Two clown princes after my heart. What’s a citizen abroad to do?
Until I decide how to cast my (let’s face it) totally symbolic vote, I’m going to fantasize about all the names I may write in.
Week 39: Inanimate
In-animate: Me, when posed with this question. Alternatively, the options fail to animate, move or inspire.
Obviously:
Faith healer wants top Kadima slot [Times of Israel]
Oren Zarif claims he secured Mofaz’s victory for him through supernatural intervention
A popular psychokinetic mystic has demanded that the newly installed head of Kadima make him his right hand man, Israel National News reported.
In a letter to MK Shaul Mofaz, Oren Zarif insisted that he be made Kadima’s number two because his supernatural powers enabled Mofaz’s victory.
In need of a little background? Meet Oren Zarif.
In the last three years, give or take, I’ve gotten married, visited my husband’s home country located across the world, moved to the suburbs, got pregnant, completed the coursework for my Masters degree, gave birth to a son, grown three years older, three years wiser and three years happier.
What have you done in the last three years?
What has Gilad Shalit done?
Aww. Google Israel got all cute and created an election day logo for the search engine’s Israeli homepage:
Of course, that’s nothing like how our Israeli kalpi (polling) stations actually look; we get a blue tray of paper ballots behind a giant blue oak tag (à la 8th grade science project) and cardboard blue boxes to stick the blue envelopes in. But hey, it’s better than dangling-chads behind curtains I suppose.
The little button on the second ‘g’ reads: בחירות, which means elections in Hebrew.
Here’s the article in Haaretz (where I actually saw it first; shows how much I actually use search engines):
Google Israel marks election day with special logo
I’m sitting in my office, listening as every single person who leaves for the day calls out in the hallway:
“Happy voting!”
“אל תשכח להצביע מחר”
“!ללכת לקלפי, להצביע ולהשפיע”
“Vote wisely!”
At lunch, I walked past a lively discussion on the strategy of voting and throughout the day have been pepper-sprayed with water cooler conversations, Tweets, Facebook statuses, and I.M. chats on the topic.
But the way I feel right now is this: if only the politicians had discussed the elections – and more importantly, their platforms – as much as we all did today. If only their passion seemed as strong as our indecision.
On one hand, I know who I don’t want in power. On the other hand, I don’t know who I do want in power. And the Israeli election is so complex: it’s not just two parties, one rep, badda bing, done. It’s more like, 30 parties. A list of reps for each one. The top of the top three who could become prime minister. Their nondescript platforms.
To vote for a small party with a specific platform, or to vote for a prime minister with a specific personality? To vote for socio-economic rights or security issues? To ignore the religious factor? To trust again or to have blind faith?
Whereas the recent American election seemed somewhat two dimensional – or maybe even three dimensional – this Israeli election is about 2348743 dimensional (and counting).
What happened to just voting for your leader?
It’s a day for democracy everywhere, isn’t it?
I know what you think I mean, but actually I’m talking about the Matte Yehuda Regional Council and Tzur Hadassah local council elections held today.
Who knew that such a little town could make such a big deal out of its leadership? Apparently Tzur Hadassah is the biggest town in the Matte Yehuda region and the constant goal is independence. All that sums up to about one thing: a whole lot of campaigning around the Tzur Hadassah block.
The elections campaigns that ran through Tzur Hadassah the past few months have been humorously intense. I’ve enjoyed all the door-to-door late-night doorbell ringing (11pm last night, folks), the personalized candies, the endless waste of printed paper, the decorative mailbox-stuffing, the half-torn outdoor posters. We read our share of mud-slinging, inaccurate polls, biased articles. All that for an area with some thousands people.
It was a cute, quaint, small-town elections experience. Fairly quick, all things considered.
And now on to bigger and more complex elections… Coming to a kalpi near you on February 10th.
Here’s something new and different: Israeli television channel ערוץ 2 and YouTube seem to have teamed up to bring us (Hebrew) coverage of the 2009 Knesset elections campaigns.
The campaigns have begun, although they’re obviously not as exciting or inspiring as the American ones this past year. Fair enough. But it is interesting that the major parties and news outlets are trying to take pages right out of the elections handbooks of the American elections culture:
Not sure where Kadima is in all this. Maybe they’re feeling the heat and thinking of a controversial right-hand (wo)man pick.
Back to the new YouTube-Channel 2 page: It’s kinda cool to see all the comments and users involved this way, via the internet. Of course, everything comes to Israel after it goes through the States first, but maybe we can hope that some of the more stupid elections aspects will not follow.
However, poor candidate choice apparently always will.
I’m sure someone already realized this and mentioned it… but…
I learned today that with Barack Obama in the White House, and Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, the Americans will be led by… thunder (רעם – Rahm) and lightning (ברק – Barack).
Hmm.