'Who's an honest politician?' ToI experts take on podcast listeners' voicemails

Paralyzed Nation

Welcome to the fifth episode of Paralyzed Nation, a podcast drilling down into the hard questions facing Israeli voters ahead of the looming November 1 elections.

In our limited series podcast, Amanda Borschel-Dan speaks with Times of Israel political analysts and learns about the forces that have brought us to this political deadlock.

In this fifth episode, our ToI political experts answer four voicemail questions sent in by our listeners. We hear from political correspondent Tal Schneider, senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur and settlements reporter Jeremy Sharon.

Topics include thoughts on whether there is an honest politician to be found in the country, whether former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could continue serving as prime minister if he were sentenced, how current Prime Minister Yair Lapid could hold on and why -- or why not -- parties are cooperating in this election.

In future episodes, we’ll hear even more from our expert ToI political team, who will answer voicemail questions from listeners. Please send questions to [e-mail].

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Below is a lightly edited transcript of questions and answers from episode 5:

Amanda Borschel-Dan: Hi, guys. Thanks for joining me for an in-person recording of our Paralyzed Nation podcast. In this episode, we're going to answer questions that you, our listeners, asked us through voice memos. I am here with our settlements reporter Jeremy Sharon, political correspondent Tal Schneider and senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur.

So our first question is from Arnie Draimon. Let's take a listen.

Question 1: Hi. Arnie Draimon here. I would like to know your opinions as to who are the most professional, cleanest, ethical, honest, first-rate, most mentsch-like candidates from any of the lists. People who you can respect and trust 100% to do the right thing regardless of your or their political beliefs. Thank you.

Borschel-Dan: So this is really hard for us because we're used to criticizing people and not praising them, as journalists. But does anyone want to take a stab at this?

Tal Schneider: I can do it. Let me just start by saying that I think all of the politicians in Israel don't tell the truth. All of them. There isn't even one that I can trust or believe. But since becoming a reporter for Israeli politics many years ago, I kind of draw a scale. And I know that there is a scale. So there are some of them who are up in the scale and being dishonest, and some of them are low in the scale. And this is the way I'm judging them. It's based on did they lie to me personally? Did something that they say to me personally come up to be proven true and so on. So, yeah, some of them manage to pass some sort of personal test of not being a big liar, but they all make spins. They twist the truth. And I wouldn't say that you can really come up and tag any of them as a truthful, honest human being.

Borschel-Dan: Wow. Okay. So she's making a list, checking it twice. Who is naughty? Who is nice? Anyone else have what to say about this particular topic? Honest or dishonest politicians.

Haviv Rettig Gur: Everything Tal said is right. I mean, you don't make it onto the national political scene if you're not a fairly decent liar. But at the same time, people are complicated. And that doesn't mean they don't believe, and that doesn't mean they're not honest, but earnest. For example, Bezalel Smotrich. Say what you will about the man, he genuinely and profoundly -- I don't want to measure people's honesty. When they run campaigns, Lapid makes things up, and Bibi makes things up -- and everybody makes things up. But do they believe fundamentally in what they are doing, even if sometimes they have to sell some snake oil to get there? I think that that's across the spectrum. Who's a mentsh? Most of them, frankly. Ahmad Tibi of the Arab List has an enormous number of friends in surprising parts of the Knesset political spectrum. And so, really, I would say that I agree with Tal completely. Everyone's a liar. And by the way, the person you like, I don't know who that is, but whoever it is, they're lying to you. And if they weren't lying to you, they wouldn't have succeeded in making it to the Knesset. But at the same time, everywhere in the Knesset, they're really good, solid, honest, hardworking people. And they're honest in the sense of politicians, right? So, even as they're lying.

Jeremy Sharon: I think, like Haviv says, politics is about compromise, and any politician has to compromise in some way on some level, and that's where we can get that sense of dishonesty. But on the other hand, again, I think there are vanishingly few politicians who don't believe that what they are doing is actually good for the State of Israel. You might fundamentally disagree with what they think is the right direction, the right policies for Israel, but they believe that what they're doing is for the good of Israel, and would advance the country, and make the country a better place. So the bar of finding the most honest, most dignified politician, that's a high bar, and I think we shouldn't expect that, but we should hope that -- which is the case-- that they're doing what they think is right for the country.

Borschel-Dan: So principled liars is what we're saying, essentially. Let's move on to our next question.

Question 2: Hi, I have a question about the election. What happens if Netanyahu is elected, and then convicted, and is in jail, can he govern from there?

