I don't read much here about #JonathanUrich . See e.g.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/purported-whatsapp-correspondence-of-netanyahus-key-aide-jonatan-urich-leaks-online/ .
It's basically a story of what could possibly go wrong if I write a quick and dirty system with Claude and give it my personal Whatsapp account?

Same person's previous "what could possibly go wrong": if I work for a Prime Minister and at the same time have a side gig for consulting other governments?

The said Prime Minister still employs Ulrich. What could possibly go wrong?

#israel #ilpol

The government tried doing a full-blown populist takeover and switching to a Hungarian style "democracy". Initially it tried the Hungarian model of "all at once", and failed. When this failed, it switched to the Polish model: try sneaking in key legislation changes one by one. It was not clear if this was working.

Protest was still boiling. For instance, In the week-long vacation of Sukkot, #Netanyahu was on vacation in Neve Ativ in the north. Many of us camped near by with much noise and rejoice and anger. Because we would not allow Netayahu to have a quiet vacation. At the same time in Tel Aviv religious fanatics were trying to divert the attention by focusing on a issues with prayers in public. One showdown was in the main holiday of Sukkot. Another round was to be held at the end of Sukkot, in Simchat Tora, on Saturday, Oct 7th.

So there were focused on protesting. And the country was torn. And then the attack happened.

Protests stopped. At the day everyone tried to figure out what they could do to help. It became quickly clear that the government doesn't do anything. And therefore civil society had to step in. Part of civil society was the massive network of protest organization. All the energy of protest had to be diverted to healing and rebuilding.

Furthermore, at that time we all worked together (not exactly all. Most. But you could see who was working). People from all sectors, working together. Both in military reserve duty, and also stepping in when there was no government. The ceremony of Kumu preserves this spirit.

The problem is that this could only work if the people in charge would assume responsibility. But Netanyahu didn't. And once again, just like he engineered a destruction of the whole system to escape conviction in his trial, he now had to destroy this spirit and blame everything on scapegoats in order to escape the trial of the public.

Protesters gradually saw this and renewed protest. I personally started it again at early 2024. But protest has lost its momentum. People were also buy in the endless war. And then, protest was also busy in the goal of bringing back the hostages. Indeed we have managed to do that. That was basically the only major achievement of the post Oct-7th protest. Although the government has also mostly failed to continue in its plan of the "Polish model", mentioned above. This is much to the credit of the legal system: the Supreme Court and the Attorney General. The government was still afraid of actively disobeying the Supreme Court.

So this is why we have different types of ceremonies (there were even others, but let's not confuse even further).

#7october #ilpol #Israel

Just returned from a meeting with #YairGolan, leader of #TheIsraeliDemocracts party.

The Democrats would be the left wing of the upcoming coalition. It is clear that winning the elections would only mark the start of a shift. And it also depends how many seats the party eventually gets.

#ilpol #israel #Israeli_elections

A short overview of the current parties. See a previous post (not up to date). Generally the main opposition block. or Eizencot's block, is expected to have roughly 60/120 seats. It may need extra coalition members from other parties. This is mainly what pundits write about now, so please go read about it elsewhere.

Israel has a parliamentary system. In the elections the members of parliament (that has a single house), the Knesset are being elected. They will be sworn into office two weeks later, on Nov. 10th, and this will start four more weeks (potentially with an extension of two more weeks) to form the ruling coalition and the government. Negotiations for forming the coalition tend to be painful and mostly happen at the last minute. So we should expect a government to be formed on Dec-8th or even Dec-22nd in case of an extension. And proceeded by many dramatic news items about all of it going to explode. And assuming that there won't be a 2019-style stalemate. But let's hope there won't be any.

The newly-formed government will likely have a wide spectrum of parties, including the Democracts and maybe Ra'am on the left and Israel Beitenu (Liberman) on the right. Most parties are right-leaning. None of them seem to have the fanatic flare of Ben Gvir and Smotrich, but at least some seem to share the sentiment of "the whole world is against us" that you see today in the actions of foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar.

I guess that the base of the expectations of the government is not the current Israel government. Rather, the one before it. That was also a wide coalition, united basically by being anti-Netanyahu, and by parties trying to do good for the whole public. It sounds naive, but it was just that: even the 2021-2022 government of Bennet and Lapid was a breath of fresh air compared to governments before it, let alone the dysfunctional government that followed it.

And then we get to the first problem: most parties in the Eisencot Block want to focus on the "80% we all agree on" and start the healing process. For instance, a lot of attention needs to be given to the whole issue of conscription and the state of Ultra Orthodox communities. The education system may need rebuilding. And taxes may need to be raised.

But the Democracts think that instead of maintaining such a large military force, we should try to close as many fronts ASAP, and that recruiting ultra orthodox to the military as is may have a bad effect on the military now. Although everybody agree that the state-tax-funded autonomies of the ultra orthodox must not be defunded.

And then again, there's also disagreement about Palestine. People on the Right seem to be afraid of that. I tend to think that they will be forced to follow something similar to Trump's Gaza Peace Plan forms a place to rebuild trust among the two parties, that is currently broken.

Right now we can hardly expect anything from the current government. We tried replacing it before elections and failed. However, we (including the small me as the fly riding on the horse) managed to stop almost all of the "Judicial reform". Levin, Rotman and co. planned to have this done by May 2023, and hardly any of this got through. We managed to start the process of tearing down the horrible structure of ultra orthodox communities, even though their parties[1] were part of the ruling coalition with a majority in parliament. However, just about the only effective minister in the government was Smotrich, who managed to expand the land grabs in the West Bank. In that front we did very poorly.

So, please wait a bit with steps against Israel. They currently mostly serve to bolster the mentality of "the whole world is against us". However, once a new government is formed - expected in December, it is very much accountable and responsible for its actions.

