Mixed messages: 9 things to know for November 7

1. Same division, different day: The last votes are being counted after a day that saw Republicans bolster their position in the Senate but lose control of the House of Representatives, a result pretty much everybody predicted. Instead of a full-throated repudiation of US President Donald Trump, America simply confirmed what it already knew: that it is deeply divided.

• Most Israeli news sites, in Hebrew and English, have been leading with coverage of the midterm elections, showing the high degree of interest in a contest that in past years has only drawn middling attention from even most Americans. That, like pretty much everything else, can be directly tied to Trump, who wasn’t on the ballot but is seen as the central player in pretty much everything that happens in America these days, fairly or not.
• “Trump suffers a blow, alongside victory,” reads the top headline on the Ynet news site, encapsulating Israeli attempts to parse the mixed results.
• “The 2020 weapons are out. The night that everybody was able to claim victory,” reads the top headline on the Walla news website.
• Even pro-Trump Israel Hayom, which plays up Trump crowing about the “tremendous success” on Twitter, writes that the results “are a message to the Trump administration that they are interested in curbing the ruling party and the president himself.”
• Haaretz’s Hebrew site goes all out with a massive seat tracker graphic of the type most usually seen on American news sites tracking the minutiae of the results. Its headline as of Wednesday mid-morning, though, “For the first time, two Muslims elected to Congress, homosexual elected governor,” reminds one how very non-American it is (especially given the fact that the Hebrew word for homosexual is a transliteration of a word considered a slur in the US and much of the West.)

2. Nothing will be the same: While there is across-the-board agreement that the immediate upshot of the Democrats taking control of the House will be Congressional deadlock and an onslaught of House-led investigations into Trump, beyond that even pundits have a hard time predicting what effect the neither-here-nor-there results will have on the domestic and international arenas.

• In Haaretz, Chemi Shalev writes that the House results will have a “dramatic impact … on the future of the United States.”
• “The Democrats are coming to the House hungry, with a majority that can’t be scoffed at, and from their view this is the start of the 2020 campaign,” Orly Azulai writes in Ynet.

3. Everything will be the same: Despite a lot of spilled ink about Israel’s closeness to Trump and the Pittsburgh connection, most see the results having little effect on Israel or the wider foreign policy scene.

• Looking at how the results are likely to affect Israel specifically, Haaretz predicts that “little seems likely to change in the U.S.-Israel relationship,” despite those two Muslims holding less than favorable views of Israel.
• JTA’s Ron Kampeas writes that even with more Israel critics in Congress, “over the next two years, their election is not truly significant. Staunchly pro-Israel lawmakers still call the shots. … If there will be a change, it will be in restoring some of the funding to the Palestinians that Trump has slashed. But that’s not funding that Israel necessarily opposes. While relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are at a nadir, Israel’s security establishment still sees a viable PA as critical to keeping the West Bank quiescent.”

4. Not everyone agrees: In Haaretz, “Jew Vs. Jew” author Samuel G. Freedman writes that Trump’s loss is also Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s: “thanks to his full embrace of Donald Trump, with which the majority of the Israeli public has followed suit but the overwhelming majority of U.S. Jews reject, he’s now shackled to Trump’s midterm losses – and potential downfall.”

• On Yedioth’s op-ed page, Shimrit Meir writes that no matter the results, Trump’s next two years could less kowtowing to Israel, meaning Jerusalem needs to take advantage of whatever advantage it’s been granted by the new Iran sanctions, including in Syria, while it can.
• “This is not the time to rest. We got a second chance, which is unbelievable, with the exit of the US from the nuclear deal, and we need to go from the assumption that there will not be a third,” she writes. “It’s safe to say the [administration’s] pro-Israel line will continue another two years, but it will be marked by dealing with the consequences of the administration’s large processes from Tehran, to Syria, to Gaza and to Jerusalem.”

5. Voting as anthropology: Bloomberg reports that among those watching results come in with Trump was Sheldon Adelson, the GOP megadonor who also happens to own Israel Hayom.

