Day 8 – The Elders of Eitan
The 99 Day Blog – Day 8
The Elders of Eitan
- More green politicians are trying to squeeze into the already packed Labor list. New recruits include Eitan Schwartz, who won the first season of Israeli political reality show “The Ambassador” and has since become Tel Aviv municipality spokesperson, and Peace Now director Yariv Oppenheimer.
- Here’s an excellent blog post about the fluidity of the Israeli political system and how hard it is to follow without prior knowledge – http://blogs.jpost.com/content/pre-election-politicking-raw-and-fluid. In the post, the blogger mentions tiny, gimmicky parties such as the pensioners, pot smokers and taxi drivers-
Such a narrow focus is not unusual in Israeli politics. Previous elections have seen the rise and decline of a Taxi-drivers’ party, a Pensioners’ party, several parties favoring the legalization of marijuana and other goodies, and parties seeking better deals or more prominence for one or another of the middle-sized Jewish ethnic communities.”
- Things change quickly in Israel. Since this blog was posted (today), Rafi Eitan announced the launch of a new party, Dor (Hebrew for “Generation”). This is not the first foray into politics for the 85-year-old (!) Eitan, a former Mosad agent whose claim to fame is the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann. Eitan headed the Gil party (Hebrew for “age”) which was seen as a non-player for years but shocked analysts by winning no less than 7 seats in the 2006 elections, forcing the prime minister to create a portfolio for Eitan (he became Minister of Pensioner Affairs). Eitan has already commissioned a poll that projects 3-4 seats for his new party. Nothing yet in English on this. So…will Eitan do it again? What do you think?
- Makor Rishon, in an article about the Facebook presence of the various candidates, posted this image-
(Left to right: Shely Yachimovitch, Danny Ayalon, Yair Lapid, Avigdor Lieberman, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ahmed Tibbi, Ehud Barak, Naftali Bennet, Nitzan Horowitz, Tsippy Livni)