict the actual outcome on March 17, when Israelis go to the polls, but at least now the electorate has a real choice.

This must be very uncomfortable for Netanyahu who’d probably like to go down in history as the longest serving prime minister of Israel. Not only does he have to contend with Herzog, whom he likes to misrepresent as a far-out wild lefty, but he also has to face Naftali Bennett, the leader of Habayit Hayehudi who oozes real or pretended self-confidence that he’ll be the next prime minister or at least the defense minister, because of his championship of continued settlement expansion, his opposition to a Palestinian state, his being against homosexuals and other views of that ilk.

Other party leaders with inflated expectations have receded into the background. However, one of the prime minister’s former cabinet colleagues, Moshe Kahlon, whose new party Kulanu claims to be the real Likud of which Netanyahu is the titular leader but which, according to Kahlon, has become corrupted beyond recognition.

Not having the wherewithal to predict the outcome, I confine myself to doubting everything the contenders say about themselves and their parties, and believing everything they say about each other.  Nevertheless, there’re signs that Buji may beat Bibi. The electorate is tired of the status quo and it wants a change.

To help make sure that Herzog doesn’t abandon all the social-democratic ideas that Labour once stood for, I intend to vote for Meretz, which is left of the Herzog-Livni Zionist Camp. If Herzog becomes prime minister, Meretz will almost certainly be part of his government. I hope that it’ll hold him to at least some of his lofty promises even after he’s elected.

And I hope that he’ll be elected because I believe that a government under his leadership would have the means to do inter alia:

(1) Repair Israel’s poor standing in the world caused by Netanyahu’s ever growing pomposity and foreign minister Lieberman’S status as something of a persona no grata in countries around the world that matter. The aim is, surely, to restart peace negotiations that would end the occupation if for no other reason than in order to save Israel’s soul that’s being corrupted by ruling over another people.

(2) Provide opportunities for a more equitable division of wealth so that the few rich are a little less rich and the many poor are little less poor.

(3) Appoint a minister of defense who has greater regard for the Palestinians under occupation (for which the IDF is responsible) than the present incumbent.

Herzog has the people to fill these and other positions. That’s why even a pessimist like me need not be without hope that Buji, not Bibi, will get in.

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Rabbi Marmur, spiritual leader emeritus of the Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, Canada, now resides in Israel. Your comment on this article may be posted in the space provided below or sent directly to the author at dow.marmur@sdjewishworld.com