With Bibi, it’s racism stupid


October 21, 2016
Sarah Benton


Bibi Triumphant. After four manic days of racist incitement, he gets the exit poll results – his tactics have worked. March 17, 2015 in Tel Aviv. Photo by AFP

‘Bibi Won Elections Because of Race,’ American Adviser to Israeli Opposition Told Clinton Campaign Chair

New email released by Wikileaks contains Herzog’s American political adviser’s analysis of a lost election and ‘racist appeals you could never get away with in the U.S.’

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz premium
October 20, 2016

On March 18, 2015, one day after the results of Israel’s last elections became clear, John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Democratic campaign for U.S. president, sent a one-sentence email to his friend Paul Begala.

“Got a take on Israel other than the obvious?” asked Podesta, according to a copy of the email that was published Thursday by Wikileaks.

Begala, an experienced Democratic American political adviser who has worked alongside the Clinton family in the past, was approached by Podesta on the matter for a simple reason. In the months leading up to Israel’s elections, Begala worked for the Zionist Union party and advised party chairman and candidate for prime minister, Isaac Herzog.


Paul Begala:

“In the U.S. you could never get away with those kind of racist appeals. But, man, did it work.”

Two hours after the original email, Begala replied to Clinton’s campaign chairman with a concise and focused analysis of the reasons he believed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had won and Herzog had lost. In Washington, especially from the Democratic side of the map, it was still thought that the speech on the Iran nuclear deal, given by Netanyahu before Congress just two weeks before, was one of the reasons for his election victory, but Begala explained that the reasons were entirely different. He wrote to Podesta:

Bibi did not win because of Iran. He won because of race. … All the smart guys in Tel Aviv thought Bibi was having a nervous breakdown. In the U.S. you could never get away with those kind of racist appeals. But, man, did it work.

Begala explained to Podesta that one of the reasons for Netanyahu’s victory had to do with Israel’s demographics. “Just as patterns of immigration are moving the U.S. left, patterns of immigration are moving Israel right,” * Herzog’s American adviser told Clinton’s campaign manager and continued his analysis of the campaign.

“I have never seen anything like Bibi’s furious surge to the right in the last 4 days,” he said. “Nothing like it in America. He had robo-calls calling the President ‘Hussein Obama, the Muslim,’ he had ads saying the Arabs will vote in droves. He accused Herzog of wanting to divide Jerusalem.”

Begala explained to Podesta how Netanyahu had “cannibalized the smaller parties on the right” in order to make his own party the biggest, and how he even managed to capture mandates from Moshe Kahlon’s party by releasing a video two days before the elections of Kahlon voicing his support for Netanyahu. It had been filmed two years before, but potential voters were none the wiser, and believed it had happened recently.

Herzog’s adviser also laid out the mistakes made by the Zionist Union campaign that contributed to their defeat in the vote.

“On our side, we focused on trying to hold down (Yair) Lapid’s Yesh Atid, but never really attacked him – a mistake. We also did zero rallies in the final days – Buji [Herzog] doesn’t like them and he is not a rah-rah guy. This gave all the bandwagon effect to Bibi. … I am deeply depressed that I failed such a good guy in such a big race.”

NOTE

* In 2014, most immigrants came from France, the first year a prosperous country topped the list, followed by the Ukraine.  2014 a record breaking year for aliyah, Ynet news, December 31, 2014.

Between Israel’s Independence Day 2015 and 2016, most immigrants arriving in Israel came from France (25%), the Ukraine (24%) and  Russia (23%). Figures from Jewish Virtual Library

 

 

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