The Trump referendum: 9 things to know for November 5

1. No confidence: A day before US midterm elections, Israeli correspondents are spread across the heartland (okay, the Eastern Seaboard) of America like invading boll weevils, eating and regurgitating every pithy quip or anecdote to try to explain America’s big democratic adventure.

• No matter where they are, though, the Israelis are united in seeing the midterm as a referendum on US President Donald Trump, in many cases overlooking the vagaries of local politics that don’t necessarily have much to do with national politics.
• Coming just a week after Israelis voted in their own local elections, which were seen as having little bearing on the national political arena, it’s interesting to see how prone pundits are to oversimplifying a foreign land in many cases.
• “The elections, seen as a confidence or no confidence vote in him, will to a large degree influence how the second half of his term looks,” Yedioth Ahronoth’s Orly Azulay writes from Washington.

2. Ohio is for voters: The pundits are also prone to looking straight past the elections to 2020.

• Haaretz’s Amir Tibon, also writing from Washington, claims that just as fateful as the makeup of Congress as a whole is how five Midwestern states that went with Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016 will vote, since that will show how they may swing in 2020.
• Democrats, he claims, have reason for optimism. “If you go state by state, you’ll see how Democrats are leading or at least putting up a serious fight against their opponents,” he quotes Democratic pollster Mark Mellman saying.
• At least one modern day Alexis de Toqueville manages to parachute past the Cumberland Gap — Israel Hayom’s Boaz Bismuth, who reports from the small town of Portsmouth, Ohio, across the Ohio River from Kentucky, on why he thinks Ohio is the ultimate bellwether even in non-presidential years (and is good news for Republicans).
• “Ohio is an example of a state where the vote for Congress is like a vote for president, and that’s exactly what can help Republicans. in this state, which Americans like to term the Midwest, which has the best values of America, these elections are first and foremost a referendum on the job Trump has done — but unlike other states, here Trump is not thought of as a hero who is restoring lost respect to the everyman (like in West Virginia). In Ohio, they voted for Trump because they identified with him more than Hillary Clinton the liberal.
• (It would take a whole separate column for this born-and-bred Ohioan to go into all the ways Bismuth’s armchair analysis oversimplifies and gets things wrong, at least from my perspective, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume things what he writes is true in Portsmouth, just a few miles from the West Virginia border).
• Yedioth’s Nahum Barnea, who once went all the way to Guam to report on North Korea tensions, now makes it all the way to Westfield, New Jersey, (about five miles from New York City,) claiming that as the state is one big suburb, and suburbs are neither rural (GOP) or urban (Democrat), it’s the best litmus test for elections in two years’ time.
• But he also admits: “Any result is possible and open for interpretation.”

3. Sanction time: Trump is still in power, though, which means that sanctions against Iran are snapping back starting Monday.

• The Israeli press isn’t paying a ton of attention to the move, scheduled months ago, though Israeli leaders are sure to thank the Trump administration, including this rare English-language tweet from Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman.

President Trump's bold decision is the sea-change the Middle East has been waiting for. In a single move, the United States is dealing a critical blow to Iran's entrenchment in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq and Yemen. President Trump, you've done it again! Thank you.

— אביגדור ליברמן (@AvigdorLiberman) November 5, 2018

• In Israel Hayom, seen as a government mouthpiece, columnist Yoav Limor lauds the sanctions and says they are not the end, but only “another necessary step in the long battle to halt the ayatollah regime’s nuclear, territorial and religious designs.”
• With Iran making vague threats of war-footing, closing the Strait of Hormuz or other retaliatory measures over the sanctions, but not doing much, Walla news’s Ronen Dangor compares it to the boy who cried wolf.

4. Bahrain-bound? After a week that saw Israel and the Gulf seemingly grow closer (partially over shared anti-Iran interests), and a report that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied to bail out Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the Jamal Khashoggi killing, Haaretz’s Zvi Bar’el reports that “ there have been frequent contacts aimed at preparing the ground for a new destination on Netanyahu’s travel itinerary, apparently to the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain.”

