The Rise and Influence of the Religious Right: Israeli and American Perspectives

Aaron T. Walter (aaronwalter@gmail.com)

Doctoral student at Masaryk University, Faculty of Social Studies, Brno,Czech Republic

Abstract

The rise of the importance of religious and national parties in Israeli politics mirrors the growth of the electoral importance of social conservatives within the religious-right in the United States. Both have shown their skill at achieving specific goals regarding legislation by their respective political parties (i.e. Likud and Republican). In the State of Israel this indicates a fundamental shift in Israeli politics away from a secular embrace of policy initiatives and issues to policy initiatives that have become increasingly religious-conservative. This fundamental shift impacts policies that have been traditionally accepted as essential for the integration of the peoples livingwithin the borders of Israel. This then offers the following questions for consideration for the state of Israel. Does this political reality reflect accurately the multicultural aspects of Israeli society and culture, and how does it affect the peace process with Palestinians and in general the relationship between Arab-Palestinians and Jews?

Introduction

This paper considers the political relationship in the United States and Israel of political parties through the lens of the realist paradigm. The discussion draws on understandings of constructivism in order to develop a hypothesis, which allows us to make predictions about the religious and national parties in the US and Israel. Drawingon the comparative study of the religious and national parties and their roles and influences in United States and Israeli politics, the article concludes that US-Israeli politics cannot be fully explained by sole classical or neo-realism for several reasons. Domestic level factors, normally downplayed by the realist paradigm must be includedin the discussion, while the complex subject of national interest for Israel in relation to other states (Allon 1976;Brecher 1972; Eytan 1958; Heller 1999), cannot be fully taken into account if secondary interests, unrelated to security and survival, are ignored. This article argues froman interdisciplinary perspective including International

Relations Theory and other Social Studies such as Political Psychology. The importance of traditional approaches such asthe aforementioned realism as well as structural constructivism understanding of states as the main actors ininternational relations (Bull 1979; Krasner 1999) occurs. Moreover from this tradition, constructivist scholars point to the significant impact of ‘social facts’ such as norms and belief-systems as a structured constrain of state behavior (Ruggie 1998) and regimes (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Recent work of the political psychologist school of thought (Geldenhuys 1990; Inbar 1985) and scholarly focus on analyzing identity categories in conflict societies (Bekerman 2009; Auerbach 2009; Etkes 2006; Klein Halevi 2001; Monroe 1993) offer a view of the political landscape in both the U.S. and Israel.

1. Rise of Religious Right

The significance of religion as a political element in American politics is not a recent occurrence.1 In Israel, religion as a part of politics is not a recent development either. Israel is a nation-state created upon a specific religion, but inasmuch as that religion has played a part inpolicy creation and individual politician’s electability, it

1 There have been numerous Christian organizations operating in the United States but typically at the local and not Federal level. The issues discussed and championed were mostly religious in nature. An example of one those groups most remembered in the early twentieth century was the Christian Temperance League. It was this group and a non-religious issue however, that saw the League move outside of regional politics. It was their campaign efforts to outlaw alcohol that became a national political issue.For a look at the efforts of American society to legislate protective barriers against drunkenness and the profound impact of the prohibition movement on political history before 1916 as well as its ambiguous triumph in the 1920's please see Norman Clark (1976) Deliver Us From Evil. Barbora Epstein (1986) The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America alsooffers insight into the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and their campaigns.

has not been as significant as in the United States where religion has had a growing influence on national policy and political electability.

The United States of America

There has always been a religious element in American politics although not very influential in lower level party politics. While a legitimate question may be “why are Americans so religious”?2 The obvious answer is American history. Religion played a prominent role in both the creation and shaping of the country. The other reason for America's religiosity is perhaps more surprising: it is the fact that America was founded as a secular state. The same First Amendment that guarantees the free exercise of religion also prohibits Congress from making any law "respecting an establishment of religion." The separation ofchurch and state distinguishes America from European "confessional states." It is this secular fact that excludesreligion from the public square. A fact that religious conservatives feel is unjust. Consequently, social conservatives and religious groups have tried to include dialogue regarding religion to the public square. The religious groups that survived best in America's competitiveenvironment were the most "enthusiastic": the ones that tooktheir faith most seriously and preached it most vigorously (Micklethwait and Wooldridge, 2004). This included positionson social issues which they used to help influence their politics and policies. The man who most influenced twentieth century conservative thought (e.g. William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan) in American politics was Russell Kirk. Kirk’s 1953 book The Conservative Mind was sensational for its instruction to conservatives dejected from FDR’s ‘New Deal’. Kirk emphasized the religious roots of society. He advised slow and orderly change. “This made his movement a welcoming home

2 John Micklethwait is the U.S. editor of The Economist and Adrian Wooldridge is its Washington correspondent.

for Americans unnerved by the social revolutions of the 1960s and ‘70s” (Von Drehle, 2012). Furthermore, those religious roots took the practical form of alternative networks of communication and scholarship in the early 1970s.One can trace the beginnings of conservative religious influence as early as 1974 when The American Christian Cause, a politically-active social movement was begun by Dr.Robert Grant as concern over Christian votes for Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election helped mobilize Christian voters in favor of candidates who shared the same socially conservative values. In the late 1970s evangelical Christian-orientated political lobbying took the form of a political organization named the Moral Majority.3 There had also been an American conservative Christian advocacy group,Christian Voice, briefly in 1978, but there developed internal disputes between the founder, Robert Grant, and members Paul Weyrich, Terry Dolan, Richard Viguerie and Howard Phillips. In a meeting with televangelist Jerry Falwell in 1979, Martin (1996) and Diamond (1995) explain how the New Christian Right was born.4 For the evangelical movement and the religious right their first presidential hero was Ronald Reagan.In fact, the Moral Majority is probably best known for its involvement in Ronald Reagan’s presidential elections. (Allit: 152). An early supporter of Reagan, Falwell announced the organization’s endorsement of Reagan before the Republican nomination (Libman and Wuthnow: 36), where more than one-fifth of those members who voted for Carter in1976 voted for Reagan in 1980 (Wilcox: 192). Part of the

3 The phrase was coined by Weyrich. See “A Reverence for Fundamentalism”, Penny Lernoux. The Nation, vol. 248, Issue #0015, April 17, 1989 for more on the origins of the Christian right.4 Gilles Kepel discusses in The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World, religious activism in the US and how the New Christian Right challenged and temporary checked the secularization of American politics.

