Published: 1 November 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
TWO GENERAL ELECTIONS within a span of five months are a treasure for any researcher, because they bring to light the issues that are most important to each group of voters.
Between the April and September elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not change, the security threats from Iran and the Gaza Strip neither grew nor shrank, and Israel's population remained almost the same.
But a new agenda that was placed at the centre of the second election took five Knesset seats from the bloc comprising Likud and the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties.
The agenda was the relationship between religion and state, and the person who put it centre stage also coined the slogan that most accurately summarizes Israel’s social and political centre of gravity: “A Jewish state, not a halakha [Jewish religious law] state.”
FULL STORY In Israel, a new consensus on what being Jewish really means (Haaretz)
Jewish-Arab partnership as an antidote to Jewish supremacism (+972)
We need to redefine Israeli politics. No more left and right, liberal or conservative, religious versus secular. Instead: a new partnership of Arabs and Jews, working side-by-side to combat Jewish supremacism
Photo: A group of Orthodox Jews pray around the holy Jewish sites of Uman, Ukraine (AP)