• While Adelson (and several other MoTs, including Cavs owner Dan Gilbert) ate “pizza, mini hotdogs, hamburgers and French fries served from elegant dishware,” an Israel Hayom editor/anthropologist was also tasting local fare deep in the jungles of South Florida.
• In his latest dispatch, Boaz Bismuth writes of how Americans are reluctant to talk openly about how they voted, which is apparently a novel concept to Israelis, and is apparently taking his anthropologist role seriously.
• “The midterm election cycle this year has been so brutal that it looks as if it’s no less than a religious ritual, a personal one, that each person performs in front of his god and his community.”

6. Up the ladder into the gutter: Nearly overtaking the midterm elections in the Israeli news agenda is a battle mixing politics and tinges of the #MeToo movement, after Yesh Atid MK Elazar Stern quipped from the Knesset plenum that he knows how minister Miri Regev got to the top of the IDF brass when she was army spokesperson.

• The comment was made Monday night during an exchange with Regev, who appeared to laugh it off, but something happened Monday that turned it into an unholy kerfuffle of righteous indignation.
• Regev and her allies quickly hit at Stern for the sexist comment (with Regev going as far as to post a video yelling at him and holding up a #YouToo placard), while Stern and his allies insisted that he only meant she kissed a lot of ass, and get your mind out of the gutter for thinking it could have meant anything else.
• Much of where people fell on the issue has depended on their politics, though Shelly Yachimovich crosses the picket line Wednesday morning, calling Stern’s words “the most chauvinistic thing you could possibly say,” and offering rare praise for the divisive Regev in an interview with Ynet.
• In Yedioth, columnist Smadar Shir writes that the same suspicions were cast upon her when she was in the army and got what looked like a sweetheart gig to travel to London: “Shame on you, Stern. It’s not easy for women, neither in the IDF nor in the job market, neither when they’re young and single nor when they have to juggle a career and family, and anyone who makes it through this gauntlet deserves a medal, not someone questioning their skills, persistence and recommendations they have racked up.”

7. Perhaps they were saying Boo-urns? Regev’s push for a bill clamping down on “disloyal” art may have some backers in Hollywood. In LA, an Israel Film Festival managed to make headlines beyond Variety after Jason Blum of the Blumhouse movie factory was pulled offstage while trying to deliver an anti-Trump diatribe.

• According to The Hollywood Reporter, as Blum tried to speak against Trump, booing got louder, and Israeli pawnbroker/human stereotype Yossi Dina tried to physically pull him offstage.
• THR notes that director Avi Nesher ran up to help Blum and later also spoke out against Trump, but was not booed. (Nesher may have earned extra sympathy because his son was killed in a electric bike crash in Tel Aviv in September).
• Somewhat interestingly, Blum’s former head of PR at Blumhouse was Josh Raffel, who served as Jared Kushner’s spokesman in the White House for over a year before suddenly leaving in February.
• Blum later posted his whole planned speech in a Twitter thread.

8. Forget Paris: Tensions with Russia apparently remain rocky, with reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may cancel a trip to Paris for Armistice Day anniversary commemorations where he was supposed to have a side meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

• The Kan broadcaster reports that the French asked that the meeting between Netanyahu and Putin be called off, and that Moscow is angry that Israel publicized the fact that it is still bombing Syria, even after the downing of a Russian spy plane.
• But Haaretz reports that Netanyahu’s office is playing it as a logistical issue: “Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office said that the structure of the conference, the tight schedule and the absence of side rooms create conditions not conducive for side meeting between leaders.”

9. Who needs Russia when you’ve got Oman? Transportation Minister Israel Katz is to give a presentation of his railway linking Israel to the Gulf in Muscat on Wednesday, the latest sign of warming ties between Israel and the Gulf that are even being noticed in Iran.

• Looking at why Oman has been so willing to host Israelis publicly lately, Steven Cook writes in Foreign Policy that the aging Sultan Qaboos is “taking out an insurance policy,” by hoping better ties with Israel will mean more backing from the US.
• “Oman’s new leader—whoever that may be—will need US political and diplomatic backing when Qaboos dies to bolster the country’s stability at a critical moment. Under ordinary circumstances that support would be forthcoming, but given the conflicts and forces—both internal and external—buffeting the Gulf, there are no guarantees. Oman’s role in the region as discreet interlocutor and broker of deals makes Muscat important beyond its size and resources, but it is also vulnerable. The Omanis sit between Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. If the sultan or his successor cannot maintain the balance among these countries, Oman may well get sucked into conflicts its leadership has sought to avoid,” he writes.