Yisrael Beiteinu Puns

Obviously the details will be out of date as soon as it is posted. I'm on a boring international call so figure I'd give the results to open up the conversation.

numbers below are 11:30 and adjusted at midnight and now 9:30 am.

• Likud (Netanyahu -- center right secular) = 30 32
• Yesh Atid (Lapid -- center left secular) = 17 16
• Shas (Deri -- Mizrahi Haredi and poor) = 9 10
• Kahol Lavan / Blue & White (Gantz -- center) = 8 7
• UTJ (Ashkenazi religious) = 8 9
• Yamina (Bennett -- hard right mostly religious) = 7 8
• Labor (Michaeli -- Center left) = 7 6
• Yisrael Beiteinu (Lieberman -- Soviet émigré, secular right) = 7 8
• Religious Zionism (Smotrich' -- Hard right / Fascist, non-Haredi religious) = 6 7
• New Hope (Sa'ar -- center right secular) = 6
• Joint List (Odeh -- Hard Left Arab mixed) = 6
• Meretz (Horowitz.-- Left) = 5
• Ra'am (Islamist) = 5 0

It's really late but if my brain is working assuming these numbers hold up it looks like:

I didn't adjust the totals from 11:30 numbers.

• Right = 74, Center = 29, Left = 17
• Religious = 42, Secular = 78
• Loves Netanyahu = 58, hates Netanyahu = 39 , maybe = 23

I think Netanyahu continues to rule. '

Meretz survived which means my choice for USA Ambassador (Tamar Zandberg) keeps her day job. Would still like to see her in the Ambassador role. Also on the plus side Gilad Kariv (Reform Rabbi) is now an MP and that will annoy the heck out of UTJ.

(midnight and 9:30 am edit) Big change at 9:30am vs. midnight is Ra'am (United Arab List) qualified in a late surge.

This is a short effort-post on the post-election government formation scenario in Israel. The election concluded on March 23, 2021. As things stand, no government formation seems likely. But a new election in November spells a risk for Netanyahu.

The results were as follows:

Government formation

The first option is for Netanyahu to seek a government formed under his leadership. He has 52 MKs confirmed in that regard (Likud + Shas + UTJ + RZ). He needs both Yamina and New Hope to put him across the 60 seats mark. However, neither Bennet nor Sa'ar are keen on joining a government under Netanyahu's leadership. The other alternative for Netanyahu is to seek Ra'am's support, but he'd still require one of Yamina and New Hope. Again, neither would join a government that has an Arab party.

The second likely contender is Yair Lapid of YA. He has 45 MKs (YA + B&W + Labor + YB + Meretz). He'll need both Yamina and New Hope, as well as Ra'am, or at least some breakaway support from Joint List to form a government. As aforesaid, that's not possible. The only upside is that this coalition would topple Netanyahu, which is a good incentive on its own for several of these parties.

Bennett could offer himself for premiership. But, the numbers would be similar to that of Lapid, and Bennet isn't keen on support from Ra'am. There is a strong possibility that Likud, Yamina, and New Hope members cross the floor to join the alternative coalition. But there isn't a strong indication for such an eventuality.

There could be another election in November, if no government is formed. The obvious downside for Netanyahu is that according to laws passed by the last Knesset, Benny Gantz automatically becomes the prime minister in November. Netanyahu must succeed in forming a government now, or risk the November election to see whether his prospects better.

Sources

• The Jerusalem Post
• [Haaretz](https://www.haaretz.

Today Israel's High Court decided to recognize Reform and Conservative conversions. The status of people who converted abroad non-orthodox and moved to Israel under Right of Return has been in question for 15 years. The Knesset was supposed to pass legislation to address the issue but didn't. So the High Court reluctantly intevened.

Shas and UTJ expressed strong opposition, "Reform and Conservative conversions are a forgery which brings thousands of gentiles into the Jewish people". Claim they will make overturning this a hard demand for a coalition government. Religious Zionist Party described it as dangerous. Yamina and Likud both expressed concerns the High Court had overstepped. Going left there was strong support. Yesh Atid, "A sane government end the situation whereby Israel is the only democracy in the world in which there is no religious freedom for Jews." Yisrael Beiteinu,"continue to fight against religious coercion." Meretz, "time for Israel to break free from the shackles of the rabbinate, which is controlled by a parochial religious stream, and to welcome with open arms those who have become Jewish through the Reform and Conservative conversion." Labor, "will continue its struggles for a pluralistic and egalitarian society that recognizes all streams of Judaism."

