The age of Liberman

One month ago, the prospect of Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon being humiliatingly booted out of his post in favor of none other than Avigdor Liberman — the leader of a small, scandal-ridden, ultra-nationalist party — would have seemed all but ludicrous. And yet, here we are today, with Yisrael Beytenu on the brink of joining Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, Ya’alon quitting politics (at least for a while) and the country completely baffled over the fast-paced developments.

It is no wonder, then, that the Hebrew-language newspapers have been thrown into disarray over this bloodless coup, with pundits on all sides continuing to voice concerns as they delve into the prime minister’s purported motives for his surprise move, leaving readers feeling like they had just binge-watched a season of some bizzaro Game of Thrones-House of Cards mashup.

Ya’alon, whose retirement from political life was only announced Friday morning — after the Hebrew papers hit the newsstands — is less the focus of Israel’s dailies, which seem more interested in Liberman. For some unfathomable reason, Yedioth Ahronoth chose to lead with a photo of the actual head of Yisrael Beytenu’s head, showing Liberman getting his hair trimmed by a nervous-looking barber. The strange image is accompanied by the words “the first right-wing government” — a headline which the regularly Netanyahu-critical daily undoubtedly means as criticism, not praise.

In a series of op-eds, analysts Sima Kadmon, Alex Fishman, Yossi Yehoshua and former Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin make no effort to hide neither their disdain for Liberman as a human being, nor their low opinion of him possessing the skills and qualifications required to hold Israel’s most important security position.

Israel Hayom, loyal as usual to the prime minister and almost his every opinion, leads with a survey determining that “the majority of the public prefer Liberman to Herzog in the government.” The headline suggests that the Israeli public is in fact happy with Netanyahu’s decision to choose Yisrael Beytenu over the Zionist Union as a coalition partner. But the headline actually provides a splendid example of how polls can be manipulated in favor of a particular worldview, as it does not take a skilled statistician to see that the message offered by the paper does not necessarily follow from the results of the survey itself.

For starters, in a common practice by Hebrew-language papers that has absolutely no statistical (not to mention moral) justification, Israel Hayom’s poll was only conducted among Jewish residents of the country. It is safe assume that adding a sample of Arab Israelis to the mix would alter the poll’s results, given that this demographic makes up roughly 20 percent of the population.

Secondly — and please pay close attention — the poll asks which of the two parties respondents would rather see in the government. This is a trick question, which can be explained by the following scenario: Imagine a Zionist Union voter who despises Liberman and his politics, yet cannot stomach the thought of Herzog’s center-left party ditching its principles and promising to join Netanyahu’s right-wing government. The survey compels said voter to answer that it would be preferable for Yisrael Beytenu to enter the coalition.

This clearly does not imply that the Zionist Union voter is at all happy with Netanyahu’s decision to include Liberman in his government, yet the way in which the survey is constructed makes it seem as if the voter wanted Yisrael Beytenu in the coalition all along. In other words, the preference for Liberman may have less to do with Yisrael Beytenu, and more to do with Zionist Union voters rejecting Herzog’s advances toward Netanyahu.

And while the survey does pose a general question regarding Yisrael Beytenu’s new role as a coalition partners for Likud — with 43% in favor of the party joining the government and 38% against — the difference between these two figures cannot provide a definitive statistical conclusion. Furthermore, the numbers clearly indicate that less than half of the population are in line with Netanyahu’s decision — not a majority, as stated on Israel Hayom’s front page headline. There are lies, there are damned lies, and there are statistics.

Moving on to the op-eds, Israel Hayom analyst Mati Tuchfeld asserts that despite all the concerns raised, Liberman’s joining of the government is a natural move for the coalition. “Liberman has always been considered the flesh and blood of the national camp in Israel,” Tuchfeld writes. “That is why the Israeli public sees the effort of his joining [the government] as a natural … matter.”

In Haaretz, veteran political analyst Yoel Marcus urges the paper’s readers not to panic over Liberman’s expected appointment, and stresses that for good or for bad, the Israeli political system itself assures that the Yisrael Beytenu chief cannot take any critical security steps alone. “Important decisions are not reached by one man,” he writes. “The defense minister is not all-powerful. In reality he has much less influence than what one may think.”

On a completely different note, Yedioth reporter Rotem Eliezra writes that the average life expectancy throughout the world has shot up by five years since the start of the millennium, including in Israel, where a man can expect to live to an average of 80.6 years, and a woman to no less than 84.3 years. These stats put residents of the Jewish state at eighth place globally in terms of average life expectancy. (Japan boasts the highest average life expectancy rate when taking both females and males into account, with 80.5 years for men — that is less than in Israel — and an impressive 86.8 for women.)