Remind Me There’s an Election

Disinterest is running high.

Campaign banners that would normally flap from Jerusalem apartment balconies in the brisk late-winter winds are conspicuously absent. My ritual pre-election visit to Tel Aviv last week to take the pulse of the secular left drew a blank. One busy corner I often visit on Balfour Street near Allenby that is normally teeming with campaign activists had been converted into a coronavirus testing center. Needless to say, I beat a hasty retreat.

Even at the Port of Tel Aviv, normally decked out with booths and tables staffed by youthful party volunteers, there was no hint of an impending election. It should have been fertile ground, considering the streams of customers patronizing the dockside restaurants newly reopened for business.

It’s too bad. I was looking forward to another encounter with the long-haired Labor Party volunteer I met there last year. He frowned at first when I told him I vote for UTJ, but then he confessed, “My brother votes for UTJ too. He’s a chozer b’teshuvah.”

My informal street tours tell me that turnout will fall short of the 70 percent recorded in the last election in March 2020. Israelis are tired of deadlocked government, but four elections in two years have dulled political senses. With so many parties — right and left — competing for the same voters, apathy and indecision reign supreme. Oversized egos of party leaders prevent like-minded parties from banding together for the common good — or evil, depending on your political viewpoint.