Schneider: Well, we know the straight answer is no, he cannot govern from jail. But when you want to look into what is "convicted" under Israeli laws, then it means convicted plus finishing up with the appeal. So only after a person is convicted and finalizing his appeals -- the right of appeal to first instance, not more than that -- so after the appellate court will decide that the conviction stays, only then he will be out of power. And that is either through, if he is in power at the time he will have to step out, or not being able to get elected, because he will be either serving his jail time or serving any other [form] of punishment.

Let me just also say that we are now, in more than a year of hearing the evidence and the trial witnesses -- only on behalf of the prosecution, we didn't reach the point where we hear any other witnesses yet -- and we are far from finalizing the prosecution case. So you still have probably at least a year or two to go on those witnesses. And if you will put on top of that the defense witnesses, and then rebuttal and then summons of the cases for each side, and then the court ruling, and then verdict, this is probably three to four years from now until it's done, and then appeal.

Rettig-Gur: So Netanyahu has time for a whole new political career before that's a question.

Schneider: At least six to seven years ahead, yup. And he's going to turn 73 this week, right, so we're looking towards the 80s, plus-minus. So no rush there.

Borschel-Dan: May we all live so long, right? Okay, so let's move on to our next question.

Question 3: Hi, I have a question about the elections. What is the most realistic possibility for Lapid to be reelected?

Rettig-Gur: Lapid is not right now, according to polls -- and polls have been wrong in the past -- but according to all the polls, Lapid does not have a coalition. What he may have -- there's somewhat of a decent chance that he'll have, although it really depends on turnout -- is the ability to block Netanyahu from having a coalition. And then the question becomes, does Lapid use the ability to block Netanyahu? Will he have 61 or even just a simple majority in the plenum to go to new elections, to sixth elections? Or will the threat of a sixth election -- especially for example, in the ultra-Orthodox community, where the longer we go without a government that they're sitting in, the longer they're actually in the opposition and unable to pull coalition budgets for their community, which is billions of shekels that their institutions, their school systems need -- how long will they jump ship, leave Netanyahu, in order to avoid that sixth election [and] another six months or maybe a year in the opposition, etc.

So Lapid's best hope is to -- first, there are two stages to an Israeli election. First, you block the other side from having a coalition, and then you piece together your own. Lapid doesn't have a coalition [of] 61, a majority coalition. He might have the numbers to stop Netanyahu. Stopping Netanyahu might be enough if he can peel off some of Netanyahu's parties. And if not, we're at a sixth election.

Borschel-Dan: In the meantime, Lapid would still be in power, correct?

Rettig-Gur: And Lapid would be in power until the Knesset swears in another government.

Borschel-Dan: So what's the time frame on that? Say that we do end up as a tie again, how much longer would Lapid be in power?

Rettig-Gur: You mean if we go to a sixth election?

Borschel-Dan: Correct.

Rettig-Gur: So November 1 is election day, the president receives the numbers, the president asks someone to try, that someone has, I think, seven weeks, something like that --

Schneider: Altogether, it can go up until February 23, if no one succeed.

Rettig-Gur: That includes a second person?

Schneider: Right. And then altogether, that's the stretch, that's the longest stretch it can go on. And then if by February something they don't form a government, then the 25th Knesset will dissolve, and then we're going to have an election in May of 2023. So he's going to be an interim. But let's just stress that this is a prime minister without real authority. This is what we call an interim prime minister. He cannot make appointments. He will be unable to pass a budget again, he is unable to -- I mean, right now we see this agreement with Lebanon. It's still up to the High Court. He will be also probably limited on foreign affairs if this High Court will succeed. And even if it doesn't succeed, it will be limited in many ways. So this is a caretaker government.

Borschel-Dan: Okay, so essentially nothing can get done and he would be the prime minister in name alone, essentially.

Right. A caretaker and parody government. It's still half and half government. Where the Bennett side? Even if Bennett will no longer be in the Knesset or Shake, they might still have cabinet posts. These are new institutions, the Parity government. So we're in a little bit of a gray area, but yeah, very, very weak.

Borschel-Dan: Okay, well, let's see what happens, obviously. Let's hear the next question.

Question 3: Hi, Times of Israel. Why were the right-wing parties able to cooperate ahead of the election, but the left opposition less so? You could say the right is united by the idea of a Greater Israel, but shouldn't the left have been united by their own shared values? As a follow-up question, putting aside political ideology, is it good or bad for the country's democracy that parties cooperate as they have in the Netanyahu bloc?