Moral Majority’s success was due to the grassroots efforts done by its members registering and encouraging church-goersto vote, creating for the first time politically active church members. Empirical evidence (Wilcox: 115-117) does support Falwell’s claim though it is difficult to definitively determine. However, the Moral Majority’s support was rewarded by the Reagan Administration5 and in the 1984 election, the organization maintained their supportfor Reagan and influenced the Republican platform for that election year. The long exile of evangelicals from Washington was officially at an end.In the late 1980s Pat Robertson founded the Christian Coalition, and, with the smart young activist Ralph Reed, became the spokesman for the Coalition. Together they influenced Christian voters and continued the rise of the Religious Right. In 1992 the

Coalition began to produce voter guides, distributed to conservative Christian Churches and its influence culminating with the effort in 1996 to elect a conservative Christian. Furthermore, as Micklethwait and Wooldridge (The Right Nation: 111) point out these efforts made the Coalition the most prominent voice in the conservative Christian movement and have allowed the traditional moral issues of the Christian right to be interspersed into a

5 Robert Liebman and Robert Wuthnow (1983) The New Christian Right, p. 60. point to the use of Reverend Robert Billings as campaign religious advisor in the 1980 campaign. For Moral Majority rewards of government posting please see Kenneth Wald (1997). Religion and Politics in the United States, p. 137 where Reagan appointed Billings to a position in the Department of Education. This appointment was particularly significant since the Moral Majorityhad lobbied on education policy issues, especially those regarding private schools. For detailed information on the Religious Right’s influence on policy positions for the 1984 campaign, in particular, school prayer and abortion; see Stephen D. Johnson and Joseph B. Tamney (1985). The Christian Right and the 1984 Presidential Election. p. 125. Review of Religious Research 27(2). pp. 124–133.29.

broader message on other political issues such as health care and the economy. This indicates a pragmatism that Reedhimself has argued against the moral absolutist tone, stressing instead the moral dimension of issues; abortion’s moral dimension, for example, rather than an emphasis on overturning Roe v. Wade (Moen: 461-464). Moreover, Catholicsand evangelicals have worked increasingly together on domestic issues such as abortion, while strong support of Israel in US foreign policy has also become a defining feature.6

While recent books of the last decade have attacked the religious right: polemics from Kevin Phillips American Theocracy (2005) and Chris Hedges American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007) as well as ‘alarmed’ reportingby American journalists like Michelle Goldberg (Salon) support a simple thesis: that religious conservatives in theUS are incubating a form of fascism that could eventually destroy America’s political and intellectual traditions. But, while the prose may be convincing and well argued American Fascists and to a certain degree American Theocracy both assume a unity of purpose and level of organization among evangelicals that does not exist. The US presidential election campaign of 2004 revealed how decentralized the evangelical movement is. While there are respected figures, James Dobson, and Pat Robertson, for example these people have no official institutional standing, and only limited moral authority. The evangelical involvement in politics waslargely the product of grass roots organizing and bottom-up effort.6 For a detailed explanation on evangelical voting patterns see Albert J. Menendez, Evangelicals at the Ballot Box (1996) ch 3, 6-7, while Duane Murray Oldfield’s The Right and the Righteous: the Christian Rightconfronts the Republican Party investigates influence in the Party, "TheChristian Right's intense commitment to its cause (especially thepro-life cause) helped make threats of disruption real". To see the connection between Christian world view towards US foreign policy, please see Andrew Preston, "The Politics of Realism and Religion: Christian Responses to Bush's New World Order," Diplomatic History, Jan 2010, Vol. 34 Issue 1, pp 95-118.

The influence of religion in American politics is not denied, but its influence has grown in proportion to citizen’s views and issues.

Clear quantitative examples are provided. “Eighty-three percent of Americans identify with a religious denomination,40 percent state that they attend services nearly every weekor more, and 58 percent say that they pray at least weekly” (Putnam and Campbell: ch1, note5). Religion when linked to political ideology is of great potency. The below graph is an aggregated Gallup Poll surveys of ideological tendencies showed 31 percent indicating conservative.7 7 Results were based on aggregated Gallup Poll surveys of approximately 1,000 national adults, aged 18 and older, and interviewed by telephone. Sample sizes for the annual compilations range from approximately 10,000 to approximately 40,000. For these results, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point. Ideological tendencies by leaned party affiliation are very similar to those of straight partisan groups. However, it is worth noting the views of pure independents -- a group usually too small to analyze in individual surveys but potentially important in deciding elections.

The majority of Americans (60% to 76%) identify themselves as Christians, mostly within Protestant and Catholic denominations, accounting for 51% and 25% of the population respectively (Kosmin and Keysar, 2008).i The graph below indicates party identification by political ideology. What is of particular note is that close to seventy percent of people who identify themselves are Republican also identify as conservative.

Empirical evidence would support the claim that Christian Right organizations overwhelming supported George W. Bush. Evangelical voters comprise 23% of the electorate and in the2000 and 2004 campaign Bush received 68% and 78% respectively (Pew Research Center, 2004). Assisted in mediaefforts in the US is the Fox News Channel that has numerous conservative commentators and is, according to John Schmalzbauer, the preferred news network for the Christian Right (Schmalzbauer: 67). It is important to point out that the religious right and religious America are far from beingthe same thing. President Bush's moral majority depended on the votes of other religious groups as well. Catholics with 27% of voters are more numerous than evangelicals, and, whatwas unusual this year was that the Republican candidate won a majority of the Catholic vote (52% against 47%). He also increased his share of the Hispanic Catholic vote from 31% in 2000 to 42%. This alone accounts for the inroads he made into the Hispanic vote which has traditionally gone to Democrats by two to one. In all, calculates Mr. Lugo, 3.5m more Catholics voted for George W. Bush in 2004 than in 2000. Thus, they were as important to his increased majorityas evangelical Protestants were.8 Kevin Phillips, best knownfor his work, The Emerging Republican Majority (1969) more recently was extremely critical of the collusion between theReligious Right and the Bush Administrationii, and convincingly demonstrated that the Bush administration had calculatedly reached out to such believers and encouraged them to see the president's policies as a response to premillennialist thought. These believers and the Republicanpoliticians they support have had a direct impact on the Israeli-Palestinian peace progress. For American politiciansinvolved in the Middle East peace-efforts, Alick Isaacs argues that “Putting peace before liberalism is crucial,” and that a philosophy of peace based entirely on liberal humanism that fails to acknowledge the role of God in the public and political lives of millions – represents one of 8 A more detailed explanation of the 2004 election can be read inThe Economist November 13-19th, 2004 piece “Moral values and America’s vote”.

