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Caesarea, March 4 - Israel's incumbent prime minister floated the idea today of appealing to segments beyond his traditional right-wing base by adopting some behaviors of the center-left American president, such as standing behind women on stage at public functions and immersing his nose in their coif to inhale the scent of their shampoo.
Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud hinted in an interview at his seaside home in this ancient Herodian city Wednesday that his electoral approach has shifted in this campaign, including an unprecedented effort to reach out to Arab citizens, and in the concluding weeks of the campaign he intends to expand that outside-the-box thinking to include left-wing voters by imitating Joe Biden's women's-hair-sniffing displays. The elections are scheduled for March 26, the fourth such contest in two years.
"We obviously need to avoid the paralysis and despair that come with an inconclusive election outcome," explained the premier, who has now served longer than any other in Israel's history. "That will require changing the way things are done to attract votes. My policies have actually been more or less indistinguishable from a left-wing government: I haven't confronted the growing hegemony of the courts and prosecution; I haven't made good on promises to demolish illegal villages; I haven't addressed discriminatory enforcement in different demographic sectors, favoring non-Jews over Jews; I haven't done anything about tens of thousands of illegal migrants from Africa; I've instructed the military to take a soft approach to Hamas violence; I've continued to allow the terrorism-inciting, violence-glorifying Palestinian Authority to receive tax revenues and goods."
"In short," he continued, "it's clearly not my policies these voters oppose, so maybe it's my personal behavior. But if I were to adopt some of the unmistakable affectations of, say, the current American president, a Democrat, that might resonate better with otherwise-left-wing members of the electorate, and the mandate to form a government under my leadership this time around will prove more convincing and longer-lasting. I've known Joe for a long time and been able to see him in action, in addition to all the footage available of him, and I have to say I'm leaning towards the whole sniffing-women's-hair tendency has a special hold on my imagination." No Israeli government has lasted its full term in decades.
Netanyahu revealed he has mooted other "Bidenisms" he can also adopt to serve the same purpose, such as putting illegal migrants in cramped quarters and calling them "overflow facilities" and "definitely not cages."