Billboards all over the country and full-page ads in the papers call for new elections now. Is this a good idea?

This is a segment from The “Yesterday’s Politics, Today!” Edition.

Transcript:

Now it is time for our first discussion.

So Allison, elections now?

Now?

Right now?

What, municipal elections aren’t enough for you, Noah?

They are enough for me.

Well, every major paper in the country ran expensive full-page advertisements last weekend, calling for national elections as soon as possible.

Now, now, now, as they say.

One ad addressed itself to the head of the Mizrahi Ultra Orthodox Party, Shas, and the two heads of the National Union Party, and read, “Derry, Benny, Gaddy, don’t drag us into the streets again.

Set a date for new elections.”

The ad was, quote unquote, “signed by a new group called Saving Israel,” the logo of which contains the telltale X.

No, not the Elon Musk X, a different X.

That’s the group called the Kaplan Force.

Yay, Kaplan, which was behind the protests against the judicial reforms back before October 7 in the before times.

Another ad, this one funded by the anti-judicial reform protest group Comrades in Arms, Achim Beneshek, read, “For the sake of the future of Israel, consensual elections this year.”

This ad included a lot of text ending with this.

“The people have lost faith in our leadership.

We do not want to go back to the days before the 7th of October.

We want to stay unified.

We want hope.

The fateful decisions lie ahead of us.

They demand suitable, responsible, unified, and agreed upon leadership that has a mandate from the people to make Israel better.

This is not the partisan call of one political side.

It is a call from the nation.

Israel must have consensual elections this year, elections that will prevent schisms and will allow us to set forth on a new path, a path of hope.”

So this week, too, billboards and public placards went up in cities around the country and on the side of highways, making the case that we need elections now.

One of the leaders of the anti-judicial reform protests, a high-tech entrepreneur named Moshe Radman, set out on a barnstorming tour this past week, arguing in gatherings of tens of people around the country that now, now, now is the moment to demand new elections.

Picking up on this new wave of political activity, the New York Times chief diplomatic reporter Stephen Erlinger reported from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem an article with the quasi-grammatical headline, “Many Israelis want Netanyahu out, but there is no simple path to do it.”

The piece begins by declaring that Prime Minister Netanyahu is on his last legs, it is widely believed, but goes, one to say, to quote Harris’s Anshel Pfeffer, that there is still, quote, “no way to force him to resign.”

That’s true.

Erlinger catalogs several paths that could lead to elections.

The first is if his coalition collapse, most likely because Ben-Gvir bolts.

This is unlikely because Ben-Gvir is sitting high, wide, and handsome in Netanyahu’s government, and he knows that if it ends, he won’t have a spot in whatever government rises next.

The second is a Ides of March scenario in which someone from the Likud challenges Netanyahu and gets the support of most of the other parties in both Netanyahu’s coalition and the opposition.

Several high-ups in the Likud have reached the conclusion that Netanyahu must go, but therein lies the problem.

None of these several pretenders to the premiership want to give their support to any of the others, so they are all frozen into inaction by their ambitions.

Familiar scenario in Israeli politics.

Another path is civil protest, basically a return to Saturday night spent protesting the government until for some reason it falls.

At the moment, none of these paths seem very likely to bring us to new elections.

A poll taken recently by the Israel Democracy Institute finds that only 21.5% of Israelis believe we should wait until the end of this government’s full term of office, which comes in November 2026, to hold new elections. 71% thinks we should have new elections sooner, 38% believing that they should come as soon as the war ends, and 33% holding that they should come this spring, three months from now, give or take.

Among Palestinian citizens of Israel, 82% support early elections, 57% in the spring, and 25% after the war, whenever that is.

Among leftist Jews, 93% support early elections, with 71% saying they should come in three months’ time, now, now, now.

Among right-wing Jews, 57% favor early elections, that’s a lot considering it’s a right-wing government.

Most of them, 46% believing they should only come after the war ends again, whenever that is.

Among centrist Jews, 85% want early elections, they’re split down the middle between those who want them soon, in three months, and those who prefer to wait until, when the war is over.

