Justice, justice shall you pursue”  Deuteronomy 16:11.

Almost without exception Palestinian terrorist attacks are “on hold” during the FIFA World Cup international association football competition. That being said, Israel’s defence and security authorities are ever watchful. Yet, despite their vigilance two terrorist attacks occurred this week? The first was the abduction of 
an Israeli Druze high school student critically injured in a car crash in Jenin and hospitalised there. The abductors demanded in exchange for the dead boy’s body the release of Palestinian terrorists incarcerated in Israeli prisons, or the bodies of deceased Palestinian terrorists held by Israel. Although no official statement was issued, it’s known that Israel refused to negotiate the exchange. It appears that the Palestinian Authority intervened and the IDF threatened to retrieve the body by force, Just the same, the boy’s body was returned when the terrorists realised that they were holding the body of a Druze high school student and not an Israeli soldier.

About the same time Palestinian terrorists detonated explosive devices at two bus terminals in Jerusalem, killing an Israeli teenager and injuring over 20 others.

Commentators reasoned that the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks were familiar with West Jerusalem and knew when and where to plant their explosive devices.  Other observers were quick to criticise the Israel Security Agency (better known by the acronym Shabak or Shin Bet) for not having foreknowledge of the attack. The Shabak is arguably the best security agency in the world. In this particular instance the terrorists managed to keep a very low profile. Still, forensic evidence and CCTV footage recorded at the site will eventually lead to their capture.

It appears that the timing of the attacks is related to the FIFA World Cup completion in Qatar and the state of “political limbo” in Israel

At this juncture, let’s look at another seemingly unrelated incident.   A 17-year-old Jewish Israeli was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of attacking a female IDF soldier during the Shabbat Chayei Sarah celebrations in Hebron last Saturday.

The soldier was attacked during clashes that developed between Jews and Palestinians in Hebron during a coordinated entry of worshipers to the tomb of Otniel Ben Knaz, the first biblical judge of Israel. In and around Hebron there are a number of ancient burial caves where according to tradition the patriarchs and others have been interred.

I only mention the long-dead jurist for the purpose of discussing Netanyahu & Co’s efforts to turn the Israel High Court of Justice into a ‘rubber-stamp judiciary. 

Professor Suzie Navot (Vice-President of Research at the Israel Democracy Institute) argues that judicial reforms proposed by the right-wing bloc to enable a Knesset override of the Supreme Court, executive immunity, and the appointment of judges, threaten Israeli democracy and the already fragile separation of powers.

“Israel is a unique country when it comes to dealing with the dangers of populism and democratic erosion.The constitution and structure of the country exposes it to these dangers even more than in any other democratic country. Namely, because in other countries there are mechanisms, there are tools, which decentralise political power.

In every country, you have checks and balances between the powers. You have – with the exception of two or three countries – a rigid constitution. You have the splitting of the legislative authority into two houses. You have, in presidential countries, the right of veto, given to the president, of legislation, or a federal structure or a regional electoral system. And sometimes, like in Europe, even the existence of international organisations and courts. All of these are part of the checks and balances, and none of these exist in Israel. So, we are unique among free countries in not having any tools for the decentralisation of political power.