the most significant and unacknowledged flaws in the historyof Middle East peace-efforts. This is also true to the support by American Jewry.9 The importance of religion in Israel is significant for at its roots is Zionism. But this is only part of the answer to the rise of the religious right in Israel.

Israel

Wurmser, (1995) states that those analysts and commentators

9 In the '40s and '50s, the Jewish community, Ganin explains, wassplit among three factions: the Zionists led by the Zionist Organization of America and such groups as Hadassah and American Jewish Congress; the non-Zionists led by the American Jewish Committee nationally and the Jewish Federation movement in local communities; and the anti-Zionists led by the American Council onJudaism, which had significant influence within the American Jewish Committee. These distinctions that were of critical importance in the years examined in the book have little relevance today. While there are institutional differences between the two AJCs today, they are not at all rooted in the Zionist/non-Zionist distinction. i According to the American Religious Identification Survey, religious belief varies considerably across the country: 59% of Americans living in Western states report a belief in God, yet inthe South, the so-called Bible belt, the figure is as high as 86%(Newport: 2008). Moreover, a late 2009 online Harris poll of 2,303 U.S. adults (18 and older) found that "82% of adult Americans believe in God", the same number as in two earlier polls in 2005 and 2007. Another 9% said they did not believe in God, and 9% said that they were not sure. It further concluded, "Large majorities also believe in miracles (76%), heaven (75%), that Jesus is God or the Son of God (73%), in angels (72%), the survival of the soul after death (71%), and in the resurrection of Jesus (70%). Less than half (45%) of adults believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution but this is more than the 40% who believe in creationism..... Many people consider themselves Christians without necessarily believing in some of the key beliefs of Christianity. However, this is not true of born-again Christians (Harris Interactive: 2009).

outside of Israel viewing Israeli politics solely through the narrow lens of foreign policy will regularly see the difference between the Likud and Labor Parties in terms of their stands on the peace process only. As such, the outlookleads them to see Israel's religious nationalists as a pivotal force in negotiations with Palestinians. But this turns around the real situation: foreign-policy differences in Israel, as in almost every country, emerge primarily fromits internal debate. For Israel, this means continued attempts at successful peace process exposes the socio-political differences. At the heart of the difference is thedefinition of Zionism and what secular-religious or religious-nationalist group will control not only Israeli politics but Israeli society too.

In the words of Meyrav Wurmser, “Zionism has been a remarkable achievement, noted not only for its success in establishing a thriving, free society but also for defendingwithout foreign forces its independence from multiple invasions. Israel stands among only a few post-colonial nations—the United States is another—as a success” (MEQ: 39). In Israel, religion may be best explained from the diversity of views that stem from the differing interpretations of Jewish law rather than a hierarchy of religious observance. This, however, is changing. The delicate balance of secular and religious demands in the evolution of the State of Israel has become unbalanced due to increased orthodox and nationalist influence since 1977.

From the state's inception, the founding fathers realized that only a compromise based on a clever formula of ideological "concessions, compromises, deference, and creative ambiguities" would permit the fledgling nation to avoid a crippling internal battle. This skillful tango, known as consociationalism, was an "adaptive, unity-preserving political style" (Cohen and Susser, 2006) that guided Israelwell through its first forty years. Through most of that time, the reigning political party (Labor) channeled the

energies of the National Religious Party as part of its coalition.

This outreach was unnecessary because it often was contrary to the ideological beliefs of the respective party. In the early decades, before the 1967 war, the Westernization10 of Israeli life increased, and pressure to do away with traditional religious prohibitions and commandments by the 10 Westernization, in this context refers to, the uncriticaladoption of European and North American cultural and sociopolitical attitudes and practices by non-European and non-North American world. Such adoption had been relatively easy since the majority of early Israeli colonizers were of European origin.ii Kevin Phillips American Theocracy, his most recent work, is a damning critique on the religious right’s influence. In the book,Phillips discusses three great forces in American politics, but as Alan Brinkey points out in his March 19, 2006 New York Times Book Review, [Phillips] “he is most passionate in his discussion of thesecond great force that he sees shaping contemporary American life — radical Christianity and its growing intrusion into government and politics…itself but American Protestantism generally. Phillips argues, are to one degree or another highly conservative. On the far right is a still obscure but, Phillips says, rapidly growing group of ‘Christian Reconstructionists’ whobelieve in a “Taliban-like" reversal of women's rights, who describe the separation of church and state as a "myth" and who call openly for a theocratic government shaped by Christian doctrine. A much larger group of Protestants, perhaps as many as a third of the population, claims to believe in the supposed biblical prophecies of an imminent "rapture" — the return of Jesus to the world and the elevation of believers to heaven. Prophetic Christians, Phillips writes, often shape their view of politics and the world around signs that charlatan biblical scholars have identified as predictors of the apocalypse — among them a war in Iraq, the Jewish settlement of the whole of biblical Israel, even the rise of terrorism. Furthermore, he suggests that the president and other members of his administration may actually believe these things themselves, thatreligious belief is the basis of policy, not just a tactic for selling it to the public. Phillips's evidence for this disturbing

secular community rose. Furthermore, a vehement anti-religious attitude clashed with growing numbers of the fervently religious, which had become political protagonistsunited to advocate their own agenda and defend and promote Israel's religious character. The past with its own rhythm of politics and civic life was transformed to a "crisis-dominated relationship between secular and religious Jews" that threatens the country's integrity and destroys any genuine multiculuralism.

