Israel starts to feel blue: What the press is saying on November 5

1. Sick of Biden’ their time: While US news outlets are trying to cautiously navigate the US election returns and keep from prematurely declaring a winner, Israelis are finding it difficult to show the same level of restraint.

• For instance on Wednesday evening, well before US media had called Michigan for Joe Biden, Israel’s Channel 12 news was already running the chyron “Assessment: Biden will win.”
• “Practically president,” reads the top front page headline of Yedioth Ahronoth (also the only front page headline the tabloid runs). Compare that with the New York Times, which would have gone to print hours later, which runs a top headline saying “Biden builds an edge in crucial states while Trump challenges the vote counts.”
• It’s only once readers venture inside Yedioth that they learn how big that “practically” is: “The momentum and latest speculation in the swing states definitely give Joe Biden a reason to smile, but we’ve already learned that you can’t gamble against Donald Trump,” the paper reports.
• An accompanying explainer, which predicts that “Trump will need a miracle,” goes on to do exactly what it said not to, making predictions about Trump based on past behavior: He won’t call Biden to concede and will exhaust every legal avenue he has. “One can definitely imagine a scenario in which he drags the nation, like in 2000, into exhausting and divisive court battles.”
• The print edition of Haaretz runs the responsible headline “Biden appears to have an advantage, Trump announces victory,” but by early Thursday afternoon, with five states still hanging the balance, visitors to its Hebrew website are greeted with the headline “Biden prepares to enter the White House.”
• The headline refers to the fact that Biden’s campaign revealed a transition website, so it’s technically true, but one can understand how it could give readers the impression that Biden was already victorious, as he appears poised to be.

2. Finding the red lining: Pro-Trump Israel Hayom’s front page concedes that “Biden has the advantage,” but just as large is Trump’s claim of voter fraud.

• But with things not auguring particularly well for Trump, the paper seems to be taking solace wherever it can. That includes editor Boaz Bismuth, who claims that if Biden wins, it will only be a “technical victory.”
• “Even if the electorates ultimately decide [Trump] will not continue as president, the people have made clear that the Democrats have not offered a suitable alternative. … While this may have garnered him a technical victory, it did not convince the American public his stance on the fateful matters of the hour – the economy, the pandemic, and the US’s standing in the world – should be placed in the hands of a left-wing administration.”
• Bismuth also tries to back Trump’s baseless claims of fraud: “A sitting president doesn’t usually lose, and if he has in fact succeeded in improving his standing in the exit polls over the last 4 years, then the vote count would not appear to make sense. Moreover, in a year where mail-in voting has doubled and even tripled, we must check even more carefully. This is particularly true due to the ease with which the system can be cheated, for example in Pennsylvania, where ballots without postmarks showing they were mailed before voting stations were closed can be counted, but also the manner in which voter identities are verified by mail are crying out for examination in numerous states.”
• Right-winger Shimon Riklin of Channel 20 writes on Twitter that “it doesn’t matter who wins,” and instead focuses on the polls that did not get the numbers right, using it as a cudgel to accuse the media of bias. “We’ve experienced in the last few months the most organized and ‘beautiful’ fake news in history. It’s amazing to see how the media is a political actor and not a journalistic one,” he charges.
• Perhaps modeling unbiased journalistic behavior, he goes on to tweet that he is praying for Trump to win.
• Minister Yoaz Hendel, who has been broadly supportive of Trump like many other Israelis, tells Army Radio that there’s a silver lining in the fact that Trump may be voted out. “It’s good that we won’t be hostage in the hands of one party.”
• Israel National News plays up comments from former minister Ayoub Kara in which he expresses “disappointment” in US Jews for “betraying Donald Trump.”
• “US Jews had to vote for Trump with a knockout majority, because a strong Israel is the only guarantee for the security of Jews in Israel and the world,” the site quotes Kara, who is not actually Jewish.
• Bringing new meaning to the word hedging, former ambassador to the UN Danny Danon sent two statements to the press to use depending on who won, ToI’s Raphael Ahren reports.
• “Joe Biden has a long relationship with Israel which extends as far back as 1973 when he met then Prime Minister Golda Meir. … We are optimistic that he recognizes the advantages of the recent regional developments… Israel hopes to once again join hands with the US and the Biden administration and build upon the strong partnership that exists between our two countries,” reads one.
• But former Likud minister Limor Livnat dispenses with being politic in Yedioth’s op-ed page, writing that Israel would prefer Trump over Biden “even if there is criticism of his style.”

3. Trump may leave, but his ism lives on: On the other side, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, a former president of the Union for Reform Judaism, writes in Haaretz that a loss for Trump will make things even more scary for US Jews.

