We discuss: 1) the strange, unnerving quietude enveloping next week’s elections 2) the surge in support among Jews of the mostly Arab-Israeli Joint List, and 3) the surge in support among modern-orthodox and secular Jews of the ultra-Orthodox parties

Is Gantz’s strategy for winning voters, “I’m a Mensch, that other guy ain’t, so vote for me”? What’s behind Bibi’s surprisingly positive message to the voters, about how we’re prosperous and things are only getting better? Should the government pay cities to build ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods?

Is Bibi’s embrace of Trump’s peace plan a reversal of Israel’s insistence that only it and the Palestinians can resolve the conflict? Was the now overturned decision to outlaw a Palestinian-Israeli lawmaker from running for Knesset fed by misogyny? What does the new “Voice of Women” party offer our body-politic?

Has the Left sold itself out by failing to fight for secularism? What are we to make of Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party’s campaign arguing only they can make Israel liberal? What’s behind the Israeli-film-industry boycott-threat on an NGO that dared to help settler filmmakers make settler films?

What does Trump’s Deal of the Century augur? What does Netanyahu’s retraction of his request for immunity augur? Did Netanyahu display diplomatic brilliance in getting Issachar freed, or did he just become Putin’s bitch?

Is former US Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, right that America needs to wean itself off the dream of bringing peace to the Middle East? Do Israelis really vote by straight class-interests, proving identity politics less powerful than we think? Is it finally time to get religion out of politics?

Do the recently united Meretz and Labor-Gesher parties actually agree about anything? What do we make of the unity agreement between 3 of the 4 right-wing parties that leaves the far-right, neo-Kahanists to run on their own? Are reality shows political activism by other means?

What’s all the fracas over an interview with a sociologists who says Israeli “liberals” are the least tolerant folks? Is “activist journalism” what we need in an age of “fake news”? Should HMOs be providing free tests of “ritual purity” to religious women who want it?

Should the Left unite before the upcoming elections? What are we to make of Palestinian President Abbas’s odd & moving decision to republish a memoir by an Iraqi-Israeli author? And an activist campaign against the new natural gas pipeline calling everyone liars?

We discuss 1) the decision by the Religious Bayit ha-Yehudi party to run in these elections with the far-right Jewish Might party 2) a TV expose debunking claims that kids were kidnapped from immigrant parents in the ’50s 3) the most important people, events and trends of the past decade