Win in bag, focus turns to hungry hungry politicos

It’s not considered good form to put tears or frowny faces on front pages, but it’s not exactly a secret that two of Israel’s three major dailies had a rough day on Wednesday as it became clear that an intense campaign to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, scourge of the populist Yedioth Ahronoth and lefty Haaretz, had come up short.

Thus, both papers play the news pretty straight, and even Israel Hayom (funded by Netanyahu backer Sheldon Adelson and seen by many as a Netanyahu mouthpiece) forgoes triumphalism, resulting in three relatively understated front pages, all with pictures of Netanyahu at the Western Wall and all leading off with news of the initial coalition-cobbling efforts.

With the natural coalition partners pretty much known, much of the news on those efforts centers around prognosticating who will be offered what ministerial posts. Israel Hayom reports that Netanyahu will likely look to increase the number of posts, undoing reforms in the system pushed by Yair Lapid during 2013’s coalition negotiations. With that, 10 Likud MKs may be offered ministerial posts, at least one of whom will be religious, with Yuli Edelstein keeping his Knesset speaker post, according to the paper.

Haaretz quotes Likud sources saying that Netanyahu is going to look to bring in Yisrael Beytenu, despite a harsh split with leader Avigdor Liberman during the campaign (“We are not looking to be in the opposition, we want to be in the coalition, but not at any price,” Liberman is quoted saying in Yedioth).

The broadsheet adds that Kulanu head Moshe Kahlon won’t necessarily take the Finance Ministry post, but may “stitch together” a special economic ministerial post that will allow him to deal with cost of living issues more directly, while also taking control of the powerful Israel Lands Administration.

With the coalition prospectively having six partners, there will be a lot of hungry, hungry politicians to feed with yummy ministerships. Yedioth reports that Jewish Home head Naftali Bennett will demand the foreign or defense ministries, though he will have to fight Liberman for the defense post. The paper sees Shas head Aryeh Deri looking to reclaim the Interior Ministry and United Torah Judaism’s Yaakov Litzman (who refuses to take on a full ministerial post for religious reasons) back as deputy health minister.

While Netanyahu is busy piecing together his coalition, the Israeli left has busied trying to piece together what went wrong. Haaretz, the flagship of Israeli liberalism, is filled with commentaries, op-eds and analyses featuring a healthy dose of hand-wringing and some carping over the loss as well.

“If the left ever wishes to return to power it must show that it has an ideological alternative to the right, not just an alternative to the personality of the leader of the right,” Aluf Benn writes in the paper. “This election showed that at the moment of truth people follow someone who fights for his positions. When Netanyahu posed as a centrist his voters drifted toward Liberman and Bennett. When he unashamedly and unapologetically returned to his roots they flocked back into his arms. By trying to please everyone and not annoy anyone Herzog ended up in the opposition.”

The paper’s Uzi Baram, meanwhile, sees little to be hopeful about after watching Netanyahu sweep to victory on what he says was a campaign to take advantage of Israelis’ persistent racist tendencies.

“Operation Protective Edge, and the frightening anti-left and anti-Arab atmosphere that accompanied it, took place less than a year ago,” he writes. “Since then, we believed we had shaken off the racist Israel that constantly portrays itself as a victim. But these attitudes lingered deep in people’s hearts … Netanyahu would stop at nothing to defeat the treacherous left (Herzog?) and the Arabs — who, we are meant to believe, aren’t really legitimate citizens anyway, seeking only to annihilate us.”

Yedioth, perhaps accepting defeat, doesn’t come off quite as dejected, with only a few commentaries, none of which go after Netanyahu especially hard.

Yigal Sarna, for instance, tries to make lemonade out of feces-covered electoral lemons, though his indignation shines through.

“In the short term I’m sad because I sought quick relief. Because I hoped we would be saved just like that, just by dropping a paper slip light as a feather into the burning depths of hatred, occupation, exploitation, lying, the king of lies and the queen of waste, and a public that rightly felt deprived and burdened,” he writes. “But we learn again and again that things take time. And the way is painful. Israel needs to drink fully of the poison of the fanatic right before its days are up. The era of Netanyahu needs to continue down its wild path until its actual end. Until we all crash and burn.”

Needless to say Israel Hayom doesn’t quite see it the same way. But while the paper is certainly happy for Netanyahu, it also sees in the vote a victory for itself over the evil Yedioth.

Itzik Saban, writing that Yedioth is disconnected from the rest of the country, bashes the tabloid for daring to report in Wednesday’s paper that the results were close, giving the paper no benefit of the doubt over the fact that it, like every other news organization at midnight still basing itself off the exit polls, thought it was in fact a tight race with much left to be decided. No, Saban writes, “we can assume that the publisher and editors of the paper knew the truth. But they understood that they would have to eat their hat and refused to swallow it.”

(For the record, while Israel Hayom’s Wednesday edition trumpeted Netanyahu’s victory, it went out on a bit of a limb by doing so, since it was relying on the same faulty exit poll numbers.)

Haim Shine also attempts to give the media a beat-down for having the temerity to not support Netanyahu, lumping in those faulty polling numbers from before the election and the exit surveys as part of a massive conspiracy to steal the election for Herzog.

“The peak of the deception was the polls, which were supposed to be representative but to me were a continual failure. Their purpose was clear, creating an atmosphere that Netanyahu and the Likud stood to lose the election and it’s worthwhile to join the winning side, namely Zionist Union,” he writes, conveniently forgetting that Likud used the specter of losing to their own benefit by rallying voters to their side. “The best proof was the exit polls, which had no connection to the real results. The similarity between the faulty numbers among the different channels needs to be checked. The explanations I’ve heard from experts and statisticians don’t convince me.”