Tel-Chai Nation

I owe many thanks to the folks who work at the Shuk, the Jerusalem open-air marketplace, for letting me know that they understand the danger that Kadima poses. Tzipi Livni, the "foreign minister", attempted to visit the Shuk today, and was shunned by the crowd, both political activists and store managers. From YNetnews:

Livni planned a campaign tour of the open-air market, famously a right-wing stronghold, but angry anti-Kadima activists surrounded her and blocked her passage. The minister only managed to cover a few meters of ground before she was forced to leave the market. Police had to use force to scatter the crowd of activists.

Livni arrived at the market around 2:00 p.m. and was met with angry faces and loud jeers. Right-wing activists from the “Moving Right” movement along with merchants from the market said earlier in the afternoon that they would not let the visit pass quietly.

Meir, who sells fruit at the market, said if Livni “was coming to go shopping, no problem, but she might have a hard time getting in without the Shin Bet. Mahane Yehuda merchants don’t want Kadima. She can come to the entrance, but no further.”

Even before this, Gideon Ezra, the "internal security minister" got a very cold reception:

Two weeks ago Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra toured the market to shouts of “Traitor!” and “Only Likud!”, although unlike Livni he managed to complete the tour as planned.

[...]

Meir, who owns a fresh juice kiosk, told Ynet, “Tzipi got a bad reception because Kadima is a party established by refugees from Labor and Likud that took an illegal mandate. The Likud platform isn’t great either, but for her to come here, where she stole the mandates from, is chutzpah.”

Another salesman added: “We don’t like her here. We are Likud. We are on the Right and not the Left. We are for the Greater Land of Israel.”

Thanks to everybody in the Shuk. If only we'd known about Ezra's visit earlier. But it certainly shows that Kadima simply isn't welcome around these parts, certainly not if they're going to steal someone else's mandates.

One Jerusalem also notes that Ehud Olmert's been avoiding serious screen time again. I also noticed that on Channel Two TV, which is one of the most fawning, favoritist-towards-Kadima members of the MSM in Israel, something that I'd also noticed last month: in a podium room where they were seemingly having a conference, they did not show the whole auditorium, keeping the camera focused almost entirely on the podium where the "party" members were sitting. Which tells us that Kadima didn't get much of an audience to attend, if at all. If they had, you can be sure that Channel Two would've done everything to exploit that for propaganda purposes.

And another interesting thing about the above is that, this time, Olmert did not speak within the auditorium itself, choosing instead to call by phone from another location. Not very tour-de-force for a political conference, eh?