Voting in, voting out
The Hebrew press gears up for Super Tuesday while a controversial bill to suspend lawmakers from the Knesset passes a hurdle
Marissa Newman is The Times of Israel political correspondent.
A controversial bill spearheaded by the prime minister that would allow the suspension of Knesset members is approved for a first vote, prompting the top Arab MK, Ayman Odeh, to threaten to resign. Unlikely allies Avigdor Liberman and Yair Lapid slam Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of foreign affairs, earning a tongue-lashing from the premier. And Odeh accuses Israel of murdering Arafat. And yet, Israeli politics takes a backseat to American (and Iranian) politics in the Hebrew press on Super Tuesday, with all eyes on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
“The day of judgment,” reads Yedioth Ahronoth’s front-page headline, which features photos of Trump and Clinton. In its inside pages, the Democratic and Republican front-runners once again are prominent in the photo spreads, with an itty-bitty snapshot of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio tacked on the bottom of the page.
On Trump, Yedioth leads with a three-day-old New York Times report that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell could try to block Trump’s nomination. “This is something that has never happened: in a surreal scene, the Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to try and block Donald Trump, the likely presidential candidate, from running in the general election,” it reports.
Despite the various predictions that Trump will emerge victorious on Tuesday, the paper quotes a poll (but doesn’t name which poll) that casts doubt on whether he can replicate that success in the general election. “Only 25% of Republicans who participated admitted that they would definitely vote for him in November,” it reports.
On Hillary, columnist Tzipi Shmilovitz maintains Clinton is confident she will win.
“The optimism in the Clinton camp ahead of the polls on ‘Super Tuesday’ was evident in that it was decided to send the big guns — Bill and Chelsea — to Massachusetts, the state adjacent to Vermont, where Senator Bernie Sanders led with a double-digit margin [over Hillary] up until two weeks ago. The message is clear: Now, as she has the momentum, Clinton assesses that she can climb to victory even in her opponent’s backyard.”
In a bizarre reference, Shmilovitz also paraphrases Netanyahu’s pre-election “the Arabs are voting in droves” comment, referring to Sanders’ inability to woo minority voters.
“His defeat in South Carolina, where Clinton beat him by over 50 points, made clear that to win in the Democratic primaries, he needs to build a wider coalition that will be based not only on white and relatively young voters, but also minorities — who are flocking to Clinton in droves.”
Over in Israel Hayom, a short article on Texas Jews reports — based on interviews with a Jewish owner of a kosher Austin supermarket, and a Chabad representative — that most will be supporting Sanders, simply because he’s Jewish. But columnist Boaz Bismuth seems more interested in what kind of steak is available than the Jewish Texan vote.
“Even if he hides it and won’t discuss it, the Vermont senator’s Judaism is helping him,” he writes, before a segue into: “Tell me, I ask the rabbi. Will you help me finally taste some juicy Texan steak? ‘You won’t have a problem finding kosher steak,’ he answers. ‘But the meat here is from Idaho.'”
Haaretz, meanwhile, is still focused on another election: Iran’s. Its top story is dedicated to the gains of Iran’s moderates, but its political cartoon is all Trump. In it, the Republican front-runner paraphrases Martin Luther King Jr. with an “I have a dream” address in Washington, with KKK members observing from the audience.
— Amos Biderman (@Amos123Biderman) March 1, 2016
Also making headlines on Tuesday is the approval of the “MK suspension bill” for a first reading, which even the Netanyahu-backing Israel Hayom calls “controversial.”
Haaretz reports that “next week, in an unusual step, the committee will bring the bill” to a Knesset vote.
All three dailies cite the attorney general’s stance on the matter, which maintained the bill was not unlawful but “creates a window for the majority to scheme against the minority.”
And in Yedioth, columnist Sima Kadmon links the bill with the new, unlikely alliance of Liberman and Lapid, who held a joint press conference on Monday to condemn Netanyahu’s handling of foreign affairs.
“It seems that Netanyahu can’t do everything after all,” she writes. “If he could, he would prefer to suspend Liberman and keep Hanin Zoabi. Certainly after yesterday, when his two rivals — Liberman and Lapid — sat next to each other during an emergency press conference in the Knesset on Israel’s national standing. Israel’s international status doesn’t trouble Netanyahu. Nor the Foreign Ministry’s situation. If there is something that makes his head spin, it’s the possibility of an alliance between the two, the head of Yisrael Beytenu and Yesh Atid, which even now, based on recent polls, would make them the largest party.”
The Times of Israel Community.