Obviously I think this is great. Like pretty much all Americans I can stand the Israeli Rabbinate. Its also worth mentioning Haaretz's analysis which I believe is correct. They believe this ruling creates a lose-lose problem for Likud and Yamina. Not overturning this will enrage Shas and UTJ. Overturning it will enrage American Jews and could shatter Israel's alliance with American Jews. It would instantly shatter Right of Return for millions. Stalling won't work because performing marriages and divorces in Israel will come up quickly as issues.

Sample articles:

• Haaretz: Core article, US response,

• Jerusalem Post: High Court conversion ruling helps bridge Israel-Diaspora rift

• LA Times [Israel's high court rules that non-Orthodox converts are Jews, entitled to citizenship](htt

Before diving in to the details a short reminder of why Israel is a terrific case study:

• Israel is a vibrant multiparty democracy (PR: proportional representation) where parties rise and fall quite regularly.
• Essentially every voter has at least 2 parties who are close enough to them ideologically that they could seriously consider voting for them in the general. Thus Israeli voters overwhelming can both vote their values and hold parties accountable.
• Israeli parties can use whatever primary system they want. Parties experiment so we at FPTP get to see party lists by leadership, party lists by primary and various mixtures side by side during the same election and for the same party in close temporal proximity. This generates excellent data on various primary schemes in a PR scenario.
• Israel parties are groupings of high information voters. For the general the parties can "run jointly" when they share low information voters. So Israel gives a very good map of what sorts of distinction in a vibrant PR system high information vs. low information voters would care about.

The list of parties we are going to discuss are the "running together" that is low information distinctions. The following list indicates off the cuff how the parties are split with the who doesn't want to be in a coalition with whom map that I thought was worth bringing up

Who doesn't want to be in coalition with whom

• Likud -- This is Netanyahu's party: Center right secular
• Yesh Atid. This party is headed by a popular news anchor and commentator whose father was a left centrist leader. Center left secular
• Shas. This party represents Mizrahi (Jews who grandparents lived in Arab countries like Morocco or Iraq) religious voters and also generally reaches out to much of the Jewish poor.
• Kahol Lavan (was called Blue & White). This is Gantz's party. It came in 2nd in the previous round but has torn itself apart in the last 18 months. Centrist.
• UTJ is the main Ashkenazi Haredi party.
• Yamina. This is Naftali Bennett's party. It is hard right mostly religious but does aim for some secular appeal among the hard right.
• Labor. This is the party that founded Israel and governed until the 1970s. Losing popularity with a voter base that is often quite elderly. Center left
• Yisrael Beiteinu is an ethnic party for Soviet émig

In Indonesia:

Australian top officials had been reporting strange things on their phones for the past few weeks, but it all came crashing down this week when Admiral Michael Noonan of the Australian navy brought his phone in, suspecting a hack, and finding much worse. It has been discovered that Indonesian agents have been using keyloggers and other information-saving techniques to document everything top international officials have been doing for the past few months. (u/SunstriderAlar)

In Azerbaijan:

Political divisiveness has increased greatly recently, as Pro Turkish and Pro Russian politicians have clashed, sometimes all too literally, over the direction the country should go in the future. Several Pro Turkish members have been disgraced from their peers for accepting bribes.

In Nepal:

Commercials and advertisements featuring the RPP and allied groups have been popping up at an alarming rate, and support for the party has gone up as well, these donations and commercials come from an unknown source, however, and suspicion has begun to grow as to the source.

In Italy:

Israeli intelligence has done a full sweep of Italian governmental offices to look for recording or tracking devices. All offices were swept, and no devices of any kind were found, showing the security of Italy's government.

In Turkey:

A sweep of S400 batteries was done by Turkey, in search of suspected agents trying to sneak information on the program. Nothing has been found so far, but continuous updates are expected.

In Hong Kong:

An increase in Hong Kong drug dealing and prostitution has many in the government concerned, as arrests are taking place, but essentially only yes men and lackies have been arrested so far, and increases in activity have been happening as of recent.

In Turkey:

Devastation has happened in Turkey. In a 3 pronged attack, agents have destroyed the physical S400 in Turkey and the online data regarding the reverse-engineered copy, however, agents were arrested by Turkey after the destruction of the physical one, and must now be interrogated. The third prong, however, may be the worst. In an act similar to Chengdu's sabotage last year, all data regarding the TAI TF-X has leaked online to the public, revealing all specifications of the aircraft.

