Israeli Election final combined polling (Maariv)

Calev..
LOTL..
18 January '13..




Today concludes all polling by Israeli election law. This is a summary put together by Maariv, combining the polls of Maariv, Reshet Bet, Yisrael Hayom, Walla, Channel 2 and Channel 10.

Right to Left ( 1st row): Likud-Beitenu 35, Labor 16, Bait HaYehudi 14, Shas 11, Yesh Atid 10, The Movement/Livni 7, Meretz 6,

H/T and special thanks to Dr. Aaron Lerner of IMRA .

Right to Left (2nd row): Yahadut HaTorah 6, Kadima 2, Otzma L'Yisrael 2, R. Amsalem 1, Chadash 4, Balad 3 and Raam Tal 3.

Maariv summary of 6 election polls - published 18.1.2013

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.

.

Arlene Kushner From Israel - So...It's Election Time

Arlene Kushner..
10 October '12..





"So...It's Election Time"

In Israel. We saw it coming and now it's official: Prime Minister Netanyahu has made the announcement that elections will be held in January. His preference would be the 15th, although the 29th is also being batted about as a possibility. Perhaps by the time you read this, the date will have been determined.

Elections, had they not been advanced, would have been held next October. After it re-convenes following the break for the holidays, the Knesset will, in short order, be dissolved and the government will function in what is a sort of caretaker mode, with only actions necessary for governance advanced (at least in theory).

~~~~~~~~~~

The electoral system here is quite confusing to people outside of Israel -- especially to Americans. I will do my best as we proceed to provide clarifications, beginning here:

We do not elect individuals -- not even the prime minister. We vote for parties.

Each party advances a list of candidates, and the way lists are established varies from party to party. Seats (mandates) are allocated to a party according to the percentage of votes received, and persons on the list, starting with the name at top and counting down, become members of the Knesset in accordance with that allocation. Thus, placement on a list is exceedingly important.

There will be a great deal of jockeying for placement in coming weeks and I'll undoubtedly be writing about this. No where will this jockeying be more significant than in Likud, which has both a left wing and a right wing flank.

Fundamentally Freund: Hyphenated Israelis

Giving those living abroad the right to vote here is a good place to start in strengthening their bond to this country.



Michael Freund
Fundamentally Freund/JPost
10 February '10

Nearly a century ago, US president Theodore Roosevelt ascended the stage of Carnegie Hall in New York and created a stir. Thundering passionately as only he could, Roosevelt launched a memorable assault on the idea of multiple national loyalties, making a forceful case against diluting the concept of American identity.

“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism,” he famously declared in his 1915 speech. “Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.”

I couldn’t help but think back to Roosevelt’s words this week after the proposal put forward by Israel Beiteinu to grant Israelis living abroad the right to vote.

At first glance, the plan does elicit a reflexive distaste. Our heart tells us there is something inherently wrong with the idea of people who do not live here being able to shape our government.

On the surface, it smacks of democracy by remote control. If a person is not invested in the outcome beyond an emotional attachment, and does not directly bear the consequences of his choices, giving him the vote seems like an affront to the rest of us who do live here. In that respect, it also seems to contradict the spirit of Zionism by extending Israeli political rights to those who have chosen to go elsewhere.

THAT, AS I said, is the heart speaking. But I think the head tells a very different story. To begin with, the world of 2010 is not the same as that of 1915. Indeed, increased global mobility and cross-border technologies have weakened the bonds of national identity, all but making Roosevelt’s pronouncements obsolete.

Consequently, an increasing number of countries around the world have been extending the right to vote to their citizens living abroad, recognizing the inherent value in strengthening ties with expatriates.

(Read full article)

Related article: Manhigut Yehudit's Ideas Going Mainstream also The Great Absentee-Ballot Debate
.

Manhigut Yehudit's Ideas Going Mainstream

Manhigut Yehudit
11 February '10

Only two weeks ago we pointed out how - slowly but surely - ideas that Manhigut Yehudit has been introducing into public discourse are eventually integrated as societal norms and become legislative proposals. We had mentioned the proposed law to give honorably discharged soldiers free land, submitted by MK Gilah Gamliel and the change in the government's handling of the illegal immigrant issue and its decision to close Israel's border with Egypt.

This week, another Manhigut Yehudit idea went mainstream, with PM Netanyahu's endorsement of the Yisrael Beiteinu proposal to allow Israeli expatriates to vote.

For Netanyahu and Lieberman, the proposed law is motivated by narrow political interests: Most Israelis are loyal to their identity and Land and naturally lean toward the right. Granting voting rights to hundreds of thousands of Israeli expatriates neutralizes the power of the Arab Knesset bloc and strengthens the right. But even though he may be governed by narrow interests, the fact that the PM has endorsed this law is a step in the right direction.

Manhigut Yehudit has repeatedly called for the granting of voting rights to every Jew as a matter of principle. The practical way to begin is to grant voting rights to those people who are already Israeli citizens. We do not propose this for opportunistic reasons but because we believe that the State of Israel is the state of the entire Jewish nation.

For more on voting rights for expatriates and world Jewry, see Moshe Feiglin's article, Israeli Voting Rights for Expatriates and Diaspora Jews.

Related article: The Great Absentee-Ballot Debate
.