The most important problem in Israel, especially following the recent elections, is the fact that unlike any other place in the world, any ordinary majority in the Knesset can enact, amend, and delete any Basic Law – or any law – in a normal law-making procedure, in three readings, and even within one day. Which means that the politicians in Israel – and only in Israel – have the possibility to change the constitutional rules of the game at any time- between the system of government and its citizens. All you need is the magic number of 61 because it’s not only the minimum number needed to form a government, a coalition, but also all you need to change Israel’s constitutional arrangement, to change the authority of the court, the system of government: to become a presidential state, or a monarchy, a non-democratic state, or to limit or even delete any human right. That makes Israel really very problematic when we are talking about the dangers of populism and the power – or the absolute power – of the ruling coalition.” …..” The override is an idea that we copied from Canada, and it is a section that will allow the Knesset to enact laws that infringe human rights, even if these laws are disproportionate and for a wrong purpose. Under the most extreme current proposals, if the court declares void a law that infringes human rights in a way that is extreme or disproportionate, then the Knesset, by a majority of 61, will be able to enact it again, because this is the will of the majority. It may sound democratic to some people, but democracy is not only the rule of the majority – definitely not! Democracy is also an effective protection of human rights, especially the rights of minorities. And, therefore, the override rule is actually intended to allow the Knesset to overcome us– it’s about our rights; the people. It will allow our rights to be limited in a disproportionate way: the right to equality; freedom of speech; perhaps a woman’s right to her body; freedom of religion or the right to property.”…” Judicial review of laws in Israel is not written in any Basic Law but follows a monumental decision by the Supreme Court in 1995. Since then, the court possesses powerful judicial review, but this power has been used with restraint, and very carefully, over the last twenty-five years. Only around twenty laws have been declared unconstitutional. But if you are looking for a section in the law where it says that the court may judicially review laws and declare them unconstitutional – we do not have it.” …..

Israel is a mixed system and is very distinct. Until 1980, Israeli courts were bound to follow British judge-made law. Everything that happened in Britain we knew, we had to learn, and to teach. This article was abolished in 1980, but even so, the custom of following British and American tradition still prevails. And the status of everything in the legal profession is far more similar to England or America than to Germany or France. Now, the structure of our legal system is influenced by common law, and we do not have judicial review – as Britain did not have until the Human Rights Act. Judicial decisions here are considered a source of law; binding precedents, like in Britain. The structure of the judiciary and the rules of evidence and procedure are very similar to the corresponding systems in common law. But we still have a mixture of influences, and we like to copy things from all over the world, even without thinking about the outcomes.

We took the idea of the override from Canada. In effect, Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which is called the ‘notwithstanding clause.’ It is also called the ‘override clause’. It is part of the Constitution of Canada. The clause was crucial in winning provincial support for the Charter. The clause allows governments to bypass some rights. Such an override must be renewed after five years. Use of the clause is politically hard and therefore rare. It has been used by provinces only rarely. It has never been used by the federal government.

Further to that, we’re speaking about the Norwegian Law of allowing ministers to resign from the Knesset and new MKs to enter in their place. We had a biannual budget like in Bahrain, and we are talking about the French Law, granting immunity [from prosecution] to a sitting prime minister. This is something that Israel would very much like to do: “okay, let’s do what they’re doing”, without thinking “are we really so similar to Canada? Are we really so close to this system in France, to the culture? Are we really like the British people, who have the culture of “it is not done”? But this is Israel- it’s a unique country, and we really have a mixture of influences.

This is really a problem. Netanyahu’s court case, if it continues it could last at least another three or four years. What kind of justice is it if you have a citizen that has a cloud above his head – a dark cloud of a criminal indictment – and has to wait for five, six, or seven years, and then perhaps be declared innocent? This is the problem, but the proposals of the Religious Zionism party are not dealing with it. They are dealing with power: They want more power, and the means to limit the power of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court of Israel is not only the Supreme Court of Justice. The Supreme Court mainly deals with appeals from the District Courts, meaning that it is also the Criminal Court of Appeal and the Civil Court of Appeal for the country. The composition of the Supreme Court selection committee seeks balance.

The committee is currently comprised of a panel of nine: four politicians (two from the government, two from the opposition); two members of the Israeli Bar Association; and three sitting judges. Advocates for reform propose increasing the political quota.

And the fact that a majority of seven out of nine is required usually leads to a compromise and the consensual selection of candidates.