The bottom line is a strong majority of Israelis think we should have early elections, and the further you are to the left, the sooner you want ’em to happen.

The biggest argument against holding new elections seems to be that a bruising election campaign season would leave in tatters the sense of unity and solidarity that most of us have enjoyed here since October 7th, and it would politicize decisions taken about how to carry out the war and how to seek the return of the hostages.

The biggest argument in favor of holding new elections seems to be that, after October 7th, this government commands the respect and trust of too few of its citizens for it to keep Israeli society together anyway, as it takes decisions about how to carry out the war and how to seek the return of the hostages.

Linda, what do you think we ought to do?

Now, now, now, later, later, later, or when?

I think now, now, now, as soon as possible.

I mean, I think that one of the things that the war has done has been this unity that we’ve talked about quite a few times, and I think that the best chance to preserve that is actually to have an election campaign, because then those who are, you know, who oppose the current government can vote for somebody else, and those who support the government can vote again for the current government.

So I think it’s really time.

I think, given what happened on October 7th, I don’t see how this current government can continue to function.

It just doesn’t have people’s trust.

And I think that what happened before the last election, where we had five elections, one after the other, kind of, you know, people were kind of afraid that, you know, Israeli democracy wasn’t quite working and why were there so many elections?

But now it’s been a while, there’s been a break, and I think it really is time for elections.

And in fact, this morning, I actually heard the hostage families on the radio saying that Netanyahu was politicizing the plight of their, you know, loved ones there at the Hague.

So I think, you know, whatever questions, whatever divisions there are in Israeli society are going to come out anyway, and I think that if we have elections, that’s a good answer of saying, you know what, we’re going to go back to the people and see what the people want. – I don’t disagree with you, and I guess, I’m guessing, Allison, that you probably don’t either.

And I think that if we go out into the street and ask anyone we come across here in Kikara Medina and Tel Aviv, they will all agree that it would be good to have elections.

But where I might disagree with you is about whether it’s a good thing to agitate for new elections now.

So like Stephen Erlinger wrote in The Times, and like we all know, it’s really hard to see the path to new elections.

And these people that just started putting out these ads everywhere, and on my street, like basically all of the ads are now ads to have new elections, I think that they are, that what they’re doing is not in any way going to foment national unity.

And I think that starting over the Saturday night protests is going to be an invitation back to exactly the, precisely the division that existed on October 6th.

And so I wish that there was some magic way.

I mean, I wish that some of the politicians in the Likud would take responsibility for this and topple the government.

I wish that Netanyahu would recognize that this is untenable and that there’s a price that we’re all paying. – We’ve been wishing that for a long time. – That’s right.

And so we all know that that’s not gonna happen.

And I think that there’s some chance that some of the heads of the Likud might decide that this is the moment that they should make their move, and then maybe it could happen in that way.

I think that there is a chance that Netanyahu will accept some kind of deal about the hostages that brings the war to a halt that he will argue is temporary, but that will look as though it’s likely to be permanent, and then Benver will leave the government.

And that’s another way it can fall.

So there are ways that it will happen, but I don’t exactly see, none of them seem like very likely in the near future.

And I want new elections, but I do not want new elections to come in the way that I almost always would want them to come by virtue of 100,000 people or 500,000 people taking to the streets every week over and over again and putting pressure, because I just feel like I and we don’t have the stomach for that right now.

Allison, what do you think? – I don’t think it has anything to do with us having the stomach or not having the stomach.

I don’t think that, I mean, we’ve had hundreds of thousands of people in the streets and it didn’t topple the government.

That’s just, I don’t see a connection between that and new elections.

I mean, it’s with this government, it’s just not going to affect them.

They don’t care how many people are on the streets, if they’ve got their majority and they’re gonna hang on to it.

So I just don’t see that as a path.

It’s a path for something else.

It’s a path for expression.

It’s a path for sending a message.

It’s a path for pressure.

And that was the way that we got the judicial overhaul not pushed through.

It definitely had an effect and it was worthwhile, but it didn’t get us new elections then.

