Silly Season, Israeli style

When I was covering local politics for a group of Central New Jersey newspapers, the publicity circus surrounding each election was playfully called "silly season." It soon became apparent, however, that Silly Season lasted for about 11 months a year.

Almost as soon as one election was over, the next began, as re-election seemed to trump actual governing way too often. After all, it was always more fun to think up clever TV ads and newspaper op-eds than it was to, say, lower taxes.

After covering local politics, most reporters are unimpressed by just about any and every story, which, hopefully, allows them to offer an impartial, emotionless account of the continuing insanity that is the project known as democratic politics.

That's certainly how I felt, until I followed the Aug. 14 primary election for the chairmanship of the Likud Party. I remarked to a friend that the whole thing couldn't have been more humorously surreal if Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, and Dana Carvey had been running in an SNL sketch on Israeli politics. {"Live from Tel-Aviv, it's Motzai Shabbat!"}

If life is a journey, not a destination, then this election was all about how "Bibi" Netanyahu got his 73 percent of the vote.

And that journey has quite a highlight reel.

The Election Day madness began with Moshe Feiglin praying on the Temple Mount and Jews for Jesus and their Messianic (read: Episcopalian) Jewish brethren throwing their support behind Bibi, essentially pitting some Likudniks' "messiah" against the messi-aniacs.

But then, thankfully, the election became less holy war, more circus. Literally.

Feiglin voted at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, where a man dressed as a clown (the Likud Leitzan?) was offering to draw caricatures of voters who promised to vote for Feiglin.

Immediately after voting there, Feiglin said: "This will be remembered as an emotional day in which Israel will return to the people and will no longer be controlled by a leftist minority and politicians on the Right who do their bidding." Okay, Moshe. You, the clown, and the 8,670 citizens who voted for you have finally returned Israel to the people.

Of course, not everybody's vote counted. All the ballots cast in Nazareth Elite were declared invalid because someone left the polling station and took the ballot box with them, unsupervised.

But the election wasn't just between Feiglin and Bibi. World Likud chairman Danny Danon was also running — unless you were voting in the North, where Danon's name wasn't even on many of the ballots.

The folks over at RonMossad.com told me they were big fans of the "dueling anthems" — Netanyahu's camp blasting the traditional Likud anthem next to Feiglin's tent, where they were blasting Ariel Zilber's Likud anthem parody, written specially for the election.

Netanyahu is a fine public speaker, and this was a proud occasion to utilize that ability to launch his general election campaign with a rousing victory speech. Too bad none of the media covered it, so we don't know what he said. Apparently, he changed rooms, and the press wasn't happy with the new location, because it wasn't the old location, and they boycotted the speech. G-d only knows what really happened there, but it's almost as if this election were a dry run for a second primary.

Which, incidentally, is exactly what Sylvan Shalom, the Likudnik who was considered Bibi's only real threat in the election, wants. Shalom, you see, decided not to run because the primary was so early. He didn't even vote in the election, probably because he managed to convince himself that this whole thing wasn't really happening.

Not that Israelis, and especially Likudniks, didn't get a preview of the feel-good comedy of the summer. Last month, it became public that a Feiglin supporter "squatted" www.netanyahu.com, and turned it into a parody site, poking sarcastic fun at Bibi's outsized persona and sometimes supersized ego. The site, run by someone named Nathan Horowitz, is good for quite a few laughs, and by far its funniest page is a list of "Bibi's" campaign slogans. "Feiglin Shmeiglin", "Because it's my turn now", "Principles so strong only I can break them", and "Because I speak good English" are a few of the fake "Bibi" slogans Horowitz offers.

Danon would do well to drop his request for a new election. He has nothing new to offer, and this election did a service to the Likud by reminding the country that it is still the party of tough negotiators, fierce competitors, support for the Orthodox (Feiglin) and support for the settlers (Netanyahu), while still showing consistency in the voters' overall support for one candidate: Binyamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is still the Likud's best chance for returning the premiership to their party. Labor's Ehud Barak, not being much of a politician, has decided his best campaign strategy would be to keep his mouth shut, so Bibi has gained ground on several foreign and domestic fronts while Barak has barely acknowledged that the public exists.

I am reminded of Bibi's March 1996 meeting with Bill Clinton, prior to elections, when Bibi was the opposition leader. At the King David Hotel, Clinton met briefly with Bibi, from whom he always wanted to keep his distance; Bibi, after all, was friendly with Conservatives like Newt Gingrich, and rose through the ranks so quickly he was almost an island of self-assurance, rarely willing to take orders from an American president.

As the two parted, Bibi said to Clinton: "We'll meet again when I am prime minister of Israel."

Clinton smiled, politely and condescendingly. Bibi smiled, too. Clinton never thought Netanyahu would win; Netanyahu was convinced it was his destiny.
It would behoove the Likudniks to put this election behind them, keep their eyes on the prize, and remember that they share both power and destiny.