The balance between the professional and political is very important in Israel because it preserves the independence of the judges. And in Israel, unlike most democracies, the judiciary is the only factor restraining the power of government. Unlike most democracies, in Israel there is no entrenchment in the constitution of the several arrangements that guarantee the independent status of the judges, for example: their tenure, the date of their retirement, the way they are appointed. Everything can be changed by a simple Knesset majority. The Supreme Court of Israel could be erased by a regular Basic Law passed by a simple majority of two versus one – it does not need even 61.

I don’t think the committee selection method is unusual and it can be seen as part of a global trend that is moving to selection models that are similar to the Israeli model, with representative members from several authorities. For example, many appointments committees include professionals – or in consultation with professionals – in Britain, Greece, Canada, Australia, France, Belgium, Austria. In these cases, you need cooperation between the authorities or a very, very large, mature majority of the parliament, which not only includes the government, but also the opposition.

Therefore, I think the proposed changes to selection are a real threat to the independence of the judiciary in Israel. It’s here, as part of the plan of Religious Zionism, which actually means they propose to erase everything that is independent and professional and objective in the public system. They want the judicial system to be subservient to the politicians in power. It is very problematic for Israel because the Supreme Court is the only branch – the last branch – with the power to limit government.”

In the meantime, the political wheeling and dealing continues and Netanyahu’s “dream team” is looking more like a nightmare.

The Religious Zionist Party headed by Bezalel Smotrich, and Itamar Ben-Gvir is eager to introduce legislation in favour of the override clause. It would likely help Arye Deri (Shas) receive a government portfolio. Following a conviction on tax evasion, Deri received a year's suspended sentence, and was also ordered to pay a NIS 180,000 fine.  He decided to resign from the Knesset knowing that no decision would be made on whether the offenses carried the designation of "moral turpitude" which would again bar him from running for office for 7 years. Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara has told incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would need approval from Central Elections Chairman Yitzhak Amit to appoint Shas party leader Arye Deri as a government minister due to his conviction and suspended jail sentence this past January. Once he gets his team together, Netanyahu is expected to permit other members of his coalition government to introduce the “override clause”. If enacted retroactively he could petition to dismiss all criminal charges filed against.

Maybe we are not all equal before the law.

 

Have a good weekend

 

Beni,                                                   25^th of November, 2022

 

 

” Pictures at an Exhibition”. 

I read somewhere that the last shipment of coal from Newcastle has left the English port, thereby ending its mining heritage that dates back to the 13^th century. However, the cliché- “bringing/selling coals to Newcastle is still relevant because the other Newcastle, the one in New South Wales, is still Australia’s largest terminal for coal exports. No, this week’s post is not about carbon emissions and global warming. 

Bringing coal to and from Newcastle brought to mind the charcoal burners at Umm al Fahm (30km west of Ein Harod). As its name implies the town’s economy was once based on charcoal burning, dating back to the Mamluk Sultanate in the 13^th century. But the similarity ends there.

Umm al Fahm has often been synonymous with crime, family feuds and the outlawed Northern Branch of the Islamic movement led by Sheikh Ra’ed Salah.

Last Friday I saw another side of Umm al Fahm when together with friends I attended the opening of the Abu Shakra family artists’ exhibition at the Mishkan. Museum of Art, Ein Harod.  The exhibition at Ein Harod is of particular importance, unprecedented in size and scope. The opening ceremony was held in the auditorium adjacent to the Mishkan’s main exhibition halls where the exhibits were on display. “Spirit of Man, Spirit of Place Artists of the Abu-Shakra Family at Ein Harod. - Walid, Said, Farid, Asim and Karim Abu-Shakra” is the title chosen for the exhibition curated jointly by Dr. Galia Bar Or, and Dr. Housni Alkhateeb Shehada.

Contemporary art is well established in Umm al Fahm where the town’s own gallery was opened in 1996, the initiative of artist Said Abu Shakra, who is currently its director and chief curator. Jewish and Arab artists exhibit their works at the gallery, which has also exhibited the works of Arab artists at other galleries in Israel.

