From fateful to failure in a few weeks

There is a new word of the day – plonter. Literally tangle or snarl it means snafu – an embarrassing screw-up or messy situation. Plonter describes the question of how so many parties ran their entire campaigns on who they would refuse to sit with in a government coalition, only to find the Arab parties managed to win so many seats, no one can really form a coalition without them. It means that too many people still support the criminal reigning party. They voted for them, despite the lies, despite the failure to explain how people in the pay of the Qatari government still work in the Prime Minister’s office, despite the failed “conceptcia” that led, directly, to the debacle of Oct. 7. 2023, despite evidence that a real truce and hostage exchange could have taken place much earlier. It means that too many people were hornswoggled by the increasingly outrageous rhetoric of the right (you’ll all die if I’m not elected); too many people are still convinced that there is only one way (the “right” way). Too many people have been brainwashed into believing that force is the only answer, that a Palestinian state will endanger them, that a nuclear bomb might fall on Tel Aviv tomorrow if we do not attack Iran at once.

Plonter is the only way to talk about the “change” bloc, led by an ex-general and featuring right-wing and center parties all devoted to getting Bibi out of office and ringing in a new era of democracy. They should have been a shoo-in. Instead, they came in underwhelmingly second.

And so we finish up an election in which everybody claimed victory and nobody won. A plonter all around. For weeks the newscasters had called this the most fateful election of the country – ever. Thousands came from outside the country to vote, and voter turnout was exceedingly high. We’ve gone from fateful to plonter, in a ridiculously short period of time.

I received a robocall right after the elections from “Gadi Eisenkot” thanking me for my support (I did not support him). Oh, right, I said to myself. They are already preparing for a failure, on all sides, to form a coalition and new elections three months from now. (I’m already dreading the robocalls from Tali Gotlieb (apparently, she is really only capable of yelling). No matter how quickly I hang up, the very sound of her screeching sends chills down my spine, as do the Ben-Gvir signs with shackled prisoners.) I hope for a government coalition to form, if only to prevent those robocalls – every few minutes on election day.

As a diversion from coalition-forming politics and the bald extortion that accompanies government talks, we’ll have some more war. Plonter or miscalculation: Take your pick. The surprise is that it has waited this long. The news reported, right before the elections, that Bibi had ordered our army to initiate a new attack on Iran, but Major General Zamir refused, saying he would not start a war for personal political gain (a shocking show of integrity). Thus it is Trump who has apparently set the date for renewing the hostilities – the day after the US midterms on Tuesday.

We’ve gone from fateful to plonter, in a ridiculously short period of time

It’s déjà vu all over again. We are all checking to make sure we have water, snacks and seating in our safe rooms. If Trump starts a new war or the Iranians start it proactively, we will be daring them to send us a missile – just one. That one will suffice to give us an excuse to enter the fray.

A war, of course, will not affect the outcome of the recent elections, but it could force the parties into a national unity government. It’s something nobody really wants. Rotations end badly for the non-Likud party, especially if they agree to let Bibi go first. It’s like sitting in on a poker game in which you know at least one player cheats badly, and expecting to break even.

Or – and this is just an idea – the “change” bloc could agree to sit with an Arab party. Or an Arab party and a Haredi one. That is, they could drop the “Zionist-only” façade and come to terms with the fact that a very large minority of this country is either not Jewish or so Jewish they cannot live by the laws of the Jewish state. And all of them – another idea – deserve equal representation (only equal, please note).

We could be surprised. We on the left (the real left, not the right-wingers parading as center-left) have lowered our expectations enough to softly shout “hallelujah” if the alternative team manages to form a government, even an ineffectual, militaristic, argumentative one. We’ll be happy with something that is marginally better than what came before.

Still, most of us think that, like the US-Iran negotiations, talks will come to a standstill and the next battle, this one for leading the country, will be renewed. It is, as they say, the most likely scenario.

My safe room won’t save me from that. Best to turn off the phone and the TV, and take a walk outdoors until it’s all over. I’ve had enough of war and enough of politics, and I think I am not alone in this.

If new elections are, indeed, held, they won’t be so fateful. They’ll be plonter II. That is, the more we hope for change, the more we’ll get mired in the tangle of elections and coalition formation. No one, as yet, has suggested a way out of the plonter (calling for national unity, for now, is viewed as lame, ignored at best), and thus we’ll find ourselves facing the logjam again and again. Until we can figure out how to live with ourselves – all of us.