Israeli Election Shenanigans? Surprised?

ד׳ לחודש הראשון תשע״ה

Reports of alleged shenanigans during the recent, Israeli elections have been streaming in. Calls from Eli Yishai's Yachad Party to join the protest, by adding their names to a petition of declared Yachad voters, has been circulating the Internet. 

Some photos of the shenanigans can be seen in a report on the matter on Yachad's Official Website:

Eli Yishai
Yachad Party Head

Yachad: Battling Over The Truth!
(Esser Agaroth (2¢) Translation)
March 20, 2015

We have received you encouragement! Your support! We feel your outcry, and we have decided, to fight for the truth! Hundreds of declarations of counterfeiting have been brought to our attention. Were you witnesses to any of this? Join the fight! (cont.)

It is pretty easy to have a ballot disqualified. All it takes is a slight ink mark, or even a folded corner, if you can believe it. But, there were much more creative ways employed to go after Yachad voters.

For example, some ballot notes were replaced by fake ones with Baruch Marzel's name on them. Baruch Marzel, on the Yachad list, ran independently in a previous election. This was one of many attempts to confuse and mislead Yachad supporters, with the goal of having as many of their votes disqualified.

Here is another example from Official Yachad (English) Facebook Group, a comparison between real Yachad ballot notes and another fake one found at polling stations. These were later disqualified by official ballot counters.

L: Fake election note "HaRav Eliyahu Yishai"
R: Real ballot note "Eli Yishai"

My sources, who have been in contact with those present at the official recount, claimed that the were about 50,000 ballot notes which had been disqualified. Of those 50,000, 13,000 were for the Yachad Party.

One fourth of the disqualified ballot notes came from one small party? Does that make any sense to you?

Furthermore, reports indicated that the Yachad Party was between 11,000 and 12,000 short of making the minimum threshold to enter the K'nesseth with four mandates.

My educated guess would be that if Yachad had made it in, there would be one less mandate (MK) for the Likud Party, one less mandate for the far left Meretz Party, one less mandate for the Untied Arab Parties, and one less mandate for another party, which would shift the edge to the right, and probably give Prime Minister Netanyahu the option to leave out  supposedly centrist Kulanu (Kachlon) Party from the government he is attempting to form.

As far as any complaints, petitions, and protests against the election results go, I really don't see the point.

I think that today might even be the deadline for the completion of any investigations into complaints about the elections. I'm not sure. But, quite frankly, I don't think it matters. Does Yachad have a chance of winning an appeal? They have a chance at convincing the Supreme Court

As if.

We have seen, time and time again, how Torah-observant Jews have begun to gain ground, sticking to the established rules of Israeli democracy, only to have those rules changed by the government, the justice system, or by party heads themselves, as in the case of Netanyahu vs. outgoing MK Moshe Feiglin. This is one of the reasons why I refer to the system of government of the State of Israel as deMOCKracy.

An additional question remains regarding the alleged, Israeli election shenanigans. Whoever was behind the shenanigans, more likely than not, presents themselves in public as being pro-democracy, yet privately subverts the democratic process, and even justifies it using a totally distorted understanding of democracy.

Were they religiously motivated? Were they anti-religiously motivated? Either way, it all spells the same thing: H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y. None of us should be in the least bit surprised by this.

Either you believe in democracy, real democracy, or you don't.

Personally, I pray for the time, when we don't have to worry about such things as democracy, or in Israel's case, deMOCKracy.