Political predictions

Mr 180 IQ shows his mettle

Please allow me the opportunity to gloat a bit. Today's political bombshell came as a huge surprise to most of the world, but not to me. I regret now that I never wrote it on my blog, but I have witnesses that I've been calling this practically since the results came out of the previous election.  This situation whereby the largest party in the Knesset constitutes less than a quarter thereof, and therefore it will be minority even within its own coalition, is utterly ridiculous.  The big parties know this, and despite their other political differences, they have one confluence of interests, which is the reform of the electoral system such that 3- or 4-seat splinter, sectoral-interest parties are either eliminated or neutered.  I predicted that 6 months to a year before the next elections came due, Netanyahu (with his estimated 180 IQ) should have enough sense and foresight to band together with Labor/Kadima/Yisrael Beiteinu (or whatever configuration thereof would get him a Knesset majority) and in one signal act, they would jointly nail the smaller parties and institute a major electoral reform to benefit the mainstream parties, before dissolving the Knesset and going to elections under the new rules.  When all this talk started about dissolving the Knesset already and going to new elections, I was sorely disappointed.  And then this morning - I was vindicated!  Bibi has been listening to me all along, and this whole spiel about going to elections now was just a clever ruse to catch everyone else off guard.  A brilliant ploy, indeed.

Mofaz - is he really a winner from this?

Now let's look forward.  Today everyone is lauding this as the largest coalition in Israel's history.  Personally, I don't give it a month in this configuration.  The main "official" reason given for Kadima entering the government at this point is to draft a replacement to the Tal Law, which gave automatic exemption from conscription to Charedim, and effectively prevented anyone who didn't go to the army from getting a legal job.  The other, less touted reason is, as I mentioned above, is electoral reform.  Other than that, there is very little in common between the main coalition partners - from security to social policy, Kadima (at least under Livni) was reflexively opposed to anything the Likud said or did.  Even assuming they have no actual principles other than the pursuit of power, and being in government is currently in their interests, they are not going to give an easy rubber stamp to anything Bibi wants, because they need to distinguish themselves before the next scheduled elections, and somehow do something that will reverse their current abysmal showing in the polls.  If they go quietly to the next elections as acquiescent enablers for Bibi, Labor will eat them alive.  They will have to manufacture some "principled" reason to walk out of the coalition before the next election. Which makes Bibi's pre-condition to Mofaz that Kadima will stay in the coalition to the bitter end all the more ingenious.  If Mofaz complies, without achieving anything for the Left, Labor will have him for breakfast.  If Bibi plays his cards right, he will keep Mofaz on a short leash, but not violate any of today's agreements, so if Mofaz decides in 9 months' time to bolt the coalition for some contrived reason, he will look like a whiner who doesn't honor agreements.  Granted that this is still a better scenario for Mofaz than going to elections now, but still his only hope is that in the next year Bibi gives him substantial grounds for quitting the government on principle and looking like a hero.  And Bibi has a 180 IQ.

Now, given that Kadima and Likud's only real shared interests are (a) replacing the Tal Law, and (b) electoral reform, where is that going to leave the smaller parties in the coalition?  Mafdal (Bayit Yehudi) might be game for a new Tal Law, but Shas will squirm and UTJ will vehemently oppose any change to the current situation, whereby Charedim are prevented by social pressure from joining the army, and therefore by law from joining the workforce, which leaves them no alternative but to stay in the Beis Midrash (and incidentally, in near-guaranteed lifelong poverty).  And as for electoral reform, which is totally against their interests, all of them will try to block anything new.  But now, with Kadima in the coalition, Netanyahu can (and probably will) simply throw them out, and railroad the electoral reform without them.

Nachal Charedi soldiers

Once the Tal Law replacement and electoral reform have been legislated, I believe the coalition with Kadima will have served its purpose.  Being that Likud and Kadima are such bitter rivals, the coalition will anyway be unmanageable, and for Netanyahu's next trick, he will dissolve the Knesset then and there, catching everyone else flat-footed.  He will look like a genius, having deftly manipulated Kadima in and out of his government, Mofaz might be able to claim some credit for showing some national responsibility, and the small parties will get the short end of the stick.  The next government, led again by Likud, might even get an outright majority, once the right-wing splinter parties realize their interests will best be served by joining up with the Likud.

All in all, kudos to Netanyahu for bringing about what I think will be a very significant and beneficial shakeup to the Israeloi political landscape.

Supporting the Iranian revolution is a no-lose proposition!

Today I had to say a birkas shehecheyanu - it's the first time I've ever felt proud of a statement made by Shimon Peres!

Israel is to my knowledge the first and only country to have publicly supported the Iranian people in their quest for freedom. And we should be trumpeting this from the rooftops!

It's a no-lose proposition: if the Iranian regime falls (as we all hope it will), then the Iranian people will have a massive grudge against the people who passively watched them getting slaughtered amid mild statements of "reservations" about the fairness of the election, calls for "restraint" and "calm", and earnest attempts to "engage in dialogue" with the murderers. Conversely, those who stood up and cheered for the people, even if they could do nothing more than have the moral clarity to call Evil for what it is, will at least be remembered as friends.

