It was a nightmare that Israel's opposition Labour Party will desperately want to forget. A nightmare that the governing Likud Party will be sure to keep replaying in its election campaign broadcasts. A scene of pure political farce. The sight of a long-established party committing electoral suicide live on television.
Tuesday, February 16th, 8 p.m. Labour has invited the cameras to its election headquarters, to guarantee live coverage on the main evening news of its "primaries" - the balloting of more than 100,000 Labour members to choose the party's list for the May 17th elections. (Israel elects its 120 Knesset members by proportional representation: If Labour gets a third of the national vote, it will get 40 seats in the Knesset; if it gets a quarter of the national vote, it will get only 30 seats, and so on. A high ranking on the party list is therefore critical.) Partial results have been leaking out all day. And they indicate that Mr Addisu Massala, the only Ethiopian-born Knesset member, is out-scoring another immigrant, Ms Sopha Landver, from the former Soviet Union, and is therefore heading for a "safe" position. Mr Massala, an unusually volatile spokesman for the self-effacing Jewish community, is already celebrating. But when the TV crews turn on their lights, and the official results are released, Mr Massala discovers to his horror that a surge of support for Mrs Landver has lifted her above him. The Knesset seat he thought was his will go to her instead.
Labour's leader, ex-army chief-of-staff Mr Ehud Barak, has hitherto been enjoying the days, celebrating Labour's democratic selection procedures - and deriding Likud, the party of the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, which chose its candidates two weeks ago by balloting only a few thousand key activists.
Standing proud at the microphone, Mr Barak begins extolling the virtues of the newly-chosen Labour candidates, and promising that his team will defeat Mr Netanyahu come May 17th.
But just yards away, in the hall below him, Mr Massala is howling in protest. The voting was rigged, he screams. Mr Barak has deliberately ousted him, because there are so many more Russian voters than Ethiopians. As the cameras converge, they capture the dark-skinned Mr Massala being manhandled out of the hall by the security guards of a party that has spent years trying to assure immigrant groups that it is not elitist, is not racist, is worthy of their votes.
Mr Barak drones on and on, apparently deluding himself that no one is watching Mr Massala's involuntary exit. Much, much too late, he calls Mr Massala back in, gives him the microphone. The defeated candidate responds by branding Mr Barak a racist, and threatening legal action. Other party officials try to grab back the microphone. Mr Barak, looks on, his features frozen in a panicked grin. Later, Mr Barak invites Mr Massala to supervise a recount. Why bother? retorts the Ethiopian politician. The whole voting process, he charges, is a con, a trick.
This weekend's opinion polls will likely show Mr Barak, previously running neck-and-neck with Mr Netanyahu, starting to slip behind. Mr Netanyahu must have laughed till the tears ran down his face. And so, too, must Mr Yitzhak Mordechai, the third would-be prime minister, leader of the new centrist party, who has always argued that Mr Barak lacks the political instincts to defeat the ultra-slick Mr Netanyahu.