What Caused the Likud Earthquake in Ashdod? Im Tirtzu and the People of Samaria

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9 am Israel time, Sunday, March 22 2015

**Israeli security forces report a “relatively quiet” weekend of Palestinian terrorism in Judea and Samaria. There were “only” 14 terrorist incidents which included an attempt to run over soldiers, “rock” and Molotov cocktail throwing, and a shooting. “Only” 3 civilians (including 2 children) and one soldier were wounded, 1 “moderately” and 3 “lightly”.

**U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gleefully declared to a press conference yesterday that an agreement with Iran is closer than ever with major gaps bridged and only a few issues remaining to be negotiated. The rush is on to meet the “end of March” deadline for reaching a framework agreement.

Apparently an agreement would already be in hand were it not for the French who have taken a harder line against Iran that the Obama Administration.

**Israel President Rivlin is beginning to meet with the heads of all the parties who won seats in the recent election today in order to determine whom to ask to form a coalition.

Unfortunately for Rivlin, his role has been minimized by the Likud victory. Herzog/Livni apparently rebuffed an informal Netanyahu offer for a unity government over the weekend, and the head of the Koolanu party (Kahlon) indicated that he is on board with Netanyahu.

**

Let’s see . . . internationalists like the U.N. and the Obama White House always fraudulently cry about Israeli discrimination against Israeli-Arabs and women. This is a picture of two Bedouin women voting near Beersheva on Tuesday. And guess what? They were not bused to the polling place by Ameinu or V15. (picture: Associated Press).

Some final election numbers:  

4,253,336 voters cast a ballot–72.3% of registered voters. It took 136,808 votes for a party to get into the Knesset, and once in, each seat equaled 33,482 votes.

What % of the vote did Likud (Netanyahu) receive? Only about 24%. Likud won 30 seats–25% of the seats in the Knesset. Remember that Likud picked up surplus votes from Jewish Home to get from the 24% to 25% representation.

What % of the vote did Herzog/Livni receive? Only about 19%. Herzog-Livni won 24 seats–20% of the seats in the Knesset. Remember that Herzog-Livni picked up surplus votes from Meretz to get from 19% to 20% representation.

Isn’t it amazing that Netanyahu won a resounding victory with only 24% of the vote?

Isn’t it amazing that with all the help from outside the country and from the media inside the country that Herzog-Livni could only get 19% of the vote?

TODAY’S BLOG:

Regular readers of this blog may remember that back on February 13, more than a month before the election, your humble servant wrote a blog entitled: “The Buve Man, The Hashmali, and the Ozerit.” At the time of the blog, Likud was running ahead in the polls, but I was at pains to point our that our buve man and hashmali (plumber and electrician) here in Ashdod were Likudniks who didn’t plan to vote at all.

I wrote: “One thing that the parties on the Right must guard against is apathy among their base–an apathy that will keep voters at home.”

As February drifted into March, the “apathy problem” became more acute, and by the weekend before the election, Netanyahu found himself in real trouble. Nowhere more so than here in Ashdod where the Likud headquarters was virtually nonexistent. There were no Likud party workers to be found, and no Netanyahu/Likud signs anywhere.

And then on Monday morning, all of Ashdod awoke to Netanyahu/Likud signs plastered all over the city on buildings, at intersections, along the beach promenade, at bus stations, at the train station, in neighborhoods–all over the place.

Suddenly, Likud was in the air.
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When we went to vote on Tuesday, everyone in our polling place was in a determined and happy mood.  Almost everyone was voting for Bibi.

When Ashdod awoke on Wednesday, we found that 34,000 Ashdodis had voted for Likud and only 9,000 for Herzog/Livni. It was the most lopsided vote for Likud proportionately of any major city in Israel. Ashdod was the epicenter of the Likud earthquake.

I even found out that our buve man and our hashmali had voted for Likud after all.

So what happened? What awakened the Likud voters?

It was not the Likud party.

Back on Thursday before the election, Likud party headquarters here put out a distress call to Gershon Mesika, the former head of the Regional Government of Samaria. To put it in “leftist” terminology, Mesika is a “settler” leader from the “West Bank”. To many of us, he has been an inspiration in Samaria and Judea.

Mesika in turn put in a call to his friends over at Im Tirtzu, the Zionist student organization in Israel.

And it was the young people of Im Tirtzu that led the charge in Ashdod, showing up on Sunday night at their own expense and in their own vehicles. That night they put Likud signs everywhere, and on Monday and Tuesday they went door to door to get out the vote on the “Right”.

Clearly, they were massively successful.

Whether Im Tirtzu did the same thing in other cities here in the South is still not known. But one thing else is clear: Benjamin Netanyahu is extremely indebted to the Jewish community members in Samaria–and to Im Tirtzu in particular.