In Israel:

The leader of Yisrael Beiteinu, in a stunning move by the Israeli police. Has been arrested and charged with corruption, related to his alleged ties with the Russian government. He both publicly and p

In the US: Support for Taiwan has grown after Taiwanese politicians continue their mysterious campaign against China, expanding to Reddit and even Facebook with posts and ads. As well as this, many Tong clan members have been spotted uniting into 1, larger, more dangerous clan, with several smaller groups that had splintered years ago reforming.

In Taiwan: Several high-ranking army officers have been uncovered in a plot to sow distrust among nuclear scientists and civilians about President Lai's leadership, in a campaign from an unknown organization they were told to find information and convince scientists to stop working on the program.

In China: Chengdu has suffered a massive data breach, and all information regarding its fighter designs, including the J-20, has been leaked publicly online by several hackers of unknown origin, an unprecedented amount of damage.

In Israel: A small number of IDF and political opponents to the government have begun expressing dissatisfaction towards Israel's US links, and Yisrael Beiteinu has been especially vocal, wondering how much better things could have been with a Russian line.

In Italy: Members of Israel's political parties on the far right are reporting feeling like they're being watched in meetings, and several even present evidence of this, but nothing is confirmable and, in other news, report that their favorite food is Tiramisu.

In Azerbaijan: The NAP has given more and more suggestions of cooperation with the Turkish government, as have members of the party in the military, no action has been taken for now, but suspicions are growing.

In Turkey: Support for the HDP has increased by 5%, and PKK support has waned, even among their own members.

In Mozambique: After being supplied with foreign military equipment of unknown origin, in a stunning move, the RENAMO party has ousted the current government in Mozambique, seizing power for itself in a bloodless coup, supported by massive firepower.

In Indonesia: It has been determined that there is no spying going on in the outer fringes of the nation and that Indonesia's cyber network is secure.

October 31, 2021

Just twelve days after the Israeli election, Prime Minister Yair Lapid has created a coalition of left-wing to center parties, with a narrow majority of 2 seats. This comes ten months after the 23rd Knesset was dissolved and Israel was left with no government at all.

With a successful coalition, some analysts believe that the Israeli political crisis can finally be resolved. Between 2019 and 2021, there have been five elections in Israel, as no party was able to form a majority coalition of more than 60 seats in the Knesset. As the crisis worsened, and issues like the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged Israel, the country took unusual measures - such as creating a rotation government with two prime ministers - to no avail. If PM Lapid can maintain this coalition, the crisis will truly come to an end.

The composition of the 24th Knesset is listed below.

Government Coalition: 61 seats

- Yesh Atid (28)

- Joint List (16)

- Israel Resilience (8)

- Labor (5)

- Meretz (4)

Opposition Parties: 59 seats

- Likud (21)

- Shas (13)

- Yamina (8)

- Yisrael Beiteinu (7)

- United Torah Judaism (6)

- New Hope (4)

The opposition, as well as certain media outlets, have noted that the government coalition has only received 47.44% of the popular vote. Some far-right groups are even accusing the Joint List coalition for gerrymandering the majority-Arab districts of Israel to artificially boost their seats. Hopefully, their accusations and complaints will amount to just white noise.

Ultimately, this government coalition is mostly united towards the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. Yair Lapid hopes to achieve this as soon as possible. (Lapid's beliefs on Palestine)

June 3, 2021

After a 12-month criminal trial, judges Rivka Friedman-Feldman, Moshe Bar-Am, and Oded Shaham have ruled prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty on all charges of breach of trust, bribery and fraud. He has been forced to resign from his post of prime minister and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Netanyahu has served as Prime Minister of Israel since 2009, and he has been leader of the Likud right-wing political party since 1993 (except for a five-year stint between 2001 and 2006). Political pundits mostly agree that Netanyahu has moved the country rightward during his tenure, though Arab political parties have also increased in influence under his rule.

Netanyahu has appointed Israel Katz, the Minister of Finance and a prominent member of the Likud party, to succeed him as prime minister. Katz has received the backing of twenty other MPs of the Likud, as well as six MPs from parties in the Likud coalition, such as Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu.

As he prepares to fill Netanyahu's shoes, Katz faces a deadlocked government, and enemies from both the left and the right. As snap elections are scheduled for October 18, most analysts doubt his chances of successfully creating a functional government of Israel.

