Netanyahu reserved a spot for a wealthy Ashkenazi from California — and exposed the entire Likud bluff | Ben Caspit

Very few events summarize a large and complex story more aptly than what happened yesterday (Monday): Gadi Eisenkot announced his reserved spot for Shiral Hogeg, while Benjamin Netanyahu announced his reserved spot in the Likud list for businessman Oren Dobronsky. From this moment on, all arguments are unnecessary. This, exactly this, is what was to be proven.

Shiral Hogeg is an Israeli, of Mizrahi descent, a social activist and resident of the periphery, a man from Ofakim who succeeded in business and contributes to the community. Hogeg is a member of a family whose members were wounded in the October 7 massacre. Shiral Hogeg is the moving, wonderful, and so unique Israeli story. He is proof that one can succeed even from the periphery, that one can take off even from a side track. He broke the glass ceiling, he is the Israeli experience.

Oren Dobronsky, and I do not intend to disparage him, is a wealthy Ashkenazi high-tech entrepreneur living abroad. He received his reserved spot from those who claim to promote the periphery and the Mizrahi communities. The whiners who blame the "Deep State" for the dire situation in the Negev and the Galilee, the charlatans who try to cast doubt even on the fact that Gadi Eisenkot is Moroccan.

For those who missed it: Dobronsky does not live here. He spends most of his time in Palo Alto, California. An Ashkenazi who got rich in high-tech, moved his company's headquarters from here to Manhattan, married a non-Jew in a Chinese restaurant (she later converted), and on top of all that, smears President Donald Trump in a series of his personal tweets from June until now, almost without stopping. The peak was when he called Trump a "morally rotten piece of shit," following the agreement he reached (and later it turned out he did not) with Iran.

But the main thing is that they smeared Gadi Eisenkot's daughter, who got married without a rabbi. These people do not have a single gram of self-awareness in their entire body. This event can serve as a state's witness: it testifies to something sick, rotten, and spoiled in the ruling party. If this is Netanyahu's first reserved candidate, after all the quality candidates politely refused, this is not a warning light, but a warning spotlight.

If no one checked the candidate's tweets before reserving his spot, the same applies to everything else. If all they can manage to do is bring a wealthy Ashkenazi expat to the Knesset list, a minute after they opposed the arrival of Israelis living abroad to vote in Israel, something very deep there is not functioning.

But that's not all. Because when Gadi Eisenkot reserves a spot for Shiral Hogeg, Naftali Bennett brings Yonatan Shalev from "Keteph el Keteph," Avigdor Lieberman reserves spots for Sharon Sharabi and Rafi Ben Shitrit, what Netanyahu manages to do is place in his list the absolute negative of all these, the one who made his local fame on the show "The Sharks" on Channel 12.

And if there is fate, it is here with us, rolling with laughter. Channel 12? Isn't this the Al Jazeera channel, the panic channel, the channel despised and boycotted by the "ruling party" or what remains of it, right? It is precisely from there that they bring a candidate who will skip over the will of the voters in the primaries? Oh, the shame and the absurdity.

This is how you pop a balloon and this is how you tear the mask off the bluff. The Likud has become a half-Haredi, half-Kahanist party. Disconnected, satiated, rotting from within. Bathing in the tens of billions distributed to non-contributing and non-Zionist sectors, it continues to preach morality to everyone else and poke greasy fingers in the eyes of others. All this will not change the truth, the reality, and the facts, as they were revealed to us yesterday within a few hours.