As Donald Netanyahu meets Bibi Trump…

Commentary with a little twist

…Britain is getting browner.

With two weeks to go, I thought I’d take a break from the U.S. midterms and turn to the political situation in two of our closest allies, Israel and the United Kingdom.

Yesterday, I opened my daily email from the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, to find two remarkable headlines:

Lapid Warns: Netanyahu Could Contest Israel’s Election Results

Netanyahu Loyalist Says Israeli Officials Behind ex- PM’s Trial ‘Should Be Jailed’

I hope you, even without reading the stories, share my sense of irony that led to today’s Around the Block headline.

Let me break these these stories down.

In the first, Lapid is, of course, Israel’s current “caretaker” prime minister, Yair Lapid. The upcoming election will be Israel’s fifth in the last three years. I’ll leave it to my Israeli friends to explain Israel’s convoluted political system that led to these seemingly never-ending elections, but doesn’t Lapid’s warning have a “close to home” ring?

Casting doubt on the integrity of an election BEFORE THE ACTUAL ELECTION? Sounds a little Trumpian to me. But Bibi might even be ‘trumping’ Trump with, as the article reports: “Netanyahu has already said that Likud activists would film vote counting, despite the fact this breaches election law and even constitutes an electoral offense.”

And doesn’t the second headline also sound familiar? Aren’t Trump loyalists demanding that the prosecutors investigating the never-ending Trump potential ‘crimes and misdemeanors’…er…’felonies,’ saying the same thing? Like, for example, everyone’s favorite multi-shirt-wearing-grenade-thrower, Steve Bannon, who said the other day as he was being carted off to prison: “The FBI is a Gestapo, the Justice Department – Merrick Garland, you’re going to go to prison, brother.” 

I was at a gathering last night with an Israeli friend. I mentioned the headlines. But when I told him they were from Haaretz, he told me that Haaretz is too left-wing; that if I wanted to get real news I should read Ynet, a much more centrist source of Israeli news. When I got home I re-read the election fraud article and saw something I had overlooked in my first read: Lapid’s comments were from an interview with…you guessed it…Ynet!

BTW, the comments of the Netanyahu Loyalist, a wing nut named David Amsalem, were recorded in an interview on Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, and also covered by the Times of Israel. So despite Haaretz’s leaning left, their article is not “fake news.”

Heading north to the United Kingdom where the political situation might be as bewildering as Israel’s, the third prime minister in six weeks was announced today.

Liz Truss, Britain’s 44-day prime minister – her tenure set the record for the shortest serving PM in British history; she is the first PM since Winston Churchill to have served two different monarchs; and, for her service, will receive a lifetime annual pension of £115,000 – was replaced by former Chancellor of the Exchequer (aka Treasury Secretary) Rishi Sunak.

Sunak is the son of African-born Hindu parents of Punjabi Indian descent. With his ascent, the head of UK’s government is Hindu and the mayor of London, Britain’s capital and biggest city, Sadiq Khan, is a Sunni Muslim.

I wonder if the right-wing, Brexit-loving British MUKGAs* have noticed this. And if they’ll react with outrage like their MAGA brethren in the “colonies?”

(*Make United Kingdom Great Again – pronounced, muck-ga)

Around the Block reached out for comment from Simon Darby-Lewthwaite, the head of MUKGA’s most influential militia, “The Proud Mates,” who told me, “Well at least Sunak and Khan weren’t born in Hawaii like your guy, Hussein Obama.”

Of course in Britain, there isn’t much choice. I mean, would you vote for this man?