#ilpol #IsraeliElections2026 #Eizencot

[1] I guess a separate topic on the whole issue of ultra orthodox, conscription, their education system, and the funding of all of that is required. There are two ultra orthodox parties that in practice represent the interests of the corrupt religious elite of them, and that helps keep them very much poor and poorly-educated.

Israel has mostly a single political arena: the national, with a parliament of a single house, the Knesset. It has 120 seats. Elections are proportional representation, that is: parties set lists of candidates and citizens elect those lists.

There are currently two major blocks of parties: current coalition: supporters of Netanyahu. They currently hold 68/120 seats, however polls[1] predict that they'll have around 50/120 seats and not hold a majority. I'm not part of this block.

(There are potentially some parties that try to live in the space between the blocks. Their fate is not clear right now. I hope they'll eventually fade away, but currently this is just my hope. I'm not there)

The other major block is the opposition to Netanyahu. I'll try to give a brief picture of its composition.

Current polls predict currently a total of some 10/120 to the so-called "Arab" parties. This designates two or more parties. One of them (United Aram List, not to be confused with a potential Joint List) may be in the future coalition, other(s) are not likely. Parties in this space may yet join. The number of votes they get also depends on the turn up rates in the Arab population that is currently unpredictable. But I'm not part of that sub-block, So let's zoom in elsewhere.

Now we are left with the main opposition block. Currently four parties that are likely to form the next coalition. The two larger ones, with currently predicted more than 15/120 seats, are Yashar ("straight"), headed by Gadi Eisenkot, and Together, headed by Naftali Bennett. Both are new parties that are now mostly forming their organizations. Hopefully they'll manage to stick together. I'm not there.

To their right is Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel our home") of Avigdor Liberman) that is somewhat fascist, but devout secular and will stick with some of the liberal values. Polls predict roughly 10/120. I'm not there.

And finally we get to where I am: The Democrats. The left-most part of that block. Polls predict some 10/120. We need to work to get more than that. Currently only party of the four that has set peace and end of conflict as a goal.

[1] Polls are always something to be taken with a grain of salt. Results of polls has been quite stable since the early days of the government about the composition of the major blocks. The content of them changed and I tend to trust those numbers less.

#ilpol #IsraeliElections2026

Elections in Israel are nationwide and proportional representation - parties present their list of candidates and each voter may elect a single party (technically it's a list, which is a combination of parties, but never mind that). And no registration is required.

Up until the 1970s, party leaders chose those lists of candidates through committees - "the elders of the party". In 1977 the #Likkud started electing people in party conferences. A while later other parties followed suit. In 1991 the Labor decided to use an even wider body: primary elections. In both cases the new format helped the party win the elections as the older method seemed corrupt.

Primary elections became the norm. Then Tommy Lapid (the father of Yair Lapid) became disenchanted with that idea after it helped kicking hime out of "his" Shinuy party in 2006 in an ugly way. This prompted Yair Lapid to avoid it altogether. Yair Lapid created his own new party in 2012 (Yesh Atid), with himself as the big party boss. And from that point, new parties tended to be "owned" by the figure that headed the party and called the shots.

In previous elections only Labor and Meretz (sort of) on the left and Likkud on the right stuck to holding primary elections. Meretz and Labor merged to forming The Democrats that will hold the primary elections for the list in July 20th.

The primary elections in the Likkud have an aura of corruption around them: workers in various large companies are "strongly encouraged" to join the party. Likewise various political movements, notably from the religious far right (often people who actually don't vote Likkud) will join the party to vote in the primary elections.

On the other hand, primary elections remain a useful channel to keep party leadership accountable to local activists. E.g. recently farmers (including ones supported by Likkud) managed to thwart a suggested milk reform (That was probably badly designed anyway).

However, Netanyahu is not so fond of those primary elections, as it means that there are people noot directly depending on him, and currently trying to select less list members in primary elections.

That is certainly not the case with the Democrats.

I'll note that there was at least one more small party that selected its list through what is described as primary elections: the Reservists (Miluimnikim), that currently fail to pass the voting threshold in polls.

#PrimaryElections #ilpol

Eisenkot is the leader of one of the opposition parties that will run in the upcoming October 2026 general elections in Israel. According to recent polls, his party will likely lead the block of opposition parties and he has a good chance of becoming the next Israeli prime minister.

He had a long military career and eventually served as the chief of staff on 2015-2018. Later has been in the Knesset (parliament) since 2022.

As you can see in his biography, he was born in the city of Tiberias to parents who immigrated from Morocco. That would mark him as Sefaradi. But the "Eisen" prefix sounds German and hence Ashkenazi. Around 2015, as he became the chief of staff, this appeared to be an oddity, and people looked into it.

They quickly realized that the name may appear German, but is not really, and such a name is not documented. However, the name Azankot, that seems to be of Berber origin, is documented for Jews in Morocco since the 17th century. At some point someone mis-transcribed the name.

So around 2015 there are multiple stories about that. A harmless anecdote.

And we get to the present times. Netanyahu is a populist leader. That is, also claims to be leader of the people. For various reasons, Sepharadi people (roughly half of the Jewish population) vote more to the Right. But Netanyahu's party, Likkud, has always been under the leadership of Ashkenazy people. And yet, they somehow keep trying to use this as an issue.

So lately we see both Netanyahu's propaganda raising the following two points: that Netanyahu is of partial Moroccan decent (with no basis whatsoever), and that Eisenkot (due to the name) is not really a Moroccan.

Note: This is obviously something that should not have mattered. Eisenkot does not make that identity a campaign topic. But it's interesting to see what issues the propaganda of Netanyahu chooses to pick on.

#israel #Eisenkut #GadiEizenkut #ilpol #netanyahu #propaganda