And if the regime manages to crush the revolution - well, what have we lost? Are they going to hate us more than they already do? Are they going to want to drop a bomb on us ר"ל any more than they do now? And if they try to incite their people against us with the "Look! It's all a Zionist plot!" line, I think that would backfire on them in our favor. The Iranian regime has no more credibility with its people, and they're not going to buy the "Goldstein" argument any more. The fear society of Iran is cracking, and it will not last very much longer at all. And if the perception in the street is that Israel is the enemy of the Iranian regime, so much the better! When the Iranian people eventually are liberated, they may yet become our allies!

Stranger than fiction?

You have nothing to lose. Get onto twitter and make sure everybody knows that Israel is supporting the Iranian people!

The best possible outcome x2

Yesterday there were two fairly significant events: Bibi Netanyahu's grand policy speech, and continued and escalating riots in Iran protesting the stolen election.

All told, I don't think things could have turned out better in either situation.

I'm not going to dissect Bibi's speech here; there are some very good analyses from Jameel and Barry Rubin, among others. I will just say that I think he played his hand very well. He made an offer to the Arabs that incensed the Right, but it's got as much chance of coming to fruition as, we have of, well, the Arabs acknowledging Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, with Jerusalem as its undivided capital, and not flooded with millions of Arab "refugees". He also had the guts to say "NO" to Obama's noxious demands that we effectively sterilize the Jews who live over the Green Line; and he gave a good lesson to the Prez about Jewish history in Eretz Yisrael not having started with the Holocaust. Just a pity that he failed to call for the release of Jonathan Pollard. Maybe he felt that he'd pushed his luck enough already... but still...

In summary, I would have been ecstatic if he'd given the speech that Moshe Feiglin wrote for him, but I don't think Bibi, given that he does not believe in G-d, could have done any better than he did last night.

Strangely enough, I'm much more captivated by the goings on in Iran than I am by the repercussions of Bibi's speech. Before the elections I was in contact with an 19-year-old Iranian programmer whom I met on StackOverflow. I asked him what his feeling was on the election, and he said he wasn't even going to bother to vote. There was originally a field of hundreds of candidates, but the list got sanitized by the mullahs until there were only 4 candidates who got the hechsher of Iran's Supreme Leadership. If they got the hechsher, that basically automatically disqualifies them as a real hope for the people. They could only choose between Bad, Filthy, Disgusting and Utterly Repulsive.

So I thought, perhaps it's actually worse if Ahmadinejad loses! Coz then the new guy can come in and pretend that he wants to talk with the West, while buying more and more time to continue developing nuclear weapons apace, and still spewing the same hatred and genocidal invective against Israel. At least if Ahmadinejad wins, he can't even fake moderation! It'll be more difficult to pretend that talking to him is going to help things - although I think Obama has already decided that he has no problem with Iran having the Bomb.

But lo and behold! The Iranian people turned out in their masses to vote for Bad instead of Utterly Repulsive - and when their votes were stolen, they decided they had had enough! They have tasted freedom, and they are not going to let go! And it's not just about rallying around the guy who lost. I don't think the Iranians just want a change in government; if they did, I wouldn't be so interested. I think they want a change in regime.

Take a look at all the Twitter traffic emanating from Iran. People aren't just chanting, "Down with Ahmadinejad," or "Long live Moussavi" - they are shouting, "Death to Khamenei!"

It's really amazing, seeing as I'm in the middle of rereading Natan Sharansky's The Case For Democracy - to see how perfectly accurate his words are. We are watching a fear society in its last stages before collapse. The people have tasted freedom, and the regime is being forced to spend every last iota of its power to repress them and beat them into submission. As his last throw of the die, Ahmadinejad is playing his only trump card - the bogeyman of "foreign enemies" who are plotting against Iran and trying to sabotage its internal affairs. Sharansky identified this, too - the only way to keep True Believers as TBs, and to prevent doublethinkers from becoming dissenters is to focus their attention on outside enemies, to serve as a rallying point. Looking at the footage of the Iranian riots, I think it's too late for that.

IMO it's going to go either one of three ways from here.

1. The mullahs carry out their own version of Tiananmen Square, crushing people's will to resist. Try papering over a massacre when you're trying to fake moderation to the West. Even Europe will have a hard time justifying doing business with Iran after that.
2. They will give in to pressure and either annul the election results or institute some kind of power sharing between the candidates. There will also have to be some kind of regime reform to accompany that if they want the people to calm down. Yet another crack in the fear society's brittle fortifications.
3. The people storm the Bastille, as it were, and literally throw the mullahs from power. Not so far-fetched; from what I'm reading on Twitter, the army has declared it will not fight against the protestors, and the government is being forced to use Hizbullah Arabs for crowd control, because the local Farsi police are to compassionate on their brethren.

I'm rooting for number 3. But whatever happens, Iran's fear society is crumbling, and we can look forward to the liberation of the Iranian people from their dictatorship sooner than you think. The only thing that can save them now is if the West, in its infuriating "realist" delusions, decides to give the mullahs and Ahmadinejad a hand-up, all in the name of "regional stability". Right now what the people of Iran really need is for the USA and Europe to come out publicly supporting their struggle for freedom. If they fail to do so, then when the Iranians finally do liberate themselves, they will resent us all the more for failing to come to their assistance.

You can also make a difference. Use the social networking web sites to post messages of encouragement to the Iranian people, who deserve freedom no less than any other nation on Earth. Tell them we are with them; encourage them to liberate themselves - and show them that they have friends in the Weat, and especially in Israel.