Gershom Gorenberg
As Israelis went to vote today, they ultimately got a choice between two moods: fear and hope. The fear, as always, was provided by Benjamin Netanyahu-who no longer asked citizens to be scared of Iran, but rather of each other. "The rule of the right is in danger. Arab voters are advancing in large numbers toward voting places. Leftist organizations are bringing them in buses," said a midday status on the prime minister's Facebook page. "Go out to vote, bring your friends, vote Likud and close the gap between us and the Labor Party."
Besides the blatant incitement against a sixth of the country's citizenry, Netanyahu's statement was amazing in its audacious untruth. At the time he issued it-and of this writing, a few hours before the polls close-there were no official numbers on turnout in Arab towns, and no evidence of significantly higher participation than in previous elections.
There's another layer of chutzpah: It's that Netanyahu's outgoing coalition pushed through a law raising the minimum share of the vote that a party needs to enter parliament from 2 percent to 3.25 percent. The idea belonged to Netanyahu's erstwhile ally Avigdor Lieberman, the incumbent foreign minister and head of the Israel Is Our Home party. Lieberman hoped to disenfranchise some or all of Israel's Arab citizens. Up to now, they've voted mainly for three small parties that risked falling short of the new threshold-or they haven't voted at all. But the Arab parties refused to roll over and play dead. Instead, they've united in the Joint List, an unlikely amalgamation of Communists, Arab nationalists, Islamicists, and others.
The Joint List has polled a couple of seats higher than the combined strength of its constituent parties in the past. When the voting ends tonight, it may turn out that the Joint List has also boosted turnout. Meanwhile, Lieberman's party has been hovering just above the new threshold, facing the threat of parliamentary extinction. Netanyahu's response is to act as if Arab voting is illegitimate-and to continue using rhetoric that makes an election defeat sound like a coup d'état.
And in most of the final pre-election polls last week, the center-left Zionist Camp led by Isaac (Buji) Herzog was leading the Likud by four seats, giving the challenger a shot at becoming the next prime minister. Israeli polls, I should note, are particularly unreliable prophets-in part because election law bans publishing survey results in the campaign's final three days, when many voters finally make up their minds.
But the polls are important for their influence on behavior. They drove Netanyahu into panic, while giving Herzog confidence and providing the left with a sense of hope that tastes nearly like forbidden fruit after years of Likud domination. The mood change was symbolized by the banners I saw this morning on the fence of an elementary school where voting was taking place. The top swath of banners read "Herzog: a level-headed, responsible prime minister." The bottom swath showed Netanyahu's face and proclaimed "It's us or them"-them meaning Herzog and his political partner, Tzipi Livni, as well as the left in general, the Arabs, Iran, the European governments that Netanyahu has accused of pouring cash into overthrowing him, the U.S. administration, and-add more yourself; there's no end to paranoia.
Netanyahu's problem is that the public's fears have moved largely from Iran to housing prices and the cost of living. Outside my own voting place, I was handed a pamphlet for the Kulanu party of Moshe Kahalon, formerly of the Likud, who made his name as communications minister by breaking up the cell-phone cartel. The man who handed me the slip said his name was Azano. He's 54, an Ethiopian Jew who wears a skullcap, meaning he's Orthodox. Till now, he always voted Likud. "I have a big family, six kids," he told me. "I used to put out 800 shekels ($200 or more, depending on the exchange rate) a month on phones. Now it's a bit over 300 shekels. Bibi is destroying us. We're little people. He gives only to the rich. He doesn't see us." Herein lies the real threat to Netanyahu, besides the simple fatigue with his leadership.
Will that be enough to bring change? Voting ends at 10 p.m. (4 p.m. Eastern Time). Three TV channels will announce exit polls-which are better than pre-election polls, but not precise. By tomorrow morning "final" results will be announced-but it will take another day and a half to count votes by soldiers, prisoners, diplomats and hospital patients, who are allowed to vote away from home and are the voters who are hardest to poll.
Anything could happen. Anything. In the meantime, I hold the fruit called hope in my hand, afraid to bite in.
