Tel Aviv, September 28 – A political faction struggling to approach, let alone restore, the legislative clout it held more than twenty years ago has followed the evidence to the only tenable explanation for its collapse in the interim: the electorate hasn’t the intelligence necessary to cast the correct ballot and return the faction to its former glory.
A series of surveys commissioned by the far-left Meretz Party found less than a twentieth of the electorate will consider voting for the party in the November 1 Knesset elections, a dramatic erosion of the kingmaker status it held in the 1990’s and early 2000’s when it commanded double-digit seats in the 120-member legislature. Meretz has failed to garner more than six seats – in 2009 dropping as low as three – in almost twenty years, as Israelis’ confidence in the party’s insistence on generous concessions to the Palestinians even as the latter killed more than a thousand Israelis in bombings and other terrorist attacks. Meretz leadership, however, has reached the unavoidable conclusion that democracy is imperiled because the electorate refuses to vote Meretz, a clear indication that the electorate lacks the mental capacity to make important decisions for itself.
“Essentially, the people are wrong for thinking Palestinians trying to kill us means we shouldn’t give Palestinians greater capacity to kill us,” explained Chairwoman Zahava Gal-On, who came out of retirement to win internal party elections last month; the most optimistic polls foresee Meretz earning up to five seats in November, and Ms. Gal-On’s return energized a party that previous polling showed might not meet the electoral threshold for Knesset representation at all.
“Our position has always been so manifestly correct that only ignorance or malice can adequately account for anyone selecting a different party’s ballot,” added Nitzan Horowitz, currently the Minister of Health. “The problem is, that obvious truth conflicts with a cardinal principle of democracy, which we purport to protect. What happens when voters get so stupid, and for so long, that our vision for the country’s future recedes so far into unpopularity that it becomes not only irrelevant, but a sick joke? I think we know the answer, which has been tried numerous times over the last century, though with varying degrees of success: somehow seize and exercise power, by what might technically be considered undemocratic means, such as appointees in key positions in the judicial and prosecutorial system, say, while all the time claiming our measures are necessary to protect a democracy under assault from the benighted fascists of Likud, Ben-Gvir, and anyone to the right of Lenin.”
{Reposted from the PreOccupied Territory site}
