Plenty of column inches have been dedicated to the Israeli election rerun. No doubt Israeli elections are complicated affairs but the least you should expect from the coverage is to correctly name the main political parties and players irrespective of the technical aspects.
United Press International (UPI) failed abysmally when it included this section in its story:
Unfortunately for the journalist who clearly hadn’t done his homework, this list was accurate… in the previous elections held in April 2019.
Since then:
- Kulanu was absorbed into Likud as Moshe Kahlon rejoined his original party, thus not even running in this election;
- Avi Gabbay was deposed as Labor leader after which the party ran jointly in this election with the Gesher party;
- Tamar Zandberg lost her position as head of Meretz, which later joined with Ehud Barak to form the Democratic Union;
- The Arab parties of Hadash, Ta’al, Ra’am and Balad reconstituted themselves as the Joint Arab List under the chairmanship of Ayman Odeh.
Clearly a factual error well beyond a simple typo.
Related reading: The Chaos of Israeli Democracy: An Explainer
In addition, the claim that the winning party’s leader is designated prime minister is also incorrect. The reality is that after holding consultations, President Reuven Rivlin will choose the party leader he feels has the best chance of forming a coalition.
Heading the party with the most Knesset seats doesn’t automatically mean that person will become prime minister. For example, Tzipi Livni’s Kadima Party won more seats than Likud in the 2009 elections, but the make-up of the Knesset and resulting consultations led president Shimon Peres to assign Benjamin Netanyahu with the job.
Shortly after HonestReporting contacted UPI, the offending section was removed in its entirety.
