Stupidity, Inanity Vying To Become Cause Of Early Elections

Jerusalem, November 26 – Two of the most powerful forces in government  – stupidity and inanity – continue to compete with each other for supremacy in bringing about the collapse of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition, Knesset sources reported today.

Stupidity in the form of shortsightedness and willful ignorance has been vying with a misguided devotion to superficial and substantially meaningless pursuits for the dubious honor of serving as the proximate cause of early elections. The stupidity and inanity have come to the fore mostly in the statements of senior officials and coalition leaders, and analysts disagree over which of the two factors will provide the final push for announcing the dissolution of the government.

Inanity has featured prominently in the recent discussions of the proposed Nationality Law. The heads of the various parties in the coalition have devoted significant time and energy to either supporting or denouncing the measure to declare the Jewish State a Jewish state. The inanity has not spared even the country’s president, who declared yesterday (Tuesday) that in its current form the Nationality Law poses a threat to Zionism itself, an assertion that attributes weight and significance to legislative language that is hardly remarkable in many constitutions around the world, let alone in the Middle East.

On the other hand, stupidity has manifested in multiple forms. The most glaring instance of it occurred this week when numerous politicians and activists urged the coalition factions opposed to the Nationality Law to bring down the government over the issue, either ignoring or not assimilating the fact that under the current political circumstances any coalition emerging following early elections will likely be functionally identical to the composition of the present one, rendering the exercise equivalent to a suspension of meaningful government activity in order to spend vast sums on the logistics and financing of elections.

Another prominent occurrence of political stupidity involves the paralysis governing any far-reaching infrastructure projects. Development in Judea and Samaria has continually been held hostage by the prophets of doom, analysts say, given the pervasive fear that any move to establish new facts on the ground will result in diplomatic difficulties for Israel. “What these doomsayers seem to ignore is the fact that all that crap is going to happen anyway,” says commentator Forrest Furthetrijs. “Imagine what could happen if a rail system connected all the Jerusalem suburbs regardless of the Green Line, and what that would mean for regional development.” Furthetrijs foresees stupidity as the most likely trigger for the coalition’s dissolution.

Others point to inanity as the dominant factor. “We have politicians staking their careers on purely symbolic gestures,” such as the “0% VAT” law, with provisions so narrowly defined as to render no help whatsoever in helping struggling young couples acquire their first home, argues Nay Kedemperor, but he allows that it may be difficult to distinguish stupidity from inanity when the electorate actually renders its decision in several months.

A third, but smaller faction, insists that a third factor may yet trump both stupidity and inanity for the distinction. “We can never discount plain old arrogance,” notes scholar Hugh Briss. “It’s the dark horse.”