October 19, 2021

With 28 seats in the Knesset (the legislature of Israel), the centrist Yesh Atid party has won the Israeli election. Yair Lapid, the leader of the Yesh Atid party, has four weeks to create a coalition.

The incumbent Likud party, led by Israel Katz after Benjamin Netanyahu's conviction, comes in a distant second place with 21 seats. This is down 9 seats from the last election, just seven months ago; analysts believe that former Netanyahu supporters are flocking to other right-wing parties, such as Yamina and Shas.

Notably, the Joint List alliance (consisting of five Arab majority parties: Balad, Hadash, Ta'al, Ma'an, and Ra'am) has won 16 seats, up from 6 seats in March 2021. This is partly due to Ra'am rejoining Joint List. If they choose to join Yesh Atid's coalition, they could successfully negotiate a two-state solution - something that hasn't seemed feasible since 2008.^(1)

The total election results are listed below.

^(1)I know that Netanyahu conducted peace talks in 2010 and 2013-2014, but it seems to be that they were intentionally doomed to fail. I'm not an expert on Israeli politics or anything, so feel free to correct me.

Retro: April 2030

Following the death of Benjamin Netanyahu in 2026 at the age of 77, Israeli politics settled in a place that could be called thoroughly centrist. Likud, now led by former IDF Spokesperson, Minister of Culture and Sport, Acting Prime Minister, and Minister of Transportation Miri Regev, entered into a centrist unity government consisting of Likud, Blue and White (and former Blue and White partners Yesh Atid-Telem and Derekh Eretz), and Haredi political party Shas (who took some cajoling to support a female Prime Minister, considering Shas bars women from running for office under their banner).

Miri Regev's tenure as Prime Minister saw substantial rhetorical progress made on the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, though this did not materialize is substantial action. While the Regev administration did not saber-rattle for further annexation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which the Netanyahu government had fallen back on from time to time, it made little effort to block the creation of new settlements and outposts within the region.

This alliance remained in power until early 2030, when disagreements over the scale of Israel's response to renewed attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah led the more liberally-minded members of Blue and White and Yesh Atid-Telem to revoke their support for the government, forcing an early election in mid-2030. This was viewed by many commentators as the final fracturing of the alliance along fault lines that had existed ever since Iran's successful ICBM tests in 2027, and was worsened by Israel's failure to respond to the blatant nuclear ambitions.

This leadership crisis was not limited to the ruling coalition, either: following immense pressure from within Likud, Miri Regev was forced to hold a leadership election in 2030. Though several Likudniks from the right wing of the party floated the idea of throwing their hat into the ring, the anti-Regev forces ultimately coalesced behind Gideon Sa'ar, a former Education and Interior Minister who had [previously challenged Netanyahu for leadership of Likud in 2019](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Likud_leadersh

I found a terrific graphic I'd like to share and do a short article explaining its relevance. I semi-regularly post on Israel. This post is going to be mainly independent of those. But for those who haven't read the previous posts the Israel is a wonderful example of what most people on here are aiming for in an electoral system.

1. It is a vibrant multiparty democracy (PR: proportional representation) where parties rise and fall quite regularly.
2. Essentially every voter has at least 2 parties who are close enough to them ideologically that they could seriously consider voting for them in the general. Thus Israeli voters overwhelming can both vote their values and hold parties accountable.
3. Israeli parties can use whatever primary system they want. Parties experiment with their primary system so we get to see party lists by leadership, party lists by primary and various mixtures side by side during the same election and in cross temporal proximity. This generates excellent data on various primary schemes in a PR scenario.
4. Israel parties are groupings of high information voters. For the general the parties can "run jointly" when they share low information voters. So Israel gives a very good map of what sorts of distinction in a vibrant PR system high information vs. low information voters would care about.

In the graphic below discusses the parties as they "run jointly" are listed which are not technically "parties" though usually you can tell by the name (Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu) is obviously Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu running jointly. Other times the connections make it clear like Zionist Union being a joint run of Hatikva and Labor or Joint List being a joint run of Balad, Hadash, Raam and Taal. Other times it won't be clear like HaBayit HaYehudi being a merger of among other parties Molodet because they don't appear on the list.

Now lets hit the graphic:

Israeli parties through time

A few things to note. The Economist is inconsistent about translation sometimes translating sometimes not. The Israeli electorate has been slowly sliding right. You can see the overall trend and how in a PR system you get voters breaking off into splinters. That's the dominant overall story. There are places I'd disagree with the Economist's classification for example Yisrael Beiteinu I'd consider to be an ethni