 At this juncture I want to place the Arab-Jewish relationship in a regional context. Thirty-three communities are represented on the Gilboa regional council, six of them are large Arab villages comprising 40% of the region’s population. Many of our Arab neighbours work in the region’s Jewish communities- kibbutzim, moshavim and community settlements. We all enjoy good neighbourly relations   

Our art museum has attracted notice beyond regional and national borders

Washington Post columnist James McAuley wrote about the Mishkan, Museum of Art, Ein Harod following a visit he made in 2015.

“A little-known art museum with luminous interiors, established on a struggling socialist kibbutz in the 1930s, has inspired some of the 20th century’s most iconic buildings. In 1937, the kibbutz’s leaders established a museum in the heart of their community, first housed in a three-room wooden shed and later in a structure that quietly became a source of inspiration for some of the 20th century’s most prominent architects. From the tranquil exhibition spaces of Louis I. Kahn’s Yale Centre for British Art and the careful curving roof of his Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, completed in 1972, to the intimacy of Renzo Piano’s Menil Collection in Houston, traces of the Mishkan Le’Omanut can be seen in the type of architecture that, as the self-taught Tadao Ando has put it, uses light to create ‘‘consciousness, an awareness of a larger universal rhythm and balance.

Today, the use of natural light is a common feature of museum architecture; as the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto wrote, ‘what acoustics are for a concert hall, light is for a museum.’ And yet the Mishkan Le’Omanut, which was officially inaugurated in 1948, is one of the earliest examples of a museum that used indirect sunlight with sublime results.”  The concept of building an art museum far removed from the country’s cultural hub was to say the least ambitious. “It was the brainchild of artist, Chaim Atar, who was also the kibbutz baker. Atar persuaded the kibbutz to send him to study art in Paris.” That was no mean feat, not the studies, but the persuasion.

“The Mishkan’s architect, Samuel Bickels, was a member of kibbutz Tel Yosef who had studied architecture in his native Poland, and whose vision — not unlike that of the Bauhaus architects then developing Tel Aviv — was of a 'total work of art,' in which form would follow function. Bickels imagined the museum as a place where visitors could put aside the roles they were required to perform in the rigid social structure of the kibbutz — in much the same way that Atar’s portraits were intended to help fellow kibbutzniks remember who, rather than what, they were.

But Bickels’s lasting legacy was more technical. Built with humble materials over a decade, the museum is a somewhat awkward string of 14 rooms. To conserve resources, the galleries were left unadorned and painted only in white, the ideal canvas to display both artworks and the sunlight in all its nuanced fluctuations. For those who care about spaces — like Pontus Hultén, Renzo Piano and countless other international visitors over the decades — the combination of intimate, varied rooms and light sources make for a kind of art museum, that’s not grand but perfectly executed. In the central sanctuary, light enters laterally, through tall, opaque windows, but elsewhere it seeps in indirectly, almost invisibly, through intricate ridges in the ceiling that filter solar glare into steady streams that gently roll over the walls. There is no view outside, no organic connection with the immediate surroundings. What the Mishkan Le’Omanut offers instead is a departure from context, a temporal escape.

I’ll conclude with a personal anecdote. 

The late Leah Rabin served in a Palmach patrol unit stationed at Ein Harod. Later in life, when she was Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s wife, she continued to stay in touch with members of Ein Harod and was an active member of the Mishkan’s management committee. In that capacity she volunteered to host a fund-raising function at her official residence. (Balfour Street, Jerusalem.) Mrs. Rabin invited wealthy art lovers to the function, it being clearly understood that they would make a generous donation to the Mishkan. I was working at the Mishkan at that time and was one of the museum’s staff attending the function. I was responsible for arranging the buffet – snacks and drinks which we brought with us. Later in the evening the Prime Minister entered the room quietly careful not to disturb the gathering. I was busy stocking the buffet and was unaware of his arrival till I turned and met him face to face.

