7 Nissan 5779
12 April 2019
The News On the Israeli Street
The achievement of Bereshit (Genesis) . . .
Of course, we were all waiting with great anticipation for Bereshit’s touch down on the moon yesterday.
Everything seemed to be going well as the spacecraft descended from lunar orbit. However, at 14 km above the lunar surface, an apparent technical malfunction caused engineers to be unable to engage the main engine–which in turn made it impossible to brake the spacecraft. Finally, all connection with the spacecraft was lost at 150 meters above the surface.
Well, not exactly.
Even after hitting the surface at 500 km/hour, Bereshit still managed to send data back to the SpaceIL control room.
As Israeli Aircraft Industries Chairman Harel Locker said afterward: “This is a tremendous technological achievement for the State of Israel, which entered the club of the seven superpowers that came close to the moon. The project took 8 years and contributed greatly to the Israeli space industry, which is one of the world’s leading companies. IAI is Israel’s national knowledge center in space technology and will continue to lead the State of Israel to technological achievements in this field. “
Your humble servant has only one thing to add: Bravo for a job well done!
TODAY’S BLOG:
It’s Not Over Until The Fat Lady Sings
Last night, Judge Meltzer–the head of the Israel Election Commission– published the “results” of Tuesday’s election. Those results–which take into account the various “vote surplus” agreements are:
Likud 36
Blue and White 35
Shas 8
United Torah Judaism 7
Hadash-Ta’al 6
Labor 6
United Right 5
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Yisrael Beiteinu 5
Kulanu 4
Meretz 4
Balad 4
What you cannot see from the results is that in order to get into the Knesset with 4 seats, a party had to receive 139,899 votes.
Despite this publication of the final results, Judge Meltzer stressed that these are still not the “final results.”
Those will only be published on Wednesday, after the Election Commission has had a chance to finish recounts, hear appeals, and deal with extreme technical irregularities.
To demonstrate an example of the latter, reflect on the following:
In yesterday’s “final count” United Torah Judaism lost 1 seat. It lost that seat by exactly 227 votes.
However, consider this one result from a polling place in a ultra-orthodox “United Torah Judaism” neighborhood in Ashdod. Three years ago, 514 valid votes were cast at that polling place (Number 181 near the Yaakov Seminary). Not surprisingly, 504 of those votes were cast for United Torah Judaism.
On Tuesday, 527 valid votes were cast at the same location. However, 518 of these votes were reported as being cast for the Labor Party–a political party reviled by the ultra-orthodox. This result simply could not have happened. Either there was a computer glitch or someone tampered with the results.
Either way, there are enough votes in this one polling place alone to give United Torah Judaism that 1 seat back again.
In addition, according to the Meltzer report yesterday, the New Right Party of Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett came up short once again.
By exactly 1,461 votes. To put it a different way, the New Right Party received 138,438 votes, thereby missing the 3.25% threshold by 0.00033922 of the total number of votes.
From the moment the election ended and the results were first reported, a team of 100 New Right volunteers has been combing through the results reported from all 11,000+ polling stations around the country. They have already uncovered hundreds of instances where the actual paper count of votes is not the same as the computer count.
As we all know by now, the problem with computers is that there is always an error rate, sometimes as high as 3%. Your humble servant has a feeling that in the case of this election, the Election Commission will not overturn the results on the basis of computer error. If that is the case, then both United Torah Judaism and the New Right (as well as other possible Parties) will end up arguing their cases before the demonstrably leftist Israel Supreme Court.
I think, unfortunately, we all know how the Supreme Court would rule.
Nevertheless, we are reminded this morning of the old adage that “It’s not over until the fat lady sings.”
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.