A story about a bunch of snot-nosed Junior Varsity Leftists, and how reality smacked them in the face during Israel’s election:
Via Haaretz: Anti¬Bibi group V15 learns that what works in Chicago doesn’t work in Israel
The crates of beer – a contribution from a local brewery – stood sealed in a corner of the room. More than anything else, they symbolized the slightly sour mood that filled the “victory headquarters” of the V15 organization last Tuesday night in Tel Aviv. At that stage, 10 P.M., it still looked like Zionist Union had achieved an honorable tie with Likud, and no one expected the enormity of the eventual defeat [six seats]. One of the activists reached out a hesitant arm and grabbed for a bottle, even though it was already clear it was not the time for celebrations.
Hey, you should’ve sent the beer over to us. We were all celebrating!
The model V15 tried to implement here was the system that brought Barack Obama to the White House in the United States: a campaign to encourage voter turnout with personal appeals, through telemarketing or by going door¬to¬door, based on precise statistical segmentation and with an emphasis on areas that leaned toward the preferred camp – all in an effort to convince despairing voters to vote. V15, short for “Victory 2015,” also hired Jeremy Bird, the national field director of Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, to help organize its efforts.
…the talk was all about positive momentum, and the catchy slogan that launched V15 – “Just change” – was a good fit with the feelings on the street and the flattering polls for Herzog. However, the underlying tectonic changes were actually going in the opposite direction, it turned out: the louder the “Anyone but Bibi” cry sounded, the more voters returned home to him….
Great job, Obamabots!
….The issue of the foreign funding, which Netanyahu mentioned many times in the lead¬up to Election Day, touched a raw nerve for V15. “The truth is, when all the lawsuits, summonses and headlines against us started coming day after day…we pissed our pants, and my mother was really anxious,” admitted Weizmann, who just turned 23 last week.
Memo to Itamar Weizmann:
There’s an old American expression: If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Or, change your pants.
Or something…
The trauma still shows, so much so that when U.S. actor Chuck Norris released a video in support of Netanyahu just ahead of Election Day, at V15 they mulled for a long time whether to release a similar video made for them by another actor, Natalie Portman. In the end they decided not to, fearing it might be construed as “foreign intervention.”
Portman? Because she was born in Jerusalem? That would have been a really big epic fail. As Daniel Greenfield in FrontPage Mag points out:
More likely they knew Israelis wouldn’t care. Natalie Portman left Israel. An endorsement from her would actually carry anti-weight.
Related:
The Hill: Netanyahu pollster: Obama role in election larger than reported
Obama and his bot brats just got the biggest slap down of their snotty lives. 😀
There is only one way to make a 30 to 40 something adolescent grow up. Toss them in the middle of a real combat experience like South Chicago or the Gaza border for a week or two.
Just a detail that came to mind, and I’m not sure whether others are saying this (I haven’t been following closely). Netanyahu caused some talk by announcing there would be no Palestinian state, which is probably not so much a change of position as a clear statement of what was known to be his sentiment. This was presumably done to sway some votes and consolidate some support, but I thought he largely did it to pick up a valuable bargaining chip for dealing with Obama. That is to say, Netanyahu recognizes the existential threat to Israel is a nuclear Iran, while Obama wants (among other things) a Palestinian state, which is a smaller threat. So Netanyahu is signalling that if Obama does this thing that will threatens to destroy Israel, one of the consequences is that there will be no Palestinian state. And it’s perhaps quietly understood that, if Iran is effectively dealt with, Netanyahu will become more flexible on the Palestinian issue.
Very enlightening as to how political campaigns are cut-and-paste manufactured. I believe “Change and Hope” was part of the Herzog litany. Anyone who was a sucker for “Hope and Change” must feel so used. But what is the Palin catchphrase doing up on the wall? Must have gotten stuck to something else picked out of the box.
Bibi should dedicate this song to the Obamabots –> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVjFwcdQlN0