Crazy People, Get Off the Roofs

 So, who won? Depends who you ask. While the right is projecting an aura of victory and beginning to look for defectors, the leftist camp is recovering from the results of the exit polls and insisting on continuing a needless battle. Meanwhile, the State of Israel and its citizens are suffering and only Ivet Liberman continues to concoct his schemes.

Still, it is hard not to be impressed by the man’s remarkable ability to control the narrative in every situation he finds himself in. After persuading us during his campaign that if the right wing bloc falls just one mandate short, Gantz will establish a government with Ahmed Tibi and the Arab list, now, after the results indicate that indeed, there is a shortfall of one or two seats for the right, he persuades us that the bloc he leads has won. In other words: It is clear to him that Gantz will not establish a minority government with the Arabs.

Now listen to this amazing figure: While Netanyahu focused his campaign on bringing out the complacent Likudniks to the polls, it turns out that they did not go vote – or voted for other parties, and the ones who brought the Likud to their dramatic achievement of 36 mandates are 100,000 voters largely from Blue and White. The dramatic spike that the party saw came from those tens of thousands of voters who voted for Blue and White in September and in March decided to cast their vote for Likud.

You don’t have to be a major genius to guess that a significant number of them did so because Netanyahu persuaded them that Gantz will establish a minority government that relies on the Arabs. But now, after on paper, the Blue and White chairman has the backing that would allow him to do this, it is clear to Netanyahu and his people that it will not happen. Fact: they explain to us that they won a resounding victory even if they are lacking one or two mandates to form a government.