Here We Go Again…
Friday June 24, 2022 – כ״ד סִיוָן תשפ״ב
It’s like Déjà vu all over again. That was the feeling as we watched the press conference of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid announce the inevitable. After a year in power, this unlikely motley crew of leaders will move forward to dissolve the coalition and the Knesset – sending the country to its fifth election in three years.
The first of the dominoes fell in April with the decision of MK Idit Silman to bolt the coalition. Then Meretz MK Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi also parted ways with the coalition. This past week Bennett simply cut his losses knowing that it was just a matter of time until his own party member MK Nir Orbach would announce his departure, leaving Bennett and Lapid without a leg to stand on.
A few takeaways and what to watch for.
PM Bennett and Alt. PM Lapid were successful in several areas, most of which were around good governance, passing a budget, and creating the tone and tenor of a functioning government.
One could even say that PM Bennett sacrificed himself in order to extend the West Bank legal regulations for another six months. The end-of-June deadline was approaching, but the dissolution of the Knesset, as written in the law, automatically extends the government’s viability by six months. The Attorney General warned that failure to extend the regulations would result in chaos and lawlessness.
The opposition’s vote against extending those regulations is but one notable example of how the opposition did everything in its power to undermine the government. Well, you might say, isn’t that the role of the Opposition?
It is. However, this behavior has gone beyond all political acceptability. Say what you might about PM Bennett, but he has demonstrated a great deal of political maturity amidst an atmosphere of demeaning speech and fomented hatred and polarization (sound familiar?). Right-wing settler MKs in the opposition voted against extending Israeli law to the settlements and left-wing anti-settlement MKs voted for extending the law. Crazy! Right?
What should we watch for in the next elections?
There are still too many unknowns about the next elections, slated for October 25, 2022, but here are a few things that we should watch for:
- King Bibi will do what he can to restore his former glory (להחזיר עתרה ליושנה). He is already plotting and looking at every possible political angle through which he can eke out a potential coalition.
- Possible threshold percentage reduction.
MK Moshe Gafni of the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party proposed a bill that would lower the electoral threshold from 3.25% to 2%. A lower electoral threshold would reduce the minimum number of seats needed to enter the Knesset, thus enabling smaller parties to obtain seats in the Knesset. Currently, the 3.25% threshold means a party needs to win at least four seats to make it in; parties under the limit have their votes redistributed among other parties proportionally. The new bill proposes to lower the threshold, likely to two seats. It’s not entirely clear what his motive is, but he may want to split his party back into two and enable many smaller and splinter factions to enter the Knesset making it easier for Netanyahu – his sworn ally – to cobble together a coalition. Doing this gives far more power to small minority parties. The minimum was adjusted upwards several years ago to avoid the rule by the minority. This would return us to those days of even more political chaos than we are experiencing now.
3. Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
Much ink has been spilled on these pages about the dangers of the inflamed ultra-nationalism of the far-right in Israel, specifically about the growing strength and prominence of MK Itamar Ben Gvir. Over the past year, Ben Gvir masterfully inserted himself into every crisis and has been a sweeping presence for the marginalized extremists of the National Religious community. He showed up after the devastating tragedy on Mt. Meron last Lag B’Omer. He set up camp in Sheikh Jarrah to fight for the right to expel Palestinians from their homes. He walked on the Temple Mount. Recently, he even turned up at the Yazdim Synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem – known as the Sancta Sanctorum of the Shas party and the longtime respected pulpit of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef z”l to stir up the dust and try and attract supporters to his party.
Here’s why we should watch carefully:
Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef reprimanded Ben Gvir for the clear halakhic violation of ascending the Temple Mount (which itself, is murky halakhic territory, but in the interest of clarity, the rabbis have largely forbid it since 1967 out of both fear of Jews walking on the Holy of Holies and to avoid offending the Muslim Waqf, an agreement made between the Waqf and Israel when Jerusalem was reunified). This is not the first time that Ben Gvir & Co. placed their nationalist ideologies over halakha. Planting trees during the Shmita year in order to displace and ascend the Temple Mount are two of the most glaring examples. But Rabbi Yosef’s admonishment comes when he is feeling most threatened. Despite Ben Gvir’s attempt at a mea culpa and deference to the revered rabbi who is set to take over Shas’ spiritual leadership after his service as Chief Rabbi, he knows that those on the margins of Haredi society don’t actually care that much about the specific halakhot and are attracted to Ben Gvir as a strong and fierce leader. We know Ben Gvir well since the mid-90s when he stole the Cadillac hood ornament off the motorcade of PM Yitzhak Rabin saying, “Today we were able to get to his hood ornament, tomorrow we can get to him.”
