Chutzpah 101 חוצפה

For those readers who followed Binyamin Netanyahu's recent Likud campaign for re-election as Israeli Prime Minister, the Machiavellian two-step is not yet exhausted. A spot on "Dancing With the Stars" is not out of the question if the PM can get the time off from the stellar job he has been doing managing things in two great nations.

You may recall that “Bibi” was reported to be trailing in the polls and an immanent Labor victory was being predicted just days and hours before Bibi's supporters crushed the challenge to his rule. Not being very astute, I found myself wondering how the polls could seemingly be so off? Truth be told, I have no idea what happened, but I was watching one of my favorite TV shows last night and got a bit of insight into how politics is “played.”

Devotees of “The Good Wife” who enjoyed last night's episode, “Red Meat” will have noted that on election day, as the good wife herself , “Alicia Florrick”, was discovering a taste for first-person shooter games (and her partner “Diane Lockhart” was distantly discovering the pleasures of shooting actual furry, hooved animals), someone pointed out to Alicia that her husband, Illinois governor “Peter Florrick,” had torpedoed her chances of winning by announcing on TV from the polls, where he was voting early that morning, that his wife had the election in the bag, sewn up or some-such.  

                                                                                                                                                                               CBS TV

  This over-confidence by her husband, someone ("Eli Gold"?) pointed out, would lull those of her intended voters who planned to vote later in the day into a sense that their votes were superfluous—thus dissuading a number of them from going to the polls and costing her an election she was predicted statistically to win. It dawned on Alicia that her hubby was not being supportive (the same hubby who had been caught with a call girl in season one.)  She felt betrayed but didn't lose her head. Instead she did something to get his attention and let him know that she knew what he had done (I was in the kitchen at this point and don't know how she lowered the boom on him, but she did and he recovered things and she won in the end--hey, this is broadcast TV!)
I wasn't paying close attention to the show and so may have missed speculation as to why a husband would do such a thing to his wife, whom he had encouraged to run for office in the first place? The possibilities with this pair seemed unwholesome at best. But, as they say, that's politics. Alicia had just had an affair with her campaign strategist (I think.) No one's hands are exactly clean. This used to be the best stuff on TV. Now I'm growing increasingly weary of these people. What's wrong with ME? Stay awake, dammit! 
Don't expect me to tell you how things turned out—you need to join me in watching this increasingly dull show every Sunday evening on CBS, or go on-line.  The fact is the Good Wife has nowhere to go except DC, so I hope it will be going bye bye after this year.

                                                                           Photoshopped Bibi?                                                    The Jerusalem Post

What, you ask, does this have to do with Mr. Netanyahu playing the race card in a big way by announcing on election day, or the day before that (“funding from foreign governments to get more Israeli Arabs to vote worked”) the Arabs were swarming out of the souk, knives in teeth and/or ululating menacingly as they headed for the polls to unseat Bibi?  Well the easy answer is that the PM was manipulating his voter base with the basest scare tactics imaginable and people would have had reason to be shocked and appalled except that this has been SOP for this man for 30 years. He knows no other way. If peace broke out tomorrow, what would become of Bibi?  He would still be at the window peering through binoculars at the nearest horizon, Look!!!

         Henri Cartier-Bresson                                                                                                                                        Magnum

Apparently his US ambassador (former US citizen, Ron Dremer) had not prepared Bibi for the possibility that people who didn't like him would actually vote against him. Given that video of the above described fictional events has yet to surface, and given that Bibi's sleepy base obviously dragged themselves out to make the difference, one is startled indeed to hear this morning that Mr. Netanyahu has apologized for his despicable behavior. Hunh? At the time he made his race-baiting interjections (But wait, aren't they all Semites?) it was widely predicted that he would “take it back” ere long. 

 

                                          The Golan will stay with us.(approximate)                              NY Daily News

Apparently the suspense was more than the PM could live with: he has taken it back. One imagines Bibi sitting alone in a dark room on election morning, a pair of steel ball-bearings working absentmindedly in his right hand, when suddenly he picks up the phone and dictates the statement to his secretary with instructions to put it out NOW... 
 

                                                                                                                          Columbia Pictures

Now everyone is waiting to see if he will retract his other "outrageous" remark—his repudiation ofthe “two-state solution” that a succession of American administrations stretching back to James Polk have used as a fig leaf to disguise tacit approval of a certain land-grab ongoing in the West Bank... President Obama is holding his breath so tight that bottled oxygen now accompanies him everywhere he goes.The Florricks have yet to talk over their little contretemps.

As for me, I can spell chutzpah and I enjoy pronouncing the word in private.    ?חֻצְפָּה