Therefore, Israel’s religious population is defined as thoseIsraelis for whom Jewish law and biblical commandments serveas the primary for making decision. As a group they compriseone eighth of the overall population. This differs from the 36 percent of Israel’s population that consider themselves traditional (misorti). Furthermore, ideologically, the religious community breaks down into two segments, religiousZionists and Charedom. In a superb article written in Middle East Quarterly, Laura Zarembski offers the full definition of the group and explanation of their belief (Zarembski, 2000):

Religious Zionists give allegiance to the State of Israel onthe basis of religious beliefs. They perceive the modern Jewish state as a reflection of the continuing covenant between God and the Jewish people and recognize the authority currently governing Israel in that light. They make up two thirds of the religious community and approximately 8 percent of the total population.11 The majority of religious Zionists serve in the army, either through regular three-year service or the hesder yeshiva program (yeshiva s are schools of religious study), which allows for a five-year combination of active duty and Torah learning. In contrast, Charedim, who make up approximately one third of Israel's overall religious community and 4.5 percent of the total population, reject the notion that the modern State of Israel is inherently holy and instead see it

11 This statistic, as well as the one on Charedim, is based on a sample survey conducted by Modi'in Ezrachi, Reasearch Institute in December 1997. Soffer and Korenstein, Ethnocentricity, p. 12.

claim is significant, but not conclusive.’

as a strictly secular political authority no different from other ones (Schief: 16)… Israel's religious community is also divided by ethnic origin. Sephardi Jews (who originatedfrom the Middle East, North Africa, or Spain) and Ashkenazi Jews (from Eastern Europe) differ in religious and cultural traditions. While they recognize each other as parts of a whole, these two communities remain largely segregated, withdifferent synagogues, distinct religious leaders, and often different neighborhoods. They are represented in both the Charedi and religious Zionist camps12, yet their segregationcreates differences in the rabbinical interpretation they are willing to follow. Note that Israel has two chief rabbis, for example, one Ashkenazi and one Sephardi.

Unlike in the US however, both liberal and conservative Jewsclaim religion as an integral part of being Jewish. What hasincreasingly separated them is how being a Jew in Israel defined them. Baruch Kimmerling states, “the hegemony of thesecular Zionist identity was broken following the 1967 war; since then, Israeli culture and identity divide into seven subcultures (secular Ashkenazi upper-middle class, national religious, traditionalist "Orientals," Orthodox religious, Arabs, Russian immigrants, and Ethiopians). The fracturing aresult of several factors, from the Israeli occupation in 1967 of the West Bank and Gaza, to the return to the biblical heartland; events prompting a group of what Kimmerling names "modern fundamentalists" to challenge the secularism and paternalism of the state.

This group presented its own Zionist-religious symbolism; the old ethos of the kibbutz, for example, was replaced withthe image of an orthodox community of settlers and fighters.Other groups (the "Orientals") soon followed their lead in challenging the state's cultural hegemony. Within this change one may observe the significance of unit level choice. Even today, new immigrant groups (Russians, Ethiopians) are little influenced by the Israeli melting

12 Sephardim maintain a very high percentage of misorti Jews as well.

pot. They change and shape the cultural face of Israel instead of being changed by it and in doing so Zionism is changed as well. For example, in 1999 Avigdor Lieberman founded Yisrael Beitenu, or “Israel Is Our Home”. Its base consists primarily of Russian-Jewish immigrants and has beena member of the last three Israeli governments.

As a political party, Israel Is Our Home, is the prominent nationalist party and advocates a unique view of Zionism dating back to the twentieth century. Zionism, Wurmser (2006) argues, represented to its adherentsa method for the Jewish people to redeem their soul from thedispersal and dereliction in which they existed. Two camps soon formed inside the movement: socialist left-wing Zionismand right-wing classical-liberal Zionism. Both have now cometo believe the other endangers the essence of what Zionism is supposed to be. The late Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook (1865-1935), the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine was a proponent of Zionism. Kook argued that religion was essential to the Zionist enterprise. Kook believed in an affinity between the land of Israel and the Jewish religion. The Jewish people, he claimed, would be redeemed and fulfill their divine purpose only through reuniting the religion with the land of Israel. This view iscountered by the secular religious-New Left who since the mid-1990s view the territories and ‘occupation’ of them as corroding and demoralizing Israeli society. Taken as a wholethe, Israeli politics indicate an on-going debate about Israeli democracy.

1.2. Unit-level choice significance

For the first thirty years of Israeli existence the political parties that existed did so representing pluralistic cultural and political backgrounds. They were also shaped through the political patterns and socioeconomicstructure of the State’s founding fathers such as Levi

Eshkol, David Ben-Gurioniii, Moshe Sharett, and Golda Meir. Originally organizations like Histadrut and Mapai served as national institutions for a post-independent Israel as well as the foundations for political parties.

Given the diverse origins of it’s largely immigrant population a wide range of social and political tendencies evolved with multiplicity being embedded in the pluralistic iii For insight into American Zionism and its relationship with the State of Israel please see Ganin who explains how the establishment of the State of Israel siphoned energy from the American Zionist movement, whose essential purpose was achievement of Jewish statehood, and that Ben-Gurion, while working through Zionist leadership, immediately recognized the importance of cultivating a close working relationship between Israel and the non-Zionists. In those early years, it was the American Jewish Committee that dominated the non-Zionist camp, and, within A JC circles, it was Jacob Blaustein who was called upon to navigate the complexities of the relationship. Indeed, Blaustein's role, as reported by Ganin, is so dominant, the volume could easily have been entitled An Uneasy Relationship: Jacob Blaustein and Israel. The reviewer will leave it to expertsin modern Jewish history to determine whether Ganin has exaggerated that role or has done it justice. (For another perspective on the advocacy efforts in Washington in the early period of Israel's existence see I.L. Kenan's book, Israel's Defense Line: Her Friends and Foes in Washington [1981].)

