Who To Vote For?

THE ELECTIONS will take place in three days, and they are boring, boring, boring.

So boring, indeed, that even to think about their boringness (if there is such a word) is boring.

For lack of any debate about the issues, media pundits are reduced to discussing the election broadcasts. Some are good, some indifferent, some atrocious. As if this were a contest between spin doctors, copywriters, "strategists" and such, with the public just a bystander.

WHEREVER I meet people, I am told with real worry: "I don't know whom to vote for! There is no party I really like!" and then the question I dread: "Whom do you advise me to vote for?"

I have closely followed all the past 18 Knesset elections, except the first, when I was still a soldier. In several of them I was a candidate myself. I have always written about my preferences, but I have never told my readers how to vote.

I shall follow the same rule now.

FIRST OF ALL, there is an absolute imperative to vote, more than ever.

It is not about the "feast of democracy," "civic duty" and blah-blah-blah. This time it is a vital necessity.

A non-vote is a vote for Binyamin Netanyahu and his allies, pure and simple. As it looks now, more than half the members of the 19th Knesset will belong to the extreme right and beyond, at least a dozen of them honest to goodness fascists.

Not to vote means to strengthen them even more.

This is especially true for Arab citizens. The polls predict that almost half of them will not vote at all. The reasons are many: a general protest against the "Jewish" state, protest against discrimination, despair of any change, disapproval of the "Arab" parties and more. All good reasons.

But abstention means that the Arab citizens are shooting themselves in the foot. If their situation is bad now, it can still become much, much worse: The Supreme court, which generally protects them, cowed into impotence. Discriminatory laws proliferating.

Some on the far right want to deprive them of the right to vote altogether. Why grant them their wish voluntarily?

LET'S PROCEED to the actual choice.

My method is to write down all the competing election lists in a random order.

Then I strike out all those I would not vote for if my life depended on it. That's the easy part.