A veteran columnist for Ha'aretz, Ari Shavit, has come under fire from fellow pundits since he published an article Wednesday warning against electing Tzipi Livni as Prime Minister.
The column is based on “about a dozen” interviews with people who know the foreign minister well, Shavit wrote. “None of them is close to either Binyamin Netanyahu or Ehud Barak. Most support Kadima or parties on the left. Nevertheless, all are concerned. The portrait they paint of Livni is a disturbing one.”
While the interviewees – none of whom is named – agreed that Livni is intelligent, patriotic and not corrupt, they also agree on several major flaws in her character, including shallowness and indecision.
The witnesses said that Livni is short-tempered. “Her more serious critics believe she has an attention deficit. She is incapable of delving into the details of a document or of sustaining an extended discussion. She does not stay with a topic until it has been completely clarified. Her thinking is not clear and she cannot distinguish the wheat from the chaff. Unlike Netanyahu and Barak, who can get to the bottom of an issue and discuss it in all its complexity, Livni tends to oversimplify, to go for the schematic. One of the most respected figures in the country says she is opinionated and superficial.”
Paralyzing indecisiveness
Livni's inability to make decisions is no less troublesome, according to the article: “She finds it very hard to make decisions. Even with noncritical decisions she deliberates, wavers, delays and changes her opinion over and over. Some people believe the combination of inexperience and lack of confidence paralyzes Livni. They think the foreign minister is incapable of deciding whether to launch a strike against Iran.”
One of the interviewees was “especially agitated,” Shavit wrote. “Despite being a mature, restrained and conservative person, he was emotional. He told me he felt like a member of some cult with a terrible secret: Tzipi Livni is not fit to be prime minister. There is a black flag waving above her journey to the Prime Minister's Office.”
“The witness said it was inconceivable to him that the media are not revealing this secret; intolerable that the public does not know,” Shavit explained.
Shavit is an influential journalist who has been credited -- or blamed -- with affecting the outcome of the Secod Lebanon War, among other things.
Waves in the pond
Shavit's article made massive waves in Israel's pundit pond. Yediot Tikshoret's Noam Reshef, writing in his blog, called it “a collection of gossip and prejudice disguised as journalism in such a crass and shameless way, it is almost awe-inspiring.”
Mor Altshuler, a writer on Judaism, diagnosed male chauvinism as the motive behind Shavit's piece, which she called “a horror show of verbal violence with the end of deterring women from competing in the public arena and even endangering them physically.”
Writing on Ynet, she said that “The chauvinist male is in truth a frightened child, who... attacks in his fright those whom he perceives as being weak, and whose weakness endangers the collective, that is to say – women.”
"The Israeli chauvinists are afraid,” she wrote. “Not of Tzipi Livni, who is a mediocre politician like many of her male colleagues... but of a real discussion of the difficult issues that this election is about. And they are even more afraid of those whom they perceive as masculine and strong: the Iranians, the Muslim world, the economic crisis.”
Yoel Marcus, also of Ha'aretz, had a similar diagnosis: “The two machos, Bibi and Barak, whose records as Prime Ministers were large-scale failures, do not want her to be elected and to be the leader above them.”
'Out to Get the Woman'
Shuki Tausig, writing in media-criticism site The Seventh Eye, called Shavit's article “undoubtedly the most resonating article in the election to date,” and accused Shavit of “shallowness and unprofessional behavior.”
Tausig also noted, however, that in its final days, Livni's election campaign is openly waving the gender card. A large news item in Yediot Acharonot this week bore the caption “Out to Get the Woman,” he wrote. Additional headings said: “Until now, Livni left the war of the sexes out of the contest; even when Barak called her Tzipporah and Netanyahu announced that the job was 'too big for her' – she ignored them. But now that she realizes that the undecided voters are mostly women, she is using the feminine weapon: 'they are disqualifying me because I am a woman.'”