While no doubt there are strong personalities in today's AmericanJewish community, the role of individual leaders--the shtadlan model, in which well placed influential Jews argued the community's case before the king or czar--has virtually disappeared. Israel, especially post-1967, has looked to Jewish organizations for support, especially the Federation system and specialized entities like AIPAC. Today the standing of lay and professional organizational representatives depends more on the political and financial strength of the memberships behind them than on their own personal relationships with Washington, as was the case in Blaustein's day. Ganin conveys the extraordinary sensitivity to the "dual loyalty" issue during early years of statehood, which was heightened by the anti-Communist Cold War atmosphere of the '50s. Ben-Gurion's use of the term Jewish

heritage of Israeli society; the result being a well-established system of multiple parties. The number of parties has fluctuated as result of realignments, occasionalmergers, and splits. Still, each party represented an interest and how each has lobbied for influence and extendedpower should be understood in David Easton’s systems theory analysis where politics is observed as a whole, not as a collection of different problems (Easton, 1953). As such, the major parties have origins in the European branches of the World Zionist Organization.

However, the various party and party system transformations of electoral campaigns that proved the relative stability ofa dominant party system bequeathed from the pre-independenceera were shattered in the 1960s. They were replaced by cluster parties that vied for power in the ideological center, only to decline and be replaced in turn in the 1980sand early 1990s by ideological party blocs locked in centrifugal competition (Mendilow, 2001). There were three significant political alignments in the first thirty years of Israeli politics. All were Zionist, but differed in "nation," which included Jews living outside Israel, rather than Jewish "people," and his blanket encouragement of aliyah sparked crises in the relationship with American Jewry. The book goes into great detail regarding negotiations over acceptable terminology for Israeli leaders, which was codified in the formalBen-Gurion-Blaustein understanding. The dual loyalty issue is still around--indeed surveys suggest that it is the most resilient of the anti-Jewish stereotypes--but the Jewish community's advocacy for Israel hardly missed a beat after the arrest and conviction of Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew serving in naval intelligence who had been recruited by Israeli officials to spy on the United States. One can only imagine the rupture such an episode would have caused had it occurred in the late '40s or early '50s. Leaders of the Jewish Federation movement, which in the earlier era joined Blaustein in expressingdeep concern about Ben-Gurion's call for a return of all Jews to Israel, now underwrites extended experiences in Israel for young Jews through a new Jewish Agency-sponsored program, MASA. Aliyah shlichim, whose job is to assist those who wish to immigrate to Israel, are welcome guests today in the Jewish community.

amount of secularism and religious orthodoxy. Two of these alignments were secular but ideologically opposed; the left or socialist labor party, Mapai being the best known and predominant until its entente with Labor in 1968; and the central-rightist parties, in which Herut, Freedom Movement, was the dominant party eventually winning an election in 1977 (Silver, 156). It is this party that has a direct connection to the modern-day Likud.

1.2.1 LikudUnderstanding the relationship between the Easton’s theory and Likud is to follow the tenant of Easton’s postulation ofan organic view of politics. In support of this too is Robert Jervis observation of leaders toward egocentric perception (Jervis, 1976). Therefore, the conservative coalition that broke the liberal and secular coalition monopoly on political power not only evolved to the point ofmaturity that made them ‘electable’ but also had a leader very much influenced by perception.

In the ninth Knesset election in May 1977, the center-right alliance known as Likud won for the first time in history ofIsrael. The backbone of the alliance was the Herut party with centrist-orientated parties: the Liberal Party, the State List, and a faction of the Land of Israel Movement. The Democratic Movement for Change joined the Likud-led coalition in late 1977.

As a center-right party, Herut was the direct ideological descendant of the Revisionist Movement, a party founded in 1925 by a Russian Jewish Zionist intellectual, Vladimir Jabotinsky who favored obtainment to the ancient border of the Land of Israel. Herut was considered an irritant to a “true” nation building party such as Mapai and Labour beforethe 1977 election. Herut’s leader, Menachem Begin lived in the political wilderness until the late sixties when he broadened his political base in 1965 by forming a new political bloc (Gahal) with the Liberal Party. He gained additional respectability by joining others in the government with a stand towards national unity on the eve ofthe six-day war (Silver, 128). In 1973 a new bloc of the Israeli democratic Right was created and religious and national parties were members. The bloc encompassed two Gahal partners plus Shmuel Tamir’s Free Centre and the StateList. Furthermore, the main parties originally within Likud

after the Knesset election that year were the National Religious Party, Agudat Israel, the Poalei Agudat Israel, and the small Slomzion party combined with the religious bloc and Herut led by Begin. Begin defined Likud’s three main targets: As a voice for the incontestable right of the Jewish people to Eretz Israel (Land of Israel), abolishing poverty, and to be the viable counterweight to that of the Labor Party.

As a viable force in Israeli politics the Likud achieved this goal in 1977. Likud was able to sustain popular supportfrom its coalition partners. It also held social and cultural positions similar to that of many Jews whatever their political and social backgrounds, namely that being Jewish embraces both nationality and religiosity, mutually reinforcing and inseparable.iv Therefore, arguably Likud after its parliamentary victory came to represent a modern, post-Ashkenazic dominance within Israel affirming Easton’s systems theory where the social system is constantly influenced.

If “political values are a product of a historically inherited social reality as much as they are a product of a given political elite, often both” (Evens-Smith, 140) then from the mid-1960s to Herut’s victory in 1977 one saw a growing questionability within Israel from Sephardic Jews (post-1948 immigrants) and even the younger generation of iv Colin Shindler in a well-written and researched book, Israel, Likudand the Zionist Dream: Power, Politics and Ideology from Begin to Netanyahu (1995) shows how much Likud leaders influence events: Begin’s Holocaust trauma effected his conduct of affairs of state and leadership ofLikud from the 1982 Lebanese invasion to peace process with Jordan. Moreover, the book reaffirms the belief that Likud has always remained an ideological party with leaders from Begin to Netanyahu faithful to be defenders of the Land of Israel, regardless of the electoral consequences; while Moshe Arens in Broken Covenant: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis between the US and Israel (1995) gives a revealing account of the rise and fall of the Shamir Peace Plan and crisis in US-Israel relations, an interesting historical footnote to remember in the difficult present relations between the Obama-Netanyahu administrations.

both Ashkenazic. Generations of Israeli reared in the themesof sovereign Jewish territoriality, egalitarianism, and distribution of puritan ethics taken together in sociopolitical action was essentially socialist-Zionist, with Sepharic origins. The relevance of the old values and changing realities created a constant variable in the construction of a group dynamic within Israeli politics and culture. With a coalition of center-right parties in government, Israel had undergone a sociopolitical transformation. A transformation within Israel’s national security and foreign affairs would soon occur as well.