He understands perfectly well that there is a shift in the marginal ranks of the ultra-Orthodox parties. Once, they steered clear of politics, specifically the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they were focused on one thing only and that was Torah study. Any coalition that offered them seats in exchange for funding of schools and yeshivot would find an easy deal. Not so anymore. Over the past several years, we are seeing an increasing blend between Nationalism and Haredism, creating what’s referred to in Israel as “Hardalism.” This is threatening the stronghold of the Haredi rabbinic leadership in their own courts and is showing a fraying of the fabric of Haredi lifestyle. Many on the margins of those communities are feeling more and more nationalistic and anti-left wing. They feel threatened by such things as the pride parade, and you better believe that having a Reform rabbi (our own Gilad Kariv) in the Knesset sparks their ire. It was this group, that campaigned against the Coalition saying that including the Arab Islamist Mansour Abbas’ Ra’am Party would lead the Knesset to be run by terrorist sympathizers, which riles up the base, especially after the string of terrorism that we saw this past Spring.
The rabbinic leadership will likely respond with a game of who can out-chumra[1] whom and begin to pull in the reigns coming out with more and more strictures on Jewish law as an attempt to prove their devotion and true leadership.
We are, of course, seeing this phenomenon growing outside of Israel as well with the Haredi Zionist organization Eretz HaKodesh. It is growing in size and succeeds largely based on its leaders telling its adherents that they are protecting the sanctity of the Land and the Orthodox establishment against the influence of the Reform Movement! Their claim that newly appointed but not-yet confirmed Jewish Agency head Maj. Gen. (Res.) Doron Almog is unfit to serve because his daughter read Torah as a Bat Mitzvah 30 years ago in a Reform synagogue is just one example of the utter intolerance and supremacy of the Hardalim.
- What’s left of the Left?
It’s easy to say that the Left is weak and not a real factor, but that’s neither fair nor accurate. The Labor and Meretz parties have 10 seats combined, hold 4 Ministerial portfolios and several other positions of importance. If they were to join with centrist parties Yesh Atid, Blue and White, and Yisrael Beiteinu, they could together formulate a considerable electoral force. While no one has made any outright commitments to join forces, we could see something that might raise the progressive political profile and symbolize a credible force to be reckoned with against the forces of Netanyahu and the extreme right-wing.
Just last week, nearly 100 hundred leaders of the URJ and ARZENU leadership missions sat in the Knesset, hosted by MK Rabbi Gilad Kariv, and discussed the future of the coalition. With the impending collapse on everyone’s mind, it was Ra’am leader MK Mansour Abbas who, as a religious Muslim, brought the Nehemta, the spark of hope for us all. He looked us all in the eye and said that this experiment of the past year (referring to the unlikely Coalition of left and right including his Islamist Arab party) was about more than just political expediency or even a means to an end.
He shared with us that:
“by sitting together in this government we were able to bring a little more fairness, equality, and justice to the Jewish and communities and therefore to the whole of Israeli society. That’s what is at stake, and that’s what we have to lose. It is sad to me that there are those who fail to internalize this concept.”
Abbas succeeded as our teacher and even as our prophet. We don’t see eye to eye on everything, and as we go into this next election cycle, it could come down to those who see their calling to be inclusive, fair, and just, versus those who feel threatened by equal rights and creating a just pluralistic society.
Stay tuned for more soon.
Shabbat Shalom.
[1] A chumra (חומרה) is a prohibition or obligation in Jewish practice that exceeds the bare requirements of Halakha (Jewish law). One who imposes a chumra on oneself in a given instance is said to be machmir (מחמיר). The rationale for a chumra comes from Deuteronomy 22:8, which states that when someone builds a house, he must build a fence around the roof in order to avoid guilt should someone fall off the roof. This has been interpreted by many as a requirement to “build a fence around the Torah” in order to protect the mitzvot. In this context, the meaning of chumra is simply “a stricter interpretation of a Jewish law (Halakha), when two or more interpretations exist”. This meaning is closely related to the first meaning because people who follow the more lenient interpretation (kulla) believe that their interpretation is the baseline requirement of the law and that people who observe the stringency are doing something “extra”. However, people who observe the chumra, in this sense, believe that they are following the baseline requirement, and to do any less would be to violate halakha entirely. In many cases, a rule followed by the majority (or even totality) of halakha-observant Jews today is a stringency in comparison with more lenient rabbinic opinions which have existed in the past or even today.