• “Trump has a bizarre relationship with American Jews, loving and hating them at the same time. Still, as President, despite his disruptive tendencies, he was subjected to certain constraints. But out of office, both empowered and embittered by the election outcome, Trumpism, in all its tribal vitality, may take on new and ugly forms,” he writes.
• Channel 12’s Aviv Bushinksy also surmises that Trumpism will not die with a Trump loss, and even envisions a possible comeback: “Trumpism is a phenomenon. A phenomenon that expresses the legitimate desires of many people. We would do well to learn it and understand better the reasons it coalesced. Anyone who dismisses it as a work accident should not be surprised if in another four years a similar candidate emerges with the same ‘etiquette’ or heaven forbid (?) Trump himself, who by law can still run for another term.”
• In JTA, Ben Sales writes that US Jews opposed to Trump were hoping for a massive repudiation of Trump. Without it, they fear things may still go sour: “Liberal Jews fear that means that even if Trump is defeated, the ideology he represents has staying power. They worry that Trump’s harsh policies against undocumented immigrants and refugees, in addition to the rising anti-Semitism of the past four years, are supported or condoned by a large portion of their country,” he writes.
• Even some conservative Jews are nervous. “The divide among Americans remains as deep as ever, which is tragic,” Rabbi Avi Shafran, a spokesperson for the ultra-Orthodox Agudath Israel of America, tells him. “When there is social upheaval, it is never good for Jews. And with Jews prominent on both sides of the political divide, those inclined to blame Jews for the world’s ills will, sadly, see the Jewish community as their enemy.”

4. How will things shake out for Israel? Shalom Yerushalmi of ToI sister site Zman Yisrael reports that Likud is beginning to fret over the possible repercussions of a Trump win, particularly what it could mean for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

• According to the sources, had Trump won, Netanyahu would have been boosted and would have gone for early elections. Now, he will find himself without the Trump card to show off to the public and his political allies.
• “Now they will tell Netanyahu: Your friend is gone, against all odds, so you will go too,” a senior Likud official says, referring to the premier’s opponents. “Now they will talk about how Netanyahu severed ties with the Democrats, what price we will all pay and how he — who knows America better than anyone — gambled on the wrong horse.”
• Former ambassador to the US Itamar Rabinovich tells Haaretz, “There will definitely be changes from the way Trump did things and more of a move back to the direction of the Obama days. The type of support Israel receives under a Biden administration will be much more mainstream. Biden is not connected to Sheldon Adelson, he would not appoint an ambassador like David Friedman, and we are sure to see an end to the massive support for the Israeli right. But I don’t believe it will be a complete return to the Obama period.”
• Walla’s Barak Ravid reports that Netanyahu told his ministers to stay mum on the race, which most have done. The PM himself has indicated to associates that he is hoping for a Trump win and his biggest fear was a “blue wave.”
• Despite the ban, put in place in reaction to Trump’s early claim of victory, current minister Tzachi Hanegbi tells Channel 13 news that Biden’s moves toward Iran could end up sparking a war.

This kind of wild speculation by senior Israeli government officials strikes me as unhelpful https://t.co/DqxPDVX6Dy

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— Judah Ari Gross (@JudahAriGross) November 5, 2020

• Israel Hayom’s Amnon Lord is already ready for a fight: “Israel will likely find itself once again in a contrarian position, and then, simple as that, our first confrontation with Washington is upon us,” he writes. “The next unavoidable disputes will concern the Palestinian issue. In order to please the anti-Israel wing of his party, Biden will rescind many of the steps Trump carried out as president. The PLO office in Washington will reopen, the funds for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, will be reinstated, and perhaps a US consulate will be opened in East Jerusalem. There will also likely be a demand to halt construction in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem. … The bottom line is that should the Democrats take control of both the White House and the Senate, Israel will once again be walking on eggshells with the US.”
• Perhaps it’s not all bad? Former diplomat Alon Pinkas tells Army Radio that “If Trump wins, he’ll sell F-35 jets to Saudi Arabia. If Biden wins, he’ll never do that.”

5. The Blue-ish State: Israelis are also watching the electoral chaos in the US and wondering how it would play out here, or vice versa.

• A cartoon in Yedioth shows Trump and Biden looking at an electoral map and Trump suggesting an “alternate presidency,” of the same type that Netanyahu and rival Benny Gantz have with the premiership.
• The joke is not exactly original:

Yalla, rotation. Trump goes first for 24 months, Biden will be Alternate President. Then they switch

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— Raphael Ahren (@RaphaelAhren) November 4, 2020

• Along that same vein, Army Radio’s Lucy Aharish jokes that Trump and Biden should form a “reconciliation cabinet,” of the type suggested by Netanyahu and Gantz.
• A cartoon in Haaretz shows Israel divided into zones, with all of them red except for Tel Aviv, which is naturally blue.

pic.twitter.com/YUgjhIOKoP

— Amos Biderman (@Amos123Biderman) November 5, 2020

• Pundit Amit Segal tweets a year-old column he wrote that tries the same experiment more seriously, showing an Israel that’s mostly blue, with only the north red. However in his world, red is Democrat and blue is Republican.

איך היית נראית מפת האלקטורים של ישראל לו היו פה מחוזות בחירה ושתי מפלגות? שווה לקרוא את הניתוח המלא https://t.co/iXVWQ6iBJl pic.twitter.com/915VdIuVNr

— עמית סגל (@amit_segal) November 5, 2020

• Channel 12 looks at what will happen if social media policies that censored Trump are used in Israel once it goes to the polls as well: “Israel should expect to see social media intervention,” Dr. Tehilla Altschuler of the Israel Democracy Institute tells the channel. “We’re already seeing much more intense intervention in taking down violence, conspiracies, etc. They stopped Bibi’s chat bot in the last elections when it broke the rules. Next time we’ll see it happening with much more intensity.”
• In Walla, Baruch Kara notes that Israel already has its version of QAnon and the deep state, thanks to Yair Netanyahu, who has tweeted accusations about a pedophile ring among his father’s accusers. “So please, don’t talk to me about America’s craziness,” he writes. “It’s here.”