1.2.2 National Security: Unit-Level ChoiceHerut as the largest party within the Likud alliance had originally been seen as the war party. That image over time was softened, embracing both nationality and religiosity, and mutually reinforcing and inseparable. Within the government, topics of national security not only included security against hostile neighbors but the issue of the so-called occupied territories taken in the 1967 war as well asthe issue of Arabs living within Israel. From the position of behavioral analysis, changes or inputs in the social or physical environment of a political system produce certain demands and offer support for action or the status quo directed from said inputs towards the political system. The change within Israeli politics was a right-wing coalition government as well as the ideologically uncompromising primeminister.Menachem Begin saw the Arabs living in Palestine as citizensof other Arab nation-states either Egyptian or Jordanian. With the creation of the state of Israel there developed theideological belief in a greater land of Israel. This belief was realized in Israel’s defeat of its Arab neighbors and obtaining the territories of Gaza and the West Bank, which held historic and biblical cities to the Jews. Land taken inwar was legal and any thought to territorial claims by thoseArabs living on the land were irrelevant. From the sea to Jordan this historic right of Jews to the Gaza Strip and theWest Bank is an area known for its biblical names Judea and

Samaria (Israeli Studies, 2005). The point may be oversimplified, but for Begin the idea of peace with Palestinians when he was Prime Minister was not considered for the main fact thatas a distinct national group, the Palestinians did not existin Herut ideology and Likud policy.

This fact can be seen in Likud’s assertion that Arabs livingin Israel belonged to Jordan and in terms of peace with an Arab neighbor; Israel under the leadership of Begin only didthis with Egypt. The case for settlement growth in the historic lands of Judea and Samaria originally held biblicalarguments as well as practical considerations due to Israelipopulation centers, potential security threats and a majority of Israelis who believed that any territorial concessions in these areas would increase the vulnerability of Israel to attack.

The ideological claims to all land within Israel and its position on national security, in large part due to decade long suicide bombings from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas and rocket attacks from the PLOand later Hezbollah, have entrenched within the Likud party firm opposition to any return of land in the territories to the Palestinians, regardless of an increasing number of senior politicians and top retired military leaders opinionsto the opposite.13 Jimmy Carter stated in his book, The Blood of Abraham: Insights Into The Middle East, that “[Yitzhak Shamir] considers the Jews the natural majority rulers of western Palestine (Israel, West Bank, and Gaza) with a right and obligation to populate the area further…” (Carter, 53). Thisposition did not change throughout the eighties and formed the basis of opposition to Labor’s peace treaty with the Palestinians in 1993. Moreover, with the return of Likud to government in 1996 came the opening of the tunnel in Jerusalem’s western wall, close to the Muslim al-Aqsa Mosque; approved by Likud’s new leader, Benjamin Netanyohu, 13 Yehoshafat Harkabi’s Israeli’s Fateful Hour (1988) offers a convincing argument for the Israeli Army withdrawal from the territories.

and while he handed over the city of Hebron to the Palestinian authorities, new settlement construction in the territories was allowed.14

It should be noted that during Likud’s first time in government (1977-1984) compromise and peace were not with those Arabs living within the borders of Israel proper, but rather with a neighbor, Egypt. It was only increased pressure by the Palestinian Liberation Organization that lead to decades-long internal conflict of both a physical and psychological nature. For the latter, the issue is the territories. Furthermore, a political policy position started by Likud, continued by opposition governments to thepoint of ‘entrenchment’ reinforced the rejection of the ideaof equilibrium prevalent in other political theories.15 Michael Brecher insists that “the operational environment affects the result or outcomes of decisions themselves, onlyas it is filtered through the images of decision-makers” (Brecher, 1972). The territories define Likud, and is the issue for orthodox and nationalist political parties.After the six-day war in 1967 Israel maintained a military presence in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) also known as the occupied territories. The deliberate establishments of Jewish settlements soon followed. Originally they were military settlements but later civilian settlements were established. In fact, new settlements had increased so that by 1977 approximately eighty-five had been set up in the occupied territories, commonly referred to as Gaza and the West Bank. Though originally a policy of the Labor party, the policy’s chief 14 Har Homa (Jabal Abu Ghneim) was begun in East Jerusalem and there was no agreement to further West Bank withdrawal. More important however was Netanyahu’s refusal to grant Palestinian local government control of 30 percent of the West Bank as expected from the wording of previous agreements determining 9 percent instead.15 Institutionalism, based upon Rosenau’s model where institutionsand regimes act with keeping their ideational and behavioral expressions.

supporters had been the National Religious party and The Bloc of the Faithful, Labor’s coalition religious partners. With Likud in power by 1977 the party’s policy of retaining the territories and opposition to trading land for peace since it would break a pledge from Likud, “Western Eretz Yisreal will never be divided again,” (Carter, 54) gave a new ideological impetus to the settlement movement. Likud leader and Prime Minister, Menachen Begin’s opposition to withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza on the basis of land gained through war affirmed this. The Likud government approved twenty-one more settlements between 1980 and 1981 meaning that Israel controlled more than one-third of the land, 90 percent of the water in the region, and at that time a total of 110,000 Jewish settlers (Evens-Smith, 1979).Likewise, the building of the concrete and barbed wire security fence in 2004 embraced Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The continued building of settlements as a specific policy offers support to Easton’s behavioral approach, and points to the significance of the religious and nationalist parties within Likud coalition governments.

