The other shidduch crisis: 8 things to know for February 1

1. Let’s get together: Parties on the left and right are jockeying for position, with many of them aiming to join up to either block Benny Gantz or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or somehow join forces with them.

• The Kan news broadcaster reports that Netanyahu’s Likud is in talks to join forces with Naftali Bennett’s New Right, after seeing polls that show Likud falling to second if Gantz and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid find a way to work together.
• Trying to put on a brave face, Labor’s Avi Gabbay is welcoming Gantz, even as his party’s polling numbers have been flattened by the rise of Israel Resilience.
• “The public that wants to replace the government must stand united and strong against Netanyahu,” the lead editorial in Haaretz reads. “But joining Yesh Atid isn’t enough. The center-left camp needs the Labor Party headed by Avi Gabbay by its side, and must expand its political ranks and reach out to more partners.”

2. Looking for a Lap-Gantz: Yedioth Ahronoth’s Nahum Barnea reports that several high-profile political movers have been ramping up lobbying efforts to get Gantz and Lapid to team up, including former IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi, who committed to joining the party if they get together.

• “In the meantime, Ashkenazi has yet to succeed. Each of them has conditioned joining up on them being in the number one slot,” he writes.
• Amit Segal on Channel 12 news asks why they don’t just come up with a rotation. “It could be a good solution for both of them to be at the top of the list, even if most don’t think it will actually happen, it seems there’s no other way that the two party heads will consider unity,” he writes.
• Yossi Verter in Haaretz notes that the Gantz-Lapid shidduch campaign extends beyond just Lapid and Gantz, with Gabbay, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak also being courted to throw their fates together.
• An internal poll shows even with just Lapid, Gantz and Ashkenazi getting together, they would have enough power to form a coalition and boot Netanyahu.
• Behind the push are several donors with deep pockets, including billionaire Mori Arkin, who sold generic drug maker Agis to US-based Perrigo for over $800 million in 2004.
• Why is it so important for the party leaders to join forces before the vote and not after? “The mathematics of the campaign’s leaders is one plus one equals three – because of the morale boost unity would provide thereby bringing out voters who would otherwise stay at home in despair,” Verter writes.

3. Bad news for the little guys: There is also the fact that with Israel’s fairly high threshold for entering the Knesset (over 3 percent of votes), smaller parties that can bolster a coalition won’t have the chance to do so.

• A poll in Israel Hayom Friday morning shows Livni bowing out if she doesn’t find a partner, and Labor on the cusp of doing the same, with only five seats coming its way.
• Also on the outs are Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, Jewish Home, and Ahmed Tibi’s Ta’al, with three seats each. Meanwhile, far-rightist Moshe Feiglin’s Zehut party sneaks in with four seats.
• The pro-Netanyahu paper also has some slightly better news for Netanyahu than past polls, with a Gantz, Lapid, Ashkenazi, Ya’alon merger bringing in 32 votes and just barely surpassing Likud’s 30 (somehow Likud gains a seat by doing nothing if they all join together). That case would also see Shas, Labor and others joining the ranks of those not making it into the Knesset.
• Should they not join up, according to the poll, Lapid would make do with only 9 seats, well behind Gantz’s 19 and Likud’s 29.
• And while polls a day earlier showed Gantz and Netanyahu neck and neck in the ‘most suitable for prime minister’ race, the Israel Hayom survey puts the incumbent well ahead, 38 percent to 22%.
• The paper’s Haim Shine mockingly compares the situation of the center-left to the Passover song “Just one goat,” with Gantz stealing votes from Lapid, who is stealing from Gabbay.

4. Unstoppable spin: Likud’s latest attempts to put down Gantz have shifted from him being accused of being a leftist to him accused of joining up with Tibi. A video put out by the party insinuates that the two are not-so secretly in cahoots, with the message being “a vote for Gantz is a vote for Tibi.”

• The video is compared by some to the 2019 version of “Arab are streaming to the polls in droves,” essentially playing on racist undercurrents to smear political rivals. (The fact that joining with leftists or Arabs is a smear in the Israel of 2019 should give many pause.)
• Yedioth Ahronoth’s Sima Kadmon reports that Netanyahu’s spin machine is also being blamed for a quote from a supposed Yesh Atid insider that threatened Gantz with political assassination if he doesn’t join in, which appeared in Israel Hayom on Thursday.
• “It’s likely not the worst we will see in the near future. Defamation, slander, stories about past misdeeds, fake news and stories out of nowhere will flutter around here like embers from a forest fire,” she predicts.

5. Iranian meddling: The Vocativ big data company told the Ynet news site Thursday it uncovered what appears to be an Iranian bot net attempting to meddle in Israel’s elections.

• Hours later, Facebook said it had taken down hundreds of pages connected to a concerted Iranian campaign meant to spread fake news in Israel and a slew of other countries.
• Foreign Ministry anti-bot czar Elad Ratson tells AFP that Israel has “identified five foreign attempts of disinformation in a level of sophistication indicating a state involvement” since early elections were announced.
• Hacktivist Noam Rotem, who tracks malicious online behavior and is preparing a report to give Twitter, tells the news agency that not only Iran, but also Saudi Arabia and probably Russia are involved.
• Though there has been no news of the international meddling being aimed to hurt Netanyahu, Likud still put out a bizarre statement Thursday night, claiming that of course they are targeting the prime minister because he has done everything from thwart their nuclear program to crush their economy.

6. No time to wait for indictment: Netanyahu launched what some are calling an unprecedented attack on Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit Thursday, releasing a “scathing” statement in response to reports by Channels 12 and 13 that Mandelblit had decided he would not delay the publication of his decision on whether he will indict Netanyahu, pending a hearing.

• In the statement, Netanyahu said the attorney general had given in to pressure from the left and the media, and calls his case the most important in Israeli political history.
• In a move possibly designed to cool Netanyahu’s wrath, Yedioth reports that “it seems Mandelblit will not actually say he is rejecting the request, but will emphasize that he is working on the case and does not know when he will finish.”
• In actual fact, Mandelblit was much less yellow, telling Netanyahu’s legal team Friday that there is “no impediment whatsoever to publishing a decision, however impactful it may be, on filing an indictment against the prime minister, subject to a hearing, before the election date.”
• In fact, he indicates that it is “in the public interest” for him to make an announcement before the elections.

7. Abbas weighs in, kinda: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has seemingly broken his silence on the Israeli elections, telling a group of Israeli businessmen that he is willing to negotiate with whoever ends up winning. “He told us that he is absolutely opposed to intervening in the elections in Israel,” Ilan Paz, a retired IDF general who was in attendance, tells ToI’s Adam Rasgon. “But he said he wishes to negotiate with whoever is elected prime minister.”

8. Bassa Nova: After a nine-month gestation, Eurovision star Netta Barzilai has finally released a new song to follow up her hit “Toy.”

• The release of “Bassa Sababa” is regarded as fairly major news on several legitimate news websites. The song, whose title means ‘That’s sucks, it’s cool,” doesn’t have any weird chicken noises, but plenty of gibberish.
• She tells the AP that the ditty, written by the same team behind “Toy,” speaks to the thrills and challenges of her past year.
• “After this experience, the people made me into some kind of idol for empowerment, self-acceptance and love,” she says. “But what they don’t know is that’s actually what empowered me.”
• The Walla news site reports that the video for the song cost close to a million shekels. Check it out here: