Hecht: My election [Video]

Israelis will wake up Tuesday to vote in what has been dubbed by many as the most crucial elections in the country’s history. For the first time in my life, I will be among them, a single citizen exercising my right to cast a single ballot in an election booth in the city of Ashkelon.

My path started about four months earlier, when I came to Israel to film a number of projects. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for an election I found myself wrapping up a Christmas special I was filming in Bethlehem. Notifications of this news lit up my phone like the decorated tree just outside, right in the middle of my meal at the Casanova restaurant near the church of the Nativity. I was speaking to two older Palestinians about the future and made them aware of the news. “So what,” said one while sipping on …