Sharon: It's not so new that the right wing has been able to unite itself, especially the current parties of the right wing, because they've done so in the previous elections as well. And the reason they are able to cooperate is that they are quite similar in many respects. The cooperation we're talking about is Otzma Yehudit, the far-right party of Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism party, which is also, to many intents and purposes, a far-right, ultra-nationalist party. So their ability to come together is quite natural and makes sense to maximize the number of votes they can get.

Borschel-Dan: I guess the question is also what do you call right? Because Likud is right and you could say Gidon Sa'ar would be right, and yet they are not cooperating at all. Response?

Rettig-Gur: I think there are a few things. On the right, there are overlaps of sort of culture and ethnicity that are missing on the left. And so even these words, "right" and "left," as you say, cross huge gaps and differences. But for example, in the history of the Shas party, founded in the 1980s, when it has grown, it has often grown at the expense of Likud because Likud's base and Shas's base are Mizrachi Sephardi Jews. And so, you know, when Shas in the '90s rose to 17 seats, Likud shed those seats to give Shas its seven or eight or 10 extra seats. So Mizrahi Jews feel very comfortable in those two places. They're essentially the same electorate, [and] that makes them competitors, but their voters want them to run together and they know it. And so they, in fact, Shas's campaign posters now, but also I think in 2015, have Netanyahu on them next to Aryeh Deri, the leader of Shas. One of the people who articulated that was Rav [Elazar] Shach, the most important Haredi rabbi of his day. In 1990, he gave this famous "rabbit" speech where he said -- I'm going to paraphrase, but look it up, it's actually a fascinating sort of political text that has helped define modern Israel -- where he said, you know, there's a part of Israeli society, Israeli Jewish society, who he called "rabbit eaters," who eat non-kosher food. And then there's a part that is much more traditional. The Mizrachi, the religious Zionist, is much more... We ultra-Orthodox can do business with anyone we need to do business with, we'll sit in left-wing coalitions, we always have, but we're much more comfortable on the more conservative side of the spectrum, just at the most basic cultural level. And that speech by the most important Haredi rabbi of the time in 1990 really has given a tone that's very similar. So they have shared electorates, kind of shared social, cultural assumptions. Benjamin Netanyahu famously, when he travels abroad, eats non-kosher, loves non-kosher. He is as non-kosher as Yair Lapid. But everyone just sort of decides to assume he's kind of a kosher eater in spirit, right? Those kinds of soft cultural questions make it a much easier thing to do.

Schneider: I think some of this unification on one side is anecdotal because we have had so many election cycles in the last three and a half years, and we've seen a huge unification on the left wing coming up to what we call the Blue and White union. And they came up with 36 mandates just standing in front of Netanyahu with 36 mandates, I think maybe on the second election. So for three election cycles the entire center-left -- not the entire, but a huge big part of it, of the center left -- ran together, only to be dismantled with COVID entering into our life and Netanyahu going in front of the TV and saying, "Benny Gantz, we need to rescue this country and you need to come and join me and don't play politics at this harsh time when we have we are facing the worst pandemic of the century and you need just to stop the politics." And he actually begged him. But up until that time for three election cycles, the entire big chunk of the left-center was united. And you do see right now in this fifth election cycle that the right wing was better in uniting and the left side is actually running apart, if you look at Labor and Meretz. But by the way, if Labor and Meretz would unite they would come up together with probably seven seats, whereas when they're running apart they each will come up with between four to five seats. So they can gain up to even 10 seats running apart, while if they were united, they would lose a lot of power. Lapid actually pushed them to unite but they refused it. So as long as they pass the threshold it's not a bad thing to run apart.

Borschel-Dan: But I think that was your key point there. As long as they pass the threshold, which is somewhat in doubt.

Schneider: But they will pass, because they will do what we call a "gevalt campaign" saying, you know, "Save us, save us, save us from the doomsday," and some people, probably on the sidelines of the center, will just run up and save them. And also I think when you have this multiparty campaign system, I think many people are not voting on their merits. They actually vote on what we call a strategic vote. So if you ask people around, if you're a lefty or if you're a liberal, what are you choosing? They will tell you, "I'm looking at the latest polls, whoever gets to be in the worst position, I'll vote for him in order to save the day." They don't really care anymore. I mean, what is the real difference between Meretz and Labor? Even with Yesh Atid? Anyone knows? I mean not me.

Rettig-Gur: You're going to get a lot of hate mail from Meretz and Labor people for saying that.

Schneider: What is the difference between Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid? Anyone knows? Not really. So you actually do a strategic vote, as opposed to the right wing at the moment, where you're doing not a strategic vote but an on the merits vote. But having said that, the right wing was not unified through all the five election cycles. Sometimes they were less organized than the right wing, specifically, I think, on the first one.