2. Political reality within Israel: death of multiculturalism after rise of Israeli right

The rise of orthodox and nationalist influence within Israeli politics did not occur suddenly in the 1990s. The participation of religious parties within Israeli politics has happened since the founding of the state with the moderate National Religious Party being best known and created specifically to influence legislation based on the Hebrew scriptures in addition to promoting immigration, settlement, religious education and labor activity in a religious context. But until the Likud victory in 1977, Israeli politics had been characterized by single-party rule. This was no longer the case after 1977 and religious and national parties began their ascent of influence. Thoughsmall, Israel's religious population has a substantial influence in politics and the society at large because its

structure provides the organization necessary to mobilize and maintain a strong political voice.

Issues of national interest are discussed in Synagogues and yeshivas and the important issues that combine national and Jewish concerns, such as the question of land concession aremost important. Rabbis and deans of the yeshivas provide guidance or definitive positions, which then influence the rest of the community. While the extent to which each individual listens to rabbinical opinion varies, the influence of these opinions on the community, as a whole is unquestionable. The religious population constitutes approximately 30 percent of the voting population.8

Religious parties as of 1999 hold 28 of the 120 seats in theKnesset (parliament), up from 23 in the 1996 elections. Of this number, United Torah Judaism (Charedim) and the National Religious Party (religious Zionists) each have 5 seats, Shas (Sephardim) has 17 and Meimad (religious Zionist) has 1. The latter three parties joined Barak's coalition and hold 6 of the 23 cabinet positions. The religious community also has an extra-legal influence via a minority extremist element that threatens to protest throughthe use of violence. The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, killed by a yeshiva student, was the most prominent example of this impact, and is particularly important in light of Barak's government associating itself with Rabin's legacy. There is also a precedent of civil disobedience within the religious community, used by a segment of the religious community in 1982 as a means to block Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula; the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has already expressed concerns for a repeat of such clashes between troops and religious civilians (Wurmser: 37).

There is a view that by building settlements, religious Zionists “pioneer” the land and therein stake a claim to theZionist enterprise. More significantly is modern Jewish presence in some of Judaism’s holiest places in Hebron and in Nablus (Shechem) with the support of both left and right

governments.16

Prior to the post-Oslo Peace Accords of the 1990s, the main ultra-orthodox party was Agudat Israel (Association of Israel) opposed to secularism in all its manifestations. ThePoalei Agudat Israel (Workers of the Association of Israel) is a religiopolitical labor movement advocating establishment of agricultural settlements. Religious Zionists replaced the Left’s waning nationalism. More than half of Israel’s officer corps is comprised of Orthodox soldiers.17

Moreover, independent religious parties have influenced Israeli politics and governments, namely due to the nature of coalition building, a necessity within Israeli politics for the dominant political party. Because a majority of sixty-one seats is needed within the Israeli parliament and normally the dominant political party is under that requirednumber, additional support is warranted. Therefore, much of the extra seats come from the religious bloc. As such, the National Religious Party, but in particular the Orthodox Jews are able to trade support for concessions on matters ofreligious importance. The rise to power of the ultra-orthodox Misrahi Shas party as the third largest political force in Israel in the 1999 elections not only demonstrated the Mizrahi ability to influence Israeli politics and masterthe political system, but to also determine Israel’s future.This is vital to the understanding of the interaction between the party-politics and the decision making of Israel’s government based upon “level of stress”. A current example is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s difficult balance between concessions to coalition partners and those of international partners, most notably the United States 16 Mitchell Bard, “Facts about Settlements,” Jewish Virtual Library, online: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/settlements.html17 The New York Sun, January 4, 2005.http://www.danielpipes.org/2325/palestinian-word-games

(Maoz, 1990). Gideon Samet, a leading intellectual figure inIsrael, addressed this point in his Albert J. Wood lecture shortly after the May 1996 Israeli elections. Israeli’s werewilling to put aside their innate fear and work towards peace, but at the slower pace advocated by Likud. Moreover, skeptical and tentative Russian immigrants and growth of religious parties

helped. These two groups are at the core of Likud and Netanyahu’s support.18 More political parties that ideologically fit into such definition existv and in the government paralysis of 2008 that saw Kadima search for viable coalition partners the parties of the far-right held considerable weight. As such, though Kadima was unable to form a government and Likud was returned to power, the fact that far-right parties make up the current government19 indicate the outcomes for future centre-right coalition governments. Such governments will exist with the support and consent of religious and national parties and throughoutthe past decade the issue of the territories capsulated thisview supporting David Easton’s interest group theory as subsumed in his political systems analysis (Easton, 1965). Nowhere within Israeli politics is this seen better than in the current struggle between religious and national groups against government plans to withdraw from the territories but instead expand settlement growth.20 18 Netanyahu won a plurality of the 1999 vote in his traditional strongholds, Jerusalem (with its large ultra-orthodox population)and in new urban areas with large Sephardic and Russian populations, including three-quarters of the vote in Judea and Samaria.19 Eli Yishai, leader of the largest Orthodox party, Shas, who is minister of the interior.20 The rationale for Sharon to leave Likud and the centre-right had much to do continued disagreements regarding his unilateral disengagement plan. The plan that Sharon endorsed saw the withdrawal of Israeli troops as well as settlers from Gaza. Though popular amongst the majority of Israelis, Sharon saw his popularity decline within Likud and a rival, Netanyahu, his

Daniel Drezner, from Tufts University wrote, “to the rapidlygrowing ultra-Orthodox and those Israeli nationalists who believe in Greater Israel.  These are the people driving theIsraeli government to expand settlement construction in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem” (Foreign Policy, 2010) insteadof the Negev or Galilee. Following a tactic begun by Begin as prime minister the short-term political logic is appeasement of coalition partners, but in the long term thisstrategy may prove counterproductive, as most of the territory will have to be given up for a Palestinian state. The territories are more than a bargaining tool to religiousand nationalist partners and those who settled on the land.

finance minister, gain advantage amongst the party’s rejectionistfaction by resigning from the government and pointing to the Gazadisengagement plan as jeopardizing the safety of Israeli citizens.

v In a written piece from the Economist, the political ideological spectrum is explained as such. “The spectrum of political Judaismis as wide as political Islam’s. A bit like the split between Muslim Brothers and Salafists, religious Jews loosely divide intoreligious Zionists, who want Jews to control biblical land, and the ultra-Orthodox, who seek to enforce literal rabbinical dictates. The former pride themselves on leading Israelis into battle. The latter staunchly defend their exemption from the military draft. Though intense ideological rivals, they have forged working relations under Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition. Both defend their assets, be it settlements in the West Bank, where they form at least 70% of the Jewish population, or the separate Torah education systems they have created, both with state backing. Both argue that Israel’s Jewish character is more vital than its democratic one. Secular Jews, who founded the state and are still a narrow majority, used to fret that the religious were carving out no-go areas for the authorities with their own legal and morality police and using their power as parliamentary kingmakers. Now they fear religious Jews are the state. Secular Jews continue to leave Jerusalem for the coastal cities, ceding it to a volatile cocktail of religious Jews and resentful Arabs in the east of the city”.