“Yitzhak” he said in his unmistakable baritone voice extending his hand to welcome me.  Almost traumatised, I shook his hand and was barely able to reply  ” Beni.”

Obviously there was no need for him to introduce himself, but he did.

 Have a good weekend.

 

Beni,                                       17^th of November, 2022

 STILL FIGURING IT OUT

If you have read Thomas L. Friedman’s column in the New York Times last week “The Israel We Knew Is Gone,” you can skip this preamble and scroll down to the main text.

Friedman noted that “Israeli political trends are often a harbinger of wider trends in Western democracies — Off Broadway to our Broadway. Lord saves us, if this is a harbinger of what’s coming our way. Imagine you woke up after the 2024 U.S. presidential election and found that Donald Trump had been re-elected and chose Rudy Giuliani for attorney general, Michael Flynn for defense secretary, Steve Bannon for commerce secretary, evangelical leader James Dobson for education secretary, Proud Boys former leader Enrique Tarrio for homeland security head and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the White House spokeswoman.

‘Impossible,’ you would say. Well, think again.

Ben-Gvir & Smotrich

The coalition that Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu is riding back into power is the Israeli equivalent of the nightmare U.S. cabinet I imagined above. Only it is real — a rowdy alliance of ultra-Orthodox leaders and ultranationalist politicians, including some outright racist, anti-Arab Jewish extremists once deemed completely outside the norms and boundaries of Israeli politics. As it is virtually impossible for Netanyahu to build a majority coalition without the support of these extremists, some of them are almost certain to be cabinet ministers in the next Israeli government.

As that previously unthinkable reality takes hold, a fundamental question will roil synagogues in America and across the globe: “Do I support this Israel or not support it?” It will haunt pro-Israel students on college campuses. It will challenge Arab allies of Israel in the Abraham Accords, who just wanted to trade with Israel and never signed up for defending a government there that is anti-Israeli Arab. It will stress those U.S. diplomats who have reflexively defended Israel as a Jewish democracy that shares America’s values, and it will send friends of Israel in Congress fleeing from any reporter asking if America should continue sending billions of dollars in aid to such a religious-extremist-inspired government.

You have not seen this play before, because no Israeli leader has ‘gone there’ before.

Netanyahu was also aided by the fact that while the right and the far right were highly energized by both growing fears of and distrust of Arabs — whether Israeli Arab citizens or Palestinians in the West Bank — their centrist and center-left opponents had no coherent or inspiring counter message.”

Friedman told how an old friend, Yediot Ahronot columnist Nahum Barnea, explained how Netanyahu succeeded beyond all expectations: “Israel is not divided down the middle, with 50 percent being pro-Netanyahu and the other 50 percent with a unified message and strategy opposing him. No, Israel is divided between the 50 percent who are pro-Netanyahu and the 50 percent who are pro-blocking Netanyahu. But that is all they can agree on,” Barnea said.” And it showed in this election. And it wasn’t enough. “

Haviv Rettig Gur Times of Israel political correspondent and senior analyst explained the 50-50 division of the Israeli electorate differently, less dispassionately.

“As the election results came in, two things became clear. One, Netanyahu’s rightist-religious bloc had won a sweeping, unassailable victory. Two, it had done so without fundamentally changing the actual numbers of votes.

Two political parties, progressive-Zionist Meretz and Palestinian-nationalist Balad, failed to meet the 3.25 percent vote minimum required to enter the Knesset, and so cost the anti-Netanyahu half of Israeli politics about 6% of the total votes cast (well over a quarter-million votes). Whereas, Netanyahu’s 64-seat majority is almost entirely a function of stemming that threshold loss.

In Balad’s case, the implosion was foreseen for weeks, a function of its decision to run separately from and without even a vote-sharing agreement with the other Arab-majority factions.

