The 37 Flavors of Israeli Political Parties

(But you only get to choose one)

This Tuesday is Election Day in Israel, and I get to vote for the first time. I’m excited. There are 37 parties to choose from. That’s even better than Baskin-Robbins’ 31 flavors. What a country we live in. But how do I choose?

Here’s a select sampling of flavors:

Do I want someone like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionism party, who “calls on Israel to ‘go to war’ in the West Bank and ‘do there what we did in Gaza,’” as the Times of Israel reports?

I’m religious, and I’m Zionist. Does Smotrich’s war include the Haredim?

How about the Otzma Yehudit party and their leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who, by a Times of Israel account, said, “‘I see all of Gaza as ours,’ and ‘I think we should carry out targeted assassinations in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night,’”… “‘not just those who pose an immediate threat. No, there are people there who are not worthy of life,’” …. “‘They shouldn’t live,’ Ben Gvir continued. ‘They’re not even people.’”

Wait a minute. I thought Trump claimed Gaza as his? Will Ben-Gvir get us into a fight with the U.S. and the Trump corporation?

What about United Torah Judaism and party member Eliakim Stark, No. 6 on the UTJ’s list? According to a Times of Israel report, he likened the situation of ultra-Orthodox in Israel to that of Jews during the Holocaust, when he “talked about the woes of many young Haredi men who cannot fly abroad to meet women as part of the community’s shidduch matchmaking system, since they are under military draft orders and would be arrested at the airport.”

I could use a shidduch myself. I kinda relate.

Maybe Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al party Knesset member Ofer Cassif, who compared the ongoing wave of violence in Arab territories to Kristallnacht, saying, “Kristallnacht has become the daily reality in the lives of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank under the auspices of the occupation army,” as the Times of Israel reported.

Nah.

Or Yair Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff and current head of the Democrats party, who, by a Times of Israel account, said, “a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations.”

Not to my taste.

Then there is the Zehut party and its chairman Moshe Feiglin, whom the Jerusalem Post reported as saying, “I want to see Gaza empty. I am not afraid when they’re hiding behind their own babies. And this is what they do.”

Well, at least half of Gaza is already empty.

When I was a young lawyer with just eleven years of experience, a local City Council Member recruited me to run for an open seat on the Fremont City Council. Fremont was the San Francisco Bay Area town where I lived and practiced. This Council Member appealed to my ego, but my naivete was what led me to agree. I thought running for public office would mean debates about policy and visions for the future. I thought expertise would count. Instead, my opponents attacked me for–get this–being a lawyer. I laughed so hard I forgot to attack back. Suffice to say, I got my tuchus handed to me. But it was the best possible outcome. I spared my soul from any further corruption. I sat on the Planning Commission for eight years instead and got to do policy.

I still believe a candidate should offer practical ideas, demonstrate intelligence, and possess expertise rather than attack opponents. I know—I’m still naive. Call it what you will, but those criteria led me to Einat Wilf.

I came across Wilf well before she formed her Oz party, which she later consolidated into the Reservist party. I had watched interviews with Wilf in which she explained that peace requires Palestinians to relinquish the demand for mass return to Israel and to accept Jewish national sovereignty, an idea she also wrote about in her 2020 book, The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace.

I found Wilf to be a blend of idealism, intellect, and practical realism. Yes, “promote peace based on Arab and Palestinian acceptance of Zionism, and the dismantling of Palestinianism as an ideology.” However, Wilf has no illusions about Israel’s enemies. “Neither peace nor security will be possible as long as the Palestinian ideology, founded on the negation of Zionism, continues to exist,” she wrote in her recent book, October Return. “The 100-year war that was forced upon us by the Palestinians in particular and the Arabs in general, does not stem from one act or another that we did. Not from the settlements, not from the occupation, and not from the violation of rights. The war that was forced upon us is because of our very existence here as a sovereign people. Therefore, peace does not depend on us, but on the cessation of the state of war by the Arab side.”

Fine. You got my attention. But give me specifics. What’s your vision?

As Wilf writes, “Pursue peace based on replacing “Palestinianism” with Arab Zionism, which is simply an Arab recognition of the equal right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their historic homeland. This is a vision which, even if not realized soon, must serve as the organizing idea of Israel’s foreign and security policy, from which daily actions derive. After decades of attempts to achieve peace through shortcuts that have brought us no closer to genuine peace, it is precisely this long-term vision, pursued patiently, day by day, that could finally lead to real progress, perhaps even sooner than expected.”

I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff. That’s why I ran for public office and lost handily.

Here’s how I see it. At the end of the day, what underlies Wilf’s realist ideology is a view and understanding of Israel’s genocidal enemies no different from what Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and Feiglin hold: We must take the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians at their word with their “from the river-to-the-sea” ideology, and when they say they want to kill us. They really want to kill us! So believe them.

So, who do I choose?

As I was wrestling with this dilemma, I received the weekly Shabbat greeting Dr. Marci Reiss sends to her friends. In her pre-election post, she offered what I thought was practical wisdom for deciding whom to vote for:

“For Jews inside Israel, every side is hurting.

Let us remember that our job is to vote for who we believe is the best to run this complicated country on a hostile world stage.

But it’s also our job to bring peace, to bring unity, to contribute in all the positive ways we can.

While we individually cannot run the country, we all have the power to bring peace between the sides, to bring unity between groups, to hear each other, to listen, to challenge ourselves to grow and improve—not just within our own communities, but within the beautiful tapestry of communities that G-d has chosen to be his nation.”

These principles don’t necessarily lead everyone to the same choice. But they do lead us to consider the greater good of the Jewish people and our homeland.

I can think of no better guidance for this Tuesday.

Am Yisroel Chai.

(For full disclosure, I neither work for nor am I affiliated with any political campaign, including Einat Wilf’s. I’m just a new Israeli voting for the first time, and from this perspective, I believe we need fewer meshuggenehs in the Knesset and more intelligence.)