Unlike settlers moved by economics, religious-nationalists are moved by genuine sense of connection to land. When Palestinian terrorists attacked, they choose to stay. Therefore, their sense of betrayal and ideological crisis isgreat. For them, this is a struggle for what is the essence of the Zionest enterprise, where they are at the forefront defining, defending and pioneering. The Gaza withdrawal is viewed as the potential precedence for withdrawals from WestBank towns such as Hebron. Gaza had to be fought to save Hebron many believed.21 Though the Gaza disengagement plan of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also consolidated existing Israeli settlements22 on the West Bank it also expanded intothe land between them. This plan would mean a total of 14,000 more Israelis entering the territories (Bickerton & Klausner, 377). This idea had support from Israeli citizens as well as becoming official policy towards the territories of the new political party that Sharon founded. Kadima opposition from Israeli religious parties and their active campaign against Sharon led to his party’s inability to forma government in 2008-2009.

The February 2009 elections saw the Israeli voter apparentlyswung to the right. Electoral change can be summed up as a net shift of 15 seats out of 120 towards the right-religiousbloc. While Kadima won the most seats as an individual party, when counted together with the five other left-of-centre parties, the left had only 55 seats in total. Likud on the other hand came in a close second in terms of seats won as an individual party, but counted together with the

21 This lead to a “Battle of the Flags” between the orange camp (religious-nationalist) and blue camp (secular religious-new Left) fought in the Israeli press and in the streets. Between thepolice and IDF and settlers. 22 For a great illustration of how Israeli militarism, expansionism and theocracy are caught up with geography, read Rajah Shehadeh's "Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape".

five religious and right-wing parties they controlled a majority bloc of 65 seats. To this we must add the shift of control of the pivotal position to the right, from Kadima toLikud. These are the reasons why Netanyahu and his Likud party—who won one seat less than Kadima—formed the new coalition government. As such, Netanyahu was returned to power beholden more than ever to small rightist parties and Likud’s stated policy positions. The chart below illustratesthis fact.

The 2009 election results in Israel indicated that the center-left and left had lost one third of their combined representational power. But the 2009 election once again demonstrated Israel’s political fragmentation and religious and social heterogeneity. It was a race in which the right competed with the center and left, Zionists clashed with Arabs, and the religious parties quarreled with the seculars. Because the coalition-forming party is forced to align with many smaller parties that are ideologically or religiously extreme, these minority factions skillfully use their position to make or break coalitions and impose their agendas. This happened to Kadima, the largest vote-getter, which won only 22.5% of the vote. On the other hand, Likud, which won only 21.6% of the vote, demonstrated it was betterable to form a viable coalition, Kadima was not asked to form a government. Instead, Likud assembled a coalition withthe Labor Party and a handful of smaller right-wing and Orthodox parties (Yisrael Beitenu, The Jewish Home, and Shas).

As a consequence, while the three smaller right-wing partiesreceived 10 ministerial positions (along with significant veto power over policy), Kadima was left out of power.

2.1. Liberal IR theory in Israel

Critics tend to view elections in liberal democracies from two perspectives: as bottom- up institutions enabling citizens to direct the leadership, and as top-down institutions geared to enhancing the legitimacy and

authority of that leadership. It is more beneficial to regard elections as a two-way exchange of influence, especially seen in the transmission of policy messages. Policy preferences, are pursued, the solicitation of approval for or disapproval of government performance, the attempt to persuade the voter that the candidates’ attributes render them fit to govern, and the ensuring of legitimacy and voter satisfaction through the ritualistic appeal to generally accepted values. (Mendilow: 86) A policypreference as well as part of Israeli values is the peace process with the Palestinians.

Alick Issacs (2006) discusses the shortcomings of the liberal humanist approach that has monopolized peace effortsin the Middle East for decades and which might account for the failed efforts to bring about a comprehensive reconciliation. According to him, “many liberal-minded religious people deeply believe that their traditions – Jewish, Christian and Muslim – promote a peace-loving point of view and remain astonished if not aggressive about those who in their judgment distort religion to breed hate and to perpetuate bloodshed.” Case in point are the efforts of the peace process between Israel and Palestine, based upon so-called progress, that in fact exclude those groups whose commitments are intractable and thus fall into the trap of partisanship and sectarianism rather than peace. On this point, the Catholic theologian Charles Taylor (1999) comments upon the temptation to build common ground in a lecture titled A Catholic Modernity? The idea of “sameness”, those shared values, common goals and higher interests are appealing, but Taylor insists is a flawed approach preciselybecause it coercively excludes those people who do not shareits basic assumptions. The efforts at unity among people arethen, “bought at the price of suppressing something of the diversity in the humanity that God created.” Furthermore, Taylor explains, “exclusive humanism also carries great dangers, which remain very under-explored in modern thought.” Here is arguably the closest link to the peace process.

Israel’s flawed political system on Israeli-Palestinian peace-making has been disastrous. By enabling the inclusion of minority right-wing religious and nationalist parties in the cabinet, the Israeli system empowers segments of the population that are least willing to make territorial compromises for peace. Prime Minister Netanyahu has specifically cited the instability of his coalition as a reason why the settlement moratorium, imposed on November 25, 2009, was not extended beyond its September 2010 expiration date (Barack and Issacharofff, 2010). Even a leader that is less ideologically right-wing than Netanyahu has major short-term political incentives not to take risks for peace. As noted above, even if the majority of the Israeli public is willing to trade land