Religion Magazine

Bennett's Other Options

By Gldmeier @gldmeier

A lot of people are calling Bennett's move the greatest electoral theft in Israeli history, stealing votes form the Right and forming a government with the Left.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. He does have some stiff competition for the title though, including both Ariel Sharon (for the Disengagement) and Benjamin Netanyahu (who repeatedly formed governments with the Left even leaving some right wing parties out)...

And, Bennett does not even have that many votes. It isn't like he is taking 30 right wing seats he accrued in elections and going Left. He is taking 6. And plenty of those 6 are fine with his moves and trust him. He promised, much more than any of his other promises, to do everything in his power to avoid fifth elections, and many of his voters are fine with this move to avoid elections. Some are not, and they legitimately might feel their vote was stolen, but I am not so sure that even if you say of his 6 seats of voters 4 are feeling manipulated (and I am confident it is much fewer), I am not sure that is quite the greatest theft in history.

And I do think that anyone who voted Bennett should be amazed with what he is doing. They voted Bennett and it looks like he will actually be Prime Minister - they won!

I really don't know what anyone expects him to have done. He promised to try to avoid elections, and he had no other moves. You can say going to elections would have destroyed his party, and that is fair motivation as well, but besides for that, he still had no other options. He could not form a government with Bibi because Bibi could not form a government. The only other choice was elections (and still might be). This was his only choice.

Bennett maneuvering his 6 seats into a possible seat at the head of the table as Prime Minister is actually amazing. None of the other parties the same size or even bigger are getting what he is getting (if it goes through). Call it theft, call it anti-democratic, call it brilliant maneuvering. He came into negotiations as a small party but kept himself in the position of kingmaker more than anyone else and used it to his advantage.

Bennett had no other options, and he made the best (seemingly) of the situation that presented itself.

 


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