Israel’s Weird Elections

January 5, 2013 by Uri Avnery

Pictured: Benjamin Netanyahu, Shaul Mofaz, Shelly Yachimovich, Eli Yishai and Tzipi Livni

In a few hundred years, a professor looking for an especially esoteric subject will ask his students to research the Israeli elections of 2013.  The students will come back with a unanimous report: the results of our research are incredible.

Faced with at least three grave dangers, they report, Israeli parties and voters just ignored them. As if joined in a conspiracy, they tacitly agreed among themselves not to talk about them. Instead, they bickered and quarreled about totally insignificant and irrelevant issues.  One remarkable fact was that the elections were called early – they were not due till November 2013 – because of the Prime Minister’s declared inability to obtain Knesset approval for the annual state budget.

The proposed budget was shaped by the fact that the state had developed a huge deficit, which made drastic measures inevitable. Taxes had to be raised dramatically and social services had to be cut even more than during the last four years of Binyamin Netanyahu’s stewardship.

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The Greatest Show on Earth

August 4, 2012 by Uri Avnery

Olympics opening ceremonies in London. Image via NBC Sports

To sum up the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in one word: kitsch.  To sum up the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in two words: wonderful kitsch.

Honest disclosure: I am an Anglophile.

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