You don't need to be a prophet to estimate that, despite the rumors of the media, at the end of this day the Likud officials will choose a good and high-quality list of their candidates for the Knesset, which will have almost everything - men and women, secular and religious, young and old, all educated, imbued with motivation and ideas.
Why almost?
Because it will no longer have a proper and adequate representation of the largest Jewish group in Israel, the community of expatriates of the former Soviet Union.
This almost is the Achilles heel of the right, and one can only wonder why its captains turn a blind eye and do not recognize the problem.
The political system in Israel is characterized by a dizzying rate of change, but one thing has remained constant in it for three decades.
The omission of the lack of representation of immigrants in the former Soviet Union is a sick evil that does not change, at least in the parties of the national camp. The narrow loss of the right in the 1992 elections, which brought us the disaster of the Oslo Accords, could have been prevented if the Likud had the wisdom to place a Russian-speaking candidate on its list, who would appeal to the hundreds Thousands of immigrants, that they came from near, in their language and style.
Even later - all the electoral losses of the right always had one common denominator: the lack of understanding that in order to attract the votes of Russian speakers one has to make an effort, and the guarantee of representation is the first and necessary element in this effort.
As the number of immigrants increased over the years and their relative proportion in society jumped up, the right had to learn the hard way that without their massive vote for the bloc parties - there is no possibility of victory.
However, the Likud, and following it smaller right-wing parties, have not yet learned the main thing: without representation that reflects the weight of Russian speakers in the population, it will not work.
Over the past few days, I have heard a multitude of explanations for the national camp's insistence on not doing the obvious.
Immigrants in the USSR are right-wing, so they will vote for us anyway, says one version. About 80% of Russian-speakers in Israel hold a right-wing worldview, which caused the right-wing parties to develop an illusion that their support would be automatic, like a death to a god for which you don't have to work. There are really thousands of immigrants who will vote. Even if the Likud does not have a single Knesset member in the ranks of the party who came with them from the USSR, but beside them there are thousands of others for whom the presence - or absence - of "someone of our own" on the list is a decisive factor.
They interpret the lack of representation as deliberate ignorance, perhaps rightly so.
As a result, the Likud, which placed only one Russian-speaking MK (Yuli Edelstein) on its list, received about five mandates from the Olim public in the last elections - much more than it would have if the Olim were based only on the representation key, and much less than it would have received if it had Places five attractive candidates in the realistic positions, who, in addition to all the qualifications, also speak Russian. It goes without saying that in the scenario of five "Russian" MKs on the Likud list, Lieberman's party would not pass the blocking percentage, and all the shenanigans of recent years would have been spared from the State of Israel.
Accordingly, Lieberman and his new partners on the left are the biggest beneficiaries of the fact that this scenario has not yet been realized.
Another version blames the Russian speakers themselves for the lack of representation.
You are not loud enough, she says, you won't break the rules, you won't go out to demonstrate and you won't shake the country by demanding that the Likud guarantee your representation, as it guarantees the representation of the members of the Mizrahi ethnic group or the representation of the much smaller Ethiopian Aliyah.
There is truth in this statement, but it forgets the fact that the one who loses from the situation is the entire national camp, and therefore it is the responsibility of the national camp to correct it, if it wants victory.
The opening of the ranks of the freedom movement to the expatriates of the eastern denomination and their proper inclusion, in large numbers, in the list for the Knesset enabled the transformation and the right-wing rule for decades.
A similar move with regard to former Soviet Union veterans may guarantee right-wing rule for generations. This requires political courage on the part of the Likud and its partners, but for such a reward it is worth the effort.
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