And it’s not going to get us new elections now.

I mean, for me, this is so pie in the sky because there’s so many ifs.

When the war is going to end, we don’t know.

Whether the hostages come back, we don’t know.

So those who want to push us off till then, then is a sort of not a clear date.

I want elections without a campaign.

Is that terrible?

But I would love for us to be able to just go to the polls tomorrow and have a new election.

What I’m scared of is, I think, unlike what Linda said, there’s going to be no way to have an election campaign without huge amount of partisan bickering and divisiveness and end of the unity, because how do you campaign?

You campaign by differentiating yourself from your camp, from the other camp.

So therefore, it’s going to be in everyone’s interest during this election campaign, whenever it happens to talk about how they’re good and the other guys are bad and how they see a future for the country and the other side is going to destroy the country.

So I don’t see a campaign without terrible, terrible divisiveness, and I don’t think that’s good for us at all.

Just quickly from what I’ve been covering in the news, I see the most likely path to a new government to be a real pre-presidential 2024 election push by the Biden White House for some sort of resolution of the war/diplomatic initiative that requires very painful or impossible, agreement by the far right sections of this government, whether it’s the release of prisoners with blood on their hands, whether it’s declaring full-throatedly that Israel has a vision of a two-state solution, something in some sort of a grand deal involving Saudi normalization that Bibi can’t say no to, and that the right-wing partners can’t say yes to, so therefore they leave the government, or alternatively, and this is not an election scenario, but it would be a complete change of government if whatever were offered is tempting enough for, say, Lapid to join the government, and therefore for Bibi to be able to push the far right out when the government is joined.

But I see if we’re getting new elections or if we’re getting a new government without elections in the near future, that that’s what it’s going to come from.

It’s going to come from developments outside of the political sphere. – And can I just add one thing?

Another scenario is that Likud replaces Netanyahu with somebody, and then Lapid joins the government, Gantz is already in the government, and you have a sort of center-to-center-right government, and I agree with Allison.

I mean, the press reports today say that the United States in the next few weeks is going to offer some sort of a plan for a Palestinian state, and already today, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have said they will not accept a Palestinian state under any conditions.

So I think there are going to be some very long-term, serious decisions that need to be made, and maybe to contradict what I said earlier about elections, maybe that a sort of new government without elections, what you were just talking about, Allison, is the way to go.

And Noah, the only thing I would add, I would sort of argue with you about is that to me, the point of elections would be that there would not be these massive street demonstrations.

In other words, if there was an agreement that there’s an election, that would then obviate the need for these massive street demonstrations. – Obviously, but there’s not going to be an agreement about the election.

I guess the question that I’m asking is, what do we think about this very, very big, very, very expensive campaign that was just entered upon by the consortium of groups that in the past brought us the anti-judicial reform protests?

I mean, they’re spending millions now saying, advertising that we must have elections, and they’ve just announced that they’re going back to having weekly protests.

In fact, these weekly protests began two months ago, but they haven’t been so successful, but now they’re trying to revamp them.

And so I guess my question is, is that a good idea, given that we all agree that elections would be good idea? – I kind of agree with you, right.

I think that it’s very expensive, and I think people just don’t have the energy right now.

I think people feel tired.

People are really traumatized.

I just want to tell you one very quick story.

My daughter, one of her Arab colleagues, it was home alone with her baby.

She lives in Beit Zafafa in Jerusalem.

She put up some boiled eggs.

She had her baby on her lap.

She was doing a Zoom class, and all of a sudden she heard an explosion, and she was thinking, “There’s a terrorist in my house.

“What am I gonna do?”

She was holding the baby.

She just was shaking in fear.

And what was the explosion?

The eggs that had exploded, because she had been too busy to take care of them.

But the fact that she had this trauma, we all have some kind of trauma, and do we have the energy to go back into the streets?

I don’t know.

Linda, I just have to say that I have totally given up, as I said earlier to Noah, on the Likud replacing Netanyahu.

I just don’t think that’s ever gonna happen.