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A booth for Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party at a polling place in Jerusalem on Tuesday. Credit: Naama Grynbaum
A booth for Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party at a polling place in Jerusalem on Tuesday. Credit: Naama Grynbaum
Ilana Blumberg, 55, a professor of English literature at Bar-Ilan University, supports the opposition and sees no reason to feel despondent about the election results.
“I think the only way that a leftist or ‘just not Bibi’ voter sees these results as a defeat is if you literally do not see Arabs as voters and citizens in this democracy,” says Blumberg, who lives in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Baka.
She said cordoning off the Arabs, who make up a fifth of the electorate, does not make sense. “I feel hopeful that people will come to their political senses and take the win,” she says. “There’s a real chance here for change. But the change coalition leaders need to be able to see it. It’s genuinely a question of political and social imagination.”
Although Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party did not achieve as many votes as expected, says Blumberg, that should not detract from its electoral achievement. “Likud is the only major party or political bloc in this election that’s been around for more than a minute,” she notes. “So Eisenkot and the other change parties have definitely accomplished something impressive in what has been a short period of chaos and crisis.”