Borschel-Dan: And one of the right wing parties is somewhat being steamrolled out, and that is of course Jewish Home, which is not being organized and there's no cooperation, it appears right now. What do you say about that, Jeremy?

Sharon: Jewish Home and Ayelet Shaked, she's in a kind of an impossible situation. She joined very reluctantly a coalition which she really didn't believe in very much and went against a lot of her principles and ideas, and she's been left carrying the ball, and now she's rejected by the Netanyahu bloc, and she herself has rejected the coalition she's come from. And so she's been put, and put herself, into an impossible situation, and her chances don't look very good at all. Whether or not that's good for the Netanyahu bloc or the anti-Netanyahu bloc remains to be seen, because in some polls it's shown that she's taking more seats away from Gantz's party, which includes some hard right elements as well, who voted last time for Yamina, [Naftali] Bennett's party, which has turned into Shaked's party and now become [Jewish Home] again. That might actually be detrimental for the anti-Netanyahu bloc. But regardless, her chances look especially slim.

Rettig-Gur: It's worth just adding Netanyahu wants her out. Also, Netanyahu has spent vast capital -- resources, time, effort, cabinet posts, promised other parties that are not Likud positions on the Likud Knesset slate, just to bring everyone and unite them and bring them around the table. And whenever he thought one of his parties in his coalition were about to maybe start, you know, looking sideways at Lapid or Gantz, he would launch public campaigns trying to shame them. Especially Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism suffered more than one of these campaigns. To say, he's about to break the right wing and destroy our coalition and give the left and, you know, the Muslim Brotherhood -- by which he means the Arab Party, Ra'am -- control of the country and all that, he would launch these incredible, as Tal said, gevalt campaigns. And so it's also a function of just very hard work and political strategy that the right has united in that way. The left managed to hold it together, as Tal said, for three elections, and this time isn't. Hasn't.

Borschel-Dan: We have another couple of minutes, and so I just want to ask you my own personal question. We're talking about several parties that may not make it beyond the threshold, and many of them, or three of them at least, are led by women. And I wonder if perhaps that may have something to do with their struggle right now to actually make it across the threshold. Tal, do you have any idea?

Schneider: So you're talking about Ayelet Shaked's Jewish Home, and then you're talking about Hadar Muchtar [Fiery Youth]?

Borschel-Dan: No, I'm not even talking about her. I was talking about Meretz, Zehava Galon, and of course, Labor, Merav Michaeli.

Schneider: I have to tell you that according to all polls, Labor and Meretz are supposed to cross the threshold. They don't have the same problem as Ayelet Shaked has. But it's interesting that usually in Israel, parties that were headed by women were on the left wing. This is aligned by the same trend in Europe and in the United States, where the first parties to put women on top were from coming from the liberal left, if you look at Hillary Clinton or --

Borschel-Dan: Geraldine Ferraro, back in the day, right?

Schneider: And the Tories in Britain, and with the fifth election, and also if you look up to Italy or maybe France, the trend has changed. So Ayelet Shaked coming from the right wing, she can be compared to the new prime minister of Italy [Giorgia Meloni] coming from the very far right wing. I think that Ayelet Shaked is not running on a specifically feminist campaign -- except one thing she does say: "I have criss-cross"? How do you say that? Like a woman, a man, a woman, a man. Like her list right now is compiled of 50% women. And at the beginning of the captain, she said, "This is amazing, you have never seen anything like that on Israel's right wing." Specifically, if you look at the Likud where their list is deprived of women, if you look up to the 20 seats, they have only three women or maybe four, but that's it. One woman in the first 10. And Ayelet Shaked said, listen, we have 50% women here on the top of the ticket. But now, in the last couple of weeks since she's running for her life, she stopped even mentioning this feminist agenda. So she's not using any kind of gender talk in order to bring people along. All she talks about is how she is the one that is going to save prime minister -- former prime minister -- Benjamin Netanyahu by giving him enough seats to cross to 61 if he will help her a bit, which he doesn't want to do.

Sharon: I think, with the circumstances, yes, all those parties are led by women, but I think Labor struggled to cross the threshold under Amir Peretz and previous male leaders. Nitzan Horowitz didn't do much better for Meretz, so I think it's kind of particular to the position of those parties rather than related to the gender of their leader.

Borschel-Dan: We like gender blind, that's great. Okay, thank you, all of you, for joining me today.

IMAGES CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Political correspondent Tal Schneider, senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur, host Amanda Borschel-Dan and settlements reporter Jeremy Sharon.

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