The Blame Game
The Labor Party points fingers while the triumphant
exude new confidence.
LARRY DERFNER ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
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Peres and Netanyahu have been cordial since the election.
n Cannel Market, a raucous
outdoor bazaar presided over
by hundreds of rough Sephar-
di vendors, the feeling after
the election was of sweet re-
venge.
"Bibi is king of Israel now.
He's going to bust up the left —
all the homos," said a man sell-
ing tomatoes and cucumbers.
In Bnei Brak, an almost all-
haredi (Orthodox) city near Tel
Aviv, a yeshiva student in his
20s said, "Maybe Peres has done
some good things, but we don't
like the people around him. Most
of the left hate everything that
has to do with religion."
There are many explanations
why Binyamin Netanyahu eked
by Shimon Peres in the recent
national elections. The most
popular one, especially abroad,
is that Israelis soured on the
peace process because of the bus
bombings. Another is that Mr.
Peres ran a weak, defensive
campaign. Another is that Mr.
Netanyahu managed to convince
voters that he, too, was a peace
candidate.
No doubt each contributed to
Mr. Netanyahu's victory. But a
new theory says cultural factors
were also at play. As it goes, con-
servative Israelis turned against
Mr. Peres not so much because
of him or his policies, but be-
cause of the poeple around him.
Conservative Israelis means
mainly Sephardim and the reli-
gious, especially the haredim.
The election results showed that
working-class Sephardi towns
and neighborhoods voted over-
I
whelmingly for Mr. Netanyahu.
In the town of Beit Dagan, Mr.
Netanyahu got 90 percent of the
vote. Jerusalem, dominated by
Sephardim and the religious,
gave the winner 70 percent of its
ballots.
"Definitely, what brought
Peres down was Meretz — we
hate their guts," said a grocery
store owner in Givat Olga — like
Beit Dagan, a central Israeli
backwater. "We don't hate them
personally, just their mentality.
They're against Jews."
This Sephardi antipathy to
leftist culture was loudly evident
during Mr. Netanyahu's victory
speech. The event took on the
flavor of a soccer match, as a
large claque of Sephardim re-
peatedly interrupted the win-
ner's remarks with chants and
handclappings.
"Labor's image these days lies
somewhere between Sheinkin
and Ramat Aviv Gimmel, which
is not a good place to be," said
Ya'acov Tzur, the party's outgo-
ing agriculture minister.
Sheinkein Street is a hip Tel-
Aviv area and Ramat Aviv Gim-
mel, the upper-class, secular
Ashkenazi section of North Tel
Aviv. This neighborhood is home
to Mr. Peres, Leah Rabin, Yael
Dayan and other members of Is-
rael's entrenched elite.
The losers thought Sephardi
bloc voting for the Likud candi-
date had ended with the 1992
election, when many switched to
Labor and Yitzhak Rabin. But
the recent election showed dif-
ferently and, "this is not going to
c=\
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