Putin Asks Netanyahu To Hold Off On Early Elections Till Russia Can Finish Hacking

The cover story for ostensibly impending elections involves mutually exclusive red lines declared by the Haredi parties in the coalition and Yisrael Beiteinu.

Jerusalem, March 7 – Officials at the Prime Minister’s Office reported today that the President of Russia has asked Israel’s premier not to announce new elections until Russian operatives can complete their operations to fix the result.

Office spokesman David Keyes informed reporters that any talk of early elections amid a coalition crisis over drafting Haredim into military service would have to wait until Binyamin Netanyahu receives the go-ahead from Vladimir Putin that everything is ready for Russia’s secret intelligence bureau to rig the vote count and create the desired result.

“Mr. Putin called and alerted the prime minister that his operatives are not yet ready to fix the elections, and to please wait at least a week to announce early elections,” announced Mr. Keyes. “We will have to see what happens in the next week or two, given the threats from multiple parties in the coalition, but I can assure you no one is interested in early elections at this stage.”

The cover story for ostensibly impending elections involves mutually exclusive red lines declared by the Haredi parties in the coalition and Yisrael Beiteinu. Whereas the former insists on advancement of a law to legalize the exemption from mandatory military service heretofore enjoyed by full-time yeshiva students, the latter seeks to nix the decades-old arrangement and subject all Israeli Jews to the same draft requirement. Kulanu chief and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon seeks specific measures in an upcoming budget vote that puts him at odds with other coalition members, and has vowed to resign if his budget does not pass – a move that could throw the coalition into further turmoil. The deadline for compromise or surrender by either side on the draft issue will expire next week, leading many to assume the government will collapse and elections called for June – more than a year before its full term of 4.5 years elapses.

A representative of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence and operations agency, explained that the sophistication of Israel’s electoral security and the relative impotence of social media trolls in changing Israeli public opinion necessitate more robust intervention and preparation than did hacking the 2016 presidential election in the US. “We were hoping that Israeli announcement not to use Kaspersky software because it’s basically spyware for us wouldn’t go out, but that was just a failure of coordination,” recalled Yuri Lipismiyov. “We’re going to need more time to set this thing up, and we hope our puppets in the Israeli government prove cooperative.”

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