In Meretz’s case, the same question was anxiously raised back in September, with calls by activists and centre-left leaders for Labour and Meretz to unite to avoid falling below the threshold. Labour refused, even as all understood that a failure by any one of the small parties in the anti-Netanyahu bloc to clear the threshold would break the four-year deadlock and hand Netanyahu his victory.

All understood and a great many predicted that the anti-Netanyahu camp was bound to fail simply because so many of its parties hovered dangerously close to the threshold.

In other words, the left and Balad self-immolated, their leadership too devoted to party brands, their own standing and narrow ideological nuances to respond to a clear and present electoral threat. They spoke of Netanyahu’s imminent return to power as a vast danger, but then did everything required to make that outcome more likely.

A very real and dramatic shift is underway in the politics of the democratic world, including in Israeli politics.

It is hard not to connect the rise of Ben Gvir to the astonishing 41% vote for Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election, to the victory of formerly fascist political elements in Italy in September, or to far-right politics in the US, Canada, Brazil, Hungary and elsewhere. Formerly fringe right-wing actors, now declaring themselves to have moderated, seem on the march everywhere.

The Israeli left didn’t collapse in a sudden, recent rightist lurch of the electorate. It has been in a tailspin for three decades. And three decades of failure suggest a simple, unsparing conclusion that hovers over the anxiety about the election results and the patina of moral panic that accompanies it: The left that just collapsed, in terms of raw political strategy, doesn’t deserve to exist.

It’s a point few are raising now, perhaps out of misplaced sympathy: Even if the Lapid-led camp had won, it would not actually have won; it would merely have denied Netanyahu a win.

It gets worse. Even this goal will soon be out of its grasp. Last week’s election highlighted a point long known but adamantly ignored by the left’s political institutions and leaders: It is losing the demographic contest, and quickly.

Israeli politics are built along cultural, religious and ethnic divides often called “sectors,” or “tribes.” The electoral system itself — a single nationwide constituency with a proportional vote for party lists — is built to reflect and express these tribal affinities as cohesive parliamentary actors.

The specific delineations of the “tribes” are not as rigid as Israeli identity politics suggest; Haredi-Sephardi Shas and traditionalist Likud have exchanged voters over the years, as have Labour and Yesh Atid. But these self-defined boundaries are nevertheless the most basic predictors of Israeli political behaviour.

Ethnicity is a factor in constructing these tribes. In last year’s election, according to a study by the Israel Democracy Institute, Meretz and Labour’s voters were majority Ashkenazi (70% and 55% respectively), Likud and Shas’s mostly Sephardi (58% and 75%).

So is income. Yesh Atid voters were more likely to have above-average income (46%) than below-average (30%), Likud the reverse (29% above, 46% below).

But by far the most successful predictor of voting patterns is level of religiosity. The centre-left is startlingly uniform in its secularism. In the 2021 election, religiously-minded voters (who self-defined as ‘ultra-Orthodox,’ ‘religious,’ or ‘traditional-religious’) made up just 2.5% of Meretz voters, 6% of Yesh Atid, 7% of Labour, 8% of Yisrael Beiteinu, 12% of Blue and White and 14% of New Hope.

The opposite was true on Netanyahu’s side of the aisle. “Less than 1% of Shas and [United] Torah Judaism voters defined themselves as secular, and among the voters of the Religious Zionism party, the figure stands at just 5%.” Likud may be the most religiously diverse Jewish-majority party, with 28% of its voters calling themselves ‘secular,’ 35% ‘traditional non-religious’ and 23% ‘traditional-religious’.”

And that’s a political cataclysm for the left as it is currently constructed, because some of these ethno-religious tribes are growing much faster than others, almost entirely by the tried-and-true method of having more children.

Two unique features of Israeli society make this a uniquely potent method for political expansion: Israeli society is younger than other democracies, and young Israelis, more than in other democracies, remain loyal to their parents’ political preferences.