• Bar’el also says Qatar ”has over the past year become an executive arm of sorts in carrying out Israeli policy in Gaza.”
• Meanwhile, Israel’s Kan broadcaster reports that Communications Minister Ayoub Kara, who paid a rare visit to Dubai last week, was detained at the airport for hours when he tried to leave.
• “Citing officials in Dubai, the report said that Kara was late for the flight and refused to follow instructions from airport personnel on the ground, prompting officials to detain him for several hours.”
• This isn’t Kara’s first foreign travel “farce,” and you can read all about his past hi-jinks here, thanks to ToI’s intrepid researchers.

5. Gideon’s law: Walla reports that the government will quickly push a bill that will force the president’s hand in choosing the head of the party with the widest support to form a governing coalition.

• In the press, the law is being named for former Likud minister Gideon Sa’ar, after Netanyahu last month accused Sa’ar of plotting with president Reuven Rivlin to have him given the go-ahead to form the next coalition.
• News sites report that the law apparently has the support of all the coalition parties.

6. More election scuttlebutt: Ynet’s Attila Somfavili writes on Twitter that minister think Netanyahu’s decision to push ahead with the Sa’ar bill and a bill imposing a death penalty for terrorists means that elections are coming soon.

• The death penalty bill will gain Netanyahu and Likud points with the right, while the Sa’ar bill will make sure he is the one chosen to form the next government, assuming Likud does as well as polls show.
• “The elections are planned for March this year. That’s our assessment, and that’s what we’re planning for,” Kulanu minister Eli Cohen tells him.

7. Cheers, not jeers: If the past few elections cycles in Israel, the US and elsewhere are any indicator, the upcoming elections may be nastier than have been seen before, with left-right divides more deeply felt by many and amplified by social media.

• Going against the grain, Haaretz’s Meirav Arlosoroff chides her own side — the left — for booing Likud minister Tzachi Hanegbi when he spoke at a memorial rally for assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
• “You have to admire Hanegbi’s political courage and honesty for coming out against his own political base by daring to participate in a rally so clearly identified with the left-wing camp, and especially one that accuses the right-wing of incitement and murder,” she writes. “The Pavlovian response of the Tel Aviv crowd – to stone a right-winger, even if he bears a message of reconciliation and tolerance – was shameful in its stupidity. What’s the point of left-wingers crying out against political incitement by the right when any attempt at moderating this incitement is rejected and booed?”

8. Who gives a shirt? A picture showing the sons of Jair Bolsonaro wearing IDF and Mossad shirts is raising hackles among some, who see it as a sign of Israel’s closeness with bag guys, or vice versa.

• The picture was first tweeted out by the editor of the right-wing media watchdog Presspectiva, who jokingly called it “repulsive and upsetting.”
• Others are not necessarily having a laugh.

This is a photo of Brazil’s new president Jair Bolsonaro’s two sons wearing IDF and Mossad shirts. Israel has become a symbol for authoritarianism around the world https://t.co/QgRTyRafBr

— Mairav Zonszein מרב זונשיין (@MairavZ) November 4, 2018

#SharedValues
Sons of Brazil's new Fascist president Jair Bolsonaro, seen wearing Mossad and IDF T-shirts.
Fascism ❤️ Zionism pic.twitter.com/tfBmfI9Owx

— عمو حسام (@3arabawy) November 4, 2018

9. Tourist trap: While your average Israeli would not be caught dead in those shirts, they are standard fare for many tourists who visit Israel, which means there may be a whole lot more floating around the thrift shops of Eastern Europe soon.

• Israel’s Tourism Ministry reports that October 2018 was the best all-time for incoming tourism, with 486,000 people making it through Shin Bet and Strategic Affairs interrogations to actually visit the country.
• According to ministry statistics, much of the growth is being driven by Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic and Italy, places where they have invested in advertising.
• Not mentioned by the ministry is the Open Skies agreement with the EU signed about 6 years ago, which brought low-cost carriers, and cheap prices for flying between Israel and much of Europe, which has likely also helped increase tourism.