Acceptable Bigotry

Being sick on “vacation” sucks. I didn’t take a sick day in the last year and a half at work, and now that I’m jobless I waste my time on the couch watching movies with tissues stuck in my nose.

In other news, Nir Barkat, secular Israeli and former hi-tech businessman, won the election for mayor of Jerusalem yesterday, beating out the haredi Meir Porush and other smaller candidates. The election results, with an almost Western 40-something% voter turnout, were decried by many as showing a deliberate prejudice against the ultra-Orthodox haredi communities. Which is essentially true. A sizable portion of the country sees the haredi community as little more than a drain on national resources. They don’t have jobs and rely on welfare to provide for their large families, don’t practice any form of family planning, don’t serve in the army, and don’t contribute much to Israeli society as a whole. In an already cash-strapped country and in such turbulent times, the Israeli public, including the more left Orthodox, has made clear that they want someone who won’t continue the system of government handouts to those they see as leeches. Porush made an interesting move in depicting himself on his campaign posters as a cartoon character, likely in the hope that this would make him less scary to the rest of the electorate, though it clearly didn’t work well enough. The rift between the haredim and everyone else is so severe that even the Orthodox think that a secular candidate better shares their values. Barkat did come out against the almost-nascent Jerusalem light rail system, but hey, at least he’s not haredi.