Israel is among the youngest populations in the developed world. Its median age is 30.5, compared to America’s 38.1, France’s 41.7 or geriatric Germany’s 47.8. Some 35% of the population is under 20 (compared to America’s 25%), and some 15% of the electorate is under 24, more than any other Western democracy.

And these vast cohorts of young people hail disproportionately from the religious side of the divide. Haredi women, according to Central Bureau of Statistics 2021 data, average about 6.5 children per woman; among religious but not Haredi women it’s 3.9. The average for all Jewish non-Haredi women, including the secular and “traditional,” is 2.5.

And they vote, as noted, like their parents.

“One of the most interesting things about the youth vote in Israel is the rate of conformity to the families they come from,” Prof. Tamar Hermann of IDI and the Open University told Channel 12 recently. “In many other countries we see young people who turn away from or even turn to the opposite [political choices] of their parents, a rebellion against the parents. But the young Israeli is very, very conforming to their family, and the result is that at most we see radicalization from the home they came from. In most homes where there is radicalization, it’s in the same direction but sharper. There’s very little jumping in the opposite direction.”

In fact, these tribal politics stick around even when religion is abandoned. “Haredi or religious young people who left their religious communities, often changed their relationship to their religious lives, but they remain in the same political camp. It’s as though you can be forgiven for one deviation, but two already makes Friday dinners too difficult.”

The steady decline of the Israeli left’s factions and institutions is thus about more than just the failed peace process. It reflects deep social changes. If the left does not fundamentally redraw the Israeli political map — that is, fundamentally reconceive itself — then the recent elections result will be more than a single painful failure. It will be a harbinger of the foreseeable future. It is this reality that drives the ‘end of the country as we’ve known it’ panic.

But as with any failure, once the problem is clear, constructive paths forward emerge. To that end, there are three points of good news for the left in this latest debacle.

The first is that almost nothing actually happened on the ground. Without diminishing from the valid fears about an incoming government dependent on what were once considered extremist and illegitimate political forces, it’s important to note that the rise of Itamar Ben Gvir was not driven by any significant shift in votes.

In the 2021 election, the two religious-Zionist factions Yamina and Religious Zionism won a combined 499,477 votes. In 2022, the single party running from that sector Religious Zionism, won 516,146 votes, just 3% more. Their total share of the vote actually declined, from 11.33% to 10.83% amid a three-point jump in turnout.

This was no Le Pen pivot or Meloni takeover.

In fact, except on the edges, in poor development towns or in tense, ethnically mixed neighbourhoods, most voters didn’t seem to register Ben Gvir’s presence at all, despite the anxiety his candidacy aroused on the left and abroad.

The second piece of good news for the left is simply the clarifying effect of disastrous failure. The divide of the left into Labour and Meretz is a distant echo of now irrelevant differences between two leftist factions at the birth of the state, when socialist Mapai and communist-Stalinist Mapam found themselves on opposite sides of the US-Soviet global divide. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then, but the basic institutional divide inexplicably remains embedded in the political psyche of left-wing elites.

After Tuesday last week, the left can no longer pretend that its old political structures were an appropriate way to build a liberal political camp. While there are differences in self-reported political identity between the two constituencies (in Labour, 24% call themselves ‘far-left,’ 44% ‘moderate left’; in Meretz it’s 58% to 29%), these are not fundamental divides that justify the danger of a recurrence of last week’s result. Failure is unpleasant, but it is also liberating from old orthodoxies. Handled properly, it can rejuvenate.

And third, there’s a growing awareness on the left of the need to rebuild itself in ways that better fit its potential electorate.

This might be a successful way forward. But there’s some chance that a clever, ambitious political left can do better. The cultural-religious-ethnic divides are fundamental, yes, but they are also more porous than they seem in snapshot polls. When it comes to the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi divide, in every single electorate, including the voters for the two Haredi parties UTJ and Shas that are defined by their Ashkenazi or Mizrahi bent, double-digit percentages of voters are no longer willing to tell pollsters whether they are one or the other, in most cases because they are both, the children of mixed marriages.

