Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant and Jerry Gordon bring back a frequent guest, Dan Diker, Director of the Political Warfare Program at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). They discuss with Diker the apparent Netanyahu victory in the third election in a year in Israel, the rising Israeli Arab quest for normalization in the Jewish state and a new book on Israelphobia and the West published by the JCPA that has caught a wave of attention in Washington, Jerusalem. Alan Dershowitz who participated in a roundtable discussion before an audience of 250 at the JCPA remarked that he considered Israelphobia and the West as the bible on combatting the new antisemitism of Israel as the Jewish state and the return of violence against individual Jews, that occurred in Pittsburgh, Poway, Jersey City and Monsey, New York in the US. Violence against Jews not seen since the Holocaust that took the lives of Six Million European Jews.
While the results of Israel’s third election will not be available until early next week, nonetheless, it appears that with 95 percent of the vote tallied that Likud has 36 mandates versus the Blue White alliance’s 32. The Likud led right bloc composed of Shas, Agudath, other religious parties and Yamina are within striking distance of forming a possible ruling coalition with 59 mandates or seats in the Knesset. The Final tally may show perhaps another 3 to 4 Knesset seats from 100,000 votes remaining to be counted. That would cement formation of a Netanyahu ruling coalition in an unprecedented fifth term as Prime Minister. Diker note that the voter turnout was the highest since 1999. Diker attributes that result to intensive campaigning in predominating Likud base areas. That was facilitated by use of an Israeli software system Elexor that identified low Likud base turnout in previous elections and sent text messages to cell phones urging voting turnout. Should President Rivlin grant PM Netanyahu the right to form a new ruling Knesset, that would effectively dent the reputation of Avigdor Liberman and his right wing secular Yisrael Beiteinu party as ‘kingmaker’. Liberman, the former foreign and defense minister in previous Netanyahu governments scored only 7 mandates in this election.
Beyond the Matrix 04MAR2020 - PODCAST
