The current Government is not “Israel”
What so many call “Israel” when they are angry about one aspect of the current situation or the other, is its current Government. But Israelis will go the polls on October 27. Many Americans assume that this will result in the current Prime Minister remaining in office with minor adjustments in its policies. In fact, though, the latest polling has the forces supporting the Government and those hoping to form a different Government virtually tied with each bloc seeming to get about 52 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. In order to form a Government, then, one group or the other will have to find support from one of the Arab dominated parties, which currently seem to be on course to receive about 11 or 12 seats.
Yes, Arab Israelis get to vote, too, again rendering the claim of an apartheid state somewhat ridiculous, especially if it is they who will decide which side gets to control the Government. I know nobody tells you this, which is why I am.
Perhaps the clearest signal that the opposition coalition is a serious governing project came last week, when Yoav Segalovitz — a Jewish, Zionist, secular former senior police commander and member of Knesset — announced he would run on the slate of Ra’am, the leading Arab party in Israel. The move, unprecedented in Israeli political history, was less a statement about Segalovitz than about where the coalition is heading: toward a governing arrangement that actually reflects the full diversity of Israeli society.
And here is where it gets even more complicated for Americans trying to figure all of this out. One of the parties among those opposing the current Government is now called “the Democrats” not so much to align itself with the similarly named party in the United States but to stress its interest in Israel remaining a democratic country and not one taken over by ideologues or right wingers. That party, which is the result of the merger of two parties which should have come together a long time ago, is running on a platform that many in the United States would heartily endorse: the separation of religion and state, protection of civil liberties, democratic guardrails against judicial capture, expanded conscription of ultra-Orthodox men, an October 7 commission. It also includes an Arab citizen in its proposed membership in Knesset who has a realistic chance of being seated.
Two of its leaders are well known in Israel though not in the United States: One is Yair Golan, a reserve major-general who served as deputy chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Force under Gadi Eisenkot, who many believe to be the most likely Prime Minister if the coalition of parties opposing the current one takes over. The other is Rabbi Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi who currently sits in Knesset. Here again, though, we come to one of those divides between American Jews and those in Israel.
In North America, Reform Jews now constitute the largest denomination among those who affiliate with a movement at all, and among synagogue-going Jews the Reform share is decisive. The Orthodox, who dominate Israeli religious politics and whose institutional interests the current Government has consistently served, represent a small and shrinking fraction of American Jewry.
That is not the case in Israel, however, where many people have barely ever heard of Reform Judaism. The hostility to Reform Judaism in Israel cuts across religious and secular lines in ways that confound outsiders — secular Israelis who haven’t set foot in a synagogue in years will still bristle at Reform claims to legitimacy, in large part because for them the argument isn’t really about religious practice at all; it’s about Orthodoxy’s monopoly over civil life (marriage, divorce, conversion, burial) with which they’ve simply made a cold peace. For these reasons and more, Kariv being a prominent Reform rabbi is a complicated asset in the Israeli context.
But this is why instead of those posts by Americans wanting to distance themselves from the current Government, we would be better off explaining why the ever deepening breach between American liberal Jews and Israel could be repaired by vocal support of Israelis who share their objections and are actually contesting power over them
The premise that the Israeli political system contains only Netanyahu and his enablers is a false one. The October 27 election is an opportunity to correct that — but only if the American Jewish conversation actually makes space for it.