Nor is religion, so successful a predictor of political behaviour, quite as hard and fast a question as the simplistic categories of pollsters might suggest. The line that divides the religious-Zionist from the Haredi has blurred, producing a hardal community, a word that combines the Hebrew terms for ultra-Orthodox and religious-Zionist. This porousness drove some Haredi voters to Ben Gvir last week.

Similarly, the ‘secular’ Israeli tends to be a more traditionally minded animal than his or her Western counterpart. Families are larger, birthrates higher, and religion-based rituals more widespread among secular Israelis than secular Europeans. Much of everyday Israeli life, even the most prosaic elements like the calendar or the country’s geography, is tied in some way to religious ideas or traditions. A French-style secularism may not be a sustainable political model even among the secular. In this, too, Israelis, including on the left, are closer to the Middle Eastern societies from which most Israeli Jews hail than to the European progressive politics to which the Israeli left often feels it belongs.

At the moment, the future belongs to the tribes that are producing more children. But the lines may be blurring. A left serious about shaping the Israeli future must reorient itself to take advantage of these changes.

It is tempting to mourn and conclude that the world is ending. It is, indeed, the expectation in the age of Twitter and TikTok.

But there remains a large liberal Israeli political camp. The left’s most basic failure is simple: Its venerable institutions, heirs to political structures dating back to before the founding of the Israeli state, no longer correspond to significant social or political realities on the ground.

Had Meretz and Labour been less concerned with their own institutional success and more with the way the voters themselves think, they would have arranged themselves differently in the runup to last week’s elections. Had the left contested the elections as a bloc unified along the lines of voters’ fundamental political impulses — as the right did — Netanyahu would likely now be trying to explain to his voters why they must back him for a sixth attempt. “

From a comparative perspective, the electoral threshold in Israel (3.25%) seems perfectly reasonable. In the vast majority of democracies, this figure ranges from 2% to 5%. Every percent plus or minus comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. When the threshold is higher, there is a greater danger that votes will go to waste. This is what just happened in Israel, where the lists that came up short of the threshold now find themselves out of the Knesset. But this is not predestined: whether parties clear the threshold or not, depends on their use of their political intelligence.

In the recent elections, the electoral threshold had a knockout effect: Two lists that were represented in the previous Knesset came very close, but ultimately fell short—Meretz and Balad. Since both belong to the anti-Netanyahu bloc (if we include Balad in this category), this means that many votes cast for the bloc were wasted-around 300,000 in total. The result is that although the vote counts for the two blocs were almost identical, the Netanyahu camp will have a clear majority of 64 seats in the new Knesset.

However, we must bear in mind, that the electoral threshold is an intrinsic feature of the proportional representation system. Even if the threshold is not defined by the law, in practice it derives from the number of seats in the parliament. In Israel this means 1∕120, or 0.83%.

Too high a threshold is likely to eliminate the representation of small minority sectors; but one that is too low - encourages extreme political fragmentation, which has a negative effect on the parliament’s performance and stability and contributes to social "disintegration."

In the final analysis, it is hard to predict the effect of tinkering with the electoral threshold. Moreover, this is not what we should be focused on. There are much more important changes that should be made to the Israeli system; starting with a Basic Law: Legislation, which would entrench constitutional principles and rules of government, through a devolution of powers from the central to local government, and on to a modification of the electoral system that would strengthen the link between the public and its representatives and the latter’s responsiveness and accountability (for example, by incorporating an individual and regional component into the system).

Maybe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

There’s a persistent rumour that Likud is sending out feelers to Yisrael Beiteinu in an attempt to cobble together an alternative coalition government.

Netanyahu is beginning to regret that he got what he wished for and wants to rid his coalition of extremists, especially the messianic parties.

Anyway, if you have managed to read this to the end, thank you.

 

Have a good weekend

 

Beni,                                                   10^th of November, 2022.