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Amir Peretz made a fool of himself when he tried to speak in English at a commemoration for Yitzhak Rabin. He has never recovered and keeps plummeting in the polls.
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners December 30, 2005 |
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When Amir Peretz tried speaking in English at a ceremony commemorating the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, his supporters cringed.
While his incompetence in English is but one factor responsible for this plunging standing in the polls, there are no signs of recovery in the offing. Yesterday the Labor party launched officially its campaign, entitled "Peretz, because the time has come."
But with Labor polling at between 16 and 21 seats in the 120 seat Knesset, the candidacy of Peretz is beginning to take on an air of desperation. The Likud party, its traditional nemesis, is rising and threatening to overtake it under the new mantle of leadership offered by Benjamin Netanyahu.
A survey by top Israeli pollster Mina Tzemach, published Friday morning by Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, show's the Sharon party, Kadima ("Forward") slipping slightly but still holding a commanding lead with 39 Knesset seats, Labor falling to 21 mandates, and the Likud improving to 14 seats, a two-seat increase compared to last week.
A Geocartographia survey for Army Radio showed an even more dire situation, with Labor falling to 17 mandates, compared to the Likud's 16, with Kadima far in front with 42 seats.
Labor Party leaders are starting to grasp that party is in trouble, with the euphoria the swept the party in the wake of Peretz' victory long gone following Sharon's departure from Likud and Shimon Peres' decision to leave Labor and join Kadima. Although there have been reports of Peres and Peretz making a rapprochement, the Jerusalem Post reports Friday, quoting Israeli political sources suggest that in fact Peres, via comrade Dalia Itzik, is spreading such rumors merely to improve his position in Kadima.
With missiles falling in the north and the south, and a terror attack in the center, and nuclear bombs being prepared in the east, Peretz' security and diplomatic background is non-existent. 40 percent of the Tzemach survey respondents said he lacked the skills to assume the premiership, while 21 percent said he lacked experience.
Meanwhile, Peres was quoted in Haaretz as comparing himself with a piece of excrement.
There are three things that cannot be returned to their place," he was quoted as saying by Haaretz pundit Yossi Verter: "A word that has come out of the mouth, an arrow that has been released from the bow" -- and the third thing he won't mention, out of politeness.
That, Verter explains, is Peres' answer to those who want to know whether there's still a chance that he will return to the Labor Party with Peretz at its helm. There is no chance, no possibility. For Peres, it's only Kadima at this point. At the age of 82 and a half, with the health of "a young man," as he puts it, only Arik will do. Together they will do great things "that another pair wouldn't do, like with Yitzhak Rabin," Peres predicts, according to Werter.
What Peres means, he won't say. But it's clear that he, like the implicit turd in his anecdote, is not going back where he came from.
David Horovitz, editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post, adds another anecdote to the fast-growing Peretz pile. He relates that "when Amir Peretz was halted in full flow during our meeting this week by a junior staffer breathlessly brandishing such a scrap, I braced for news of a suicide bombing or rocket attack. 'Unbelievable,' gasped the new Labor leader as he digested the handwritten text. The aide nodded, and my fears grew. Peretz looked up at me. 'Unbelievable,' he repeated. Then he dropped the bombshell: 'Ehud Olmert went and ate lunch at a soup kitchen!'
Taken aback, but pressing on in his interview, Horovitz goes on to relate that Peretz really doesn't have much of any opinion about defense and diplomatic affairs whatsoever, avoiding most questions on the subject and saying that he will delegate all such issues to the military establishment -- his top candidate for Defense Minister appears to be Ami Ayalon, the leader of the ultra-left "Voice of Peace" movement -- and focus exclusively on domestic affairs.
Verter also relates a vignette from the Peretz campaign:
"Greet the new prime minister!" gushed the emcee. The crowd, some 400 Tnuva pensioners at an annual celebration held at a hall in Rehovot, were apathetic. Only a few bothered to turn their heads when Peretz entered the hall joyfully. It was noon, and the pensioners were eating lunch. Their lack of interest in Peretz was strange. After all, they're his target audience. His entire campaign is geared toward these people. If he doesn't manage to get them excited, then who will?"
Peretz was invited to light the third Hanukkah candle. He broke out in song, from the heart. Someone recalled the joke about the boy who brings home a report card filled with bad marks, except for a "very good" in music. The boy's father looks at the report card, gets to the good grade, and slaps him. With these kinds of grades, he screams, you're in the mood to sing?
Verter concludes that Labor is likely, this time, as in two previous losing attempts at winning power, to turn to a "Gevalt" campaign -- as in "Oy Gevalt" -- an emotional "Hail Mary" in which former Labor voters are begged and pleaded with to return to the fold out of sheer desperation.
With the campaign in chaos even before it begins and the organization in free fall, "Oy Gevalt!" may be starting to look optimistic for Labor. But at least Peretz can sing.
For now anyway.
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