RUTHFULLY YOURS

One of the regular skits on the new season of the popular satire program “Eretz Nehederet” (“A Wonderful Country”) takes place in a beauty salon. Two Russian-speaking pedicurists are conducting a fierce political argument. The punch line is that, when asked for whom they will be voting, they both answer, “Lieberman.”

This is the attitude of Israel’s snooty liberals toward the citizens who hail from the former Soviet Union — that they don’t care about ideas, as long as their candidate speaks their language. It is utter nonsense, of course, and not only because this particular community is generally educated and politically engaged. That most of their members lean to the Right is rooted in their first-hand experience with socialism, communism, and anti-Semitism.

Inaccuracy about Russian immigrants is not the only reason that the spoof wasn’t especially successful. Another is that the public at large has been suffering from a very different form of irrationality, which has led to an inordinate amount of electoral indecision.

Due to a fear of an even lower voter turnout than has been characteristic of recent past elections — when it hovered around a disappointing 60 percent — a commercial TV and radio campaign was launched to dissuade the public from staying home on election day. The message, conveyed by celebrities, was that anybody who fails to cast a ballot on Tuesday will be forfeiting his right to complain about the government for the next four years.

This campaign was initiated by activists to the left of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s joint Likud-Yisrael Beytenu list. Its goal was to counteract the apathy deemed responsible for what purports to be “the most right-wing government since the establishment of the state.”

According to pollsters, it is the “moderates,” the under-30s, and the Israeli Arabs who tend to exhibit poor voting habits. This probably results from more and more Jewish Israelis having come to the realization that, no matter what is offered to the Palestinians, they keep waging war against the “Zionists.” The rest can’t bring themselves to vote for a conservative party, but have no faith in the others. As for the Arab Israelis: They waver between wanting to boycott a system they oppose and wanting to fight the enemy from within, by exercising their democratic right to do so. Interestingly, this is the first time that the Arab League has openly urged their brethren in Israel to vote, so as to oust the incumbent. If there ever was a reason to support Netanyahu, it would be that one — along with re-inaugurated U.S. President Barack Obama’s clear aversion to the Israeli prime minister.

But none of the above seems to factor into the calculations of a worrisome number of my own peers.

One acquaintance told me that he always votes the way his best friend does. When I asked him which party that would be this time around, he couldn’t remember. After phoning his buddy for a reminder, he said, “Oh, Meretz.”

This, he hastened to add, is not an ideological choice, but rather because “it doesn’t really matter.”

Another woman I know said she was debating between Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party and Naftali Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi. Puzzled by this peculiarity, I pointed out that the former espouses social-democracy and a renewed peace process with the Palestinians, while the latter embraces capitalism and a firm stance in the face of Palestinian terrorism.

“Oh,” she replied, cupping her chin thoughtfully. “Now I’m really confused about what to do.”

Yet another woman I encountered said she was “floating” between Lapid and Shaul Mofaz’s Kadima party. Though she really prefers the former, she explained, she “feels so sorry for Mofaz, because Tzipi Livni was a sore loser to him,” and her new party — Hatnuah — “is liable to steal the votes he needs in order to pass the electoral threshold.”

This woman’s husband contributed to the discussion by asserting that no one should back Netanyahu, because “the Likud is finished.” I didn’t bother interjecting that all the polls indicate a distinct Likud victory, so it couldn’t be all that “finished.” He, by the way, is not sure whether he will vote for Livni or the Labor Party, headed by Shelly Yachimovich.

The couple’s daughter chimed in that she would never vote for Labor, on the grounds that “Yachimovich has beady eyes.”

Another person told me he has been floating between Labor and Meretz, “because Yachimovich is no different from Netanyahu.”

He is in good company; the Palestinian Authority leadership shares this view. Any Israeli party that is not anti-Zionist is all the same to Hamas and Fatah, after all.

One cannot blame the satirists for having a hard job of trumping reality, particularly after the pathetic display of campaign ads to which we were treated this month. One would never have known that Iran is working away steadfastly at its nuclear weapons program; that the PA is planning to have several field days against Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague; that a dangerous lack of genuine competition in the marketplace is crushing the middle class; and that a second Obama term spells “flexibility” — of the kind that the president promised Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev he would have once he was re-elected.

Just like the activists behind the “get-out-and-vote” campaign, I, too, have been pleading with my peers to perform their civic duty today. But, confronted with the thought process among so many “floaters,” maybe I should be questioning whether the country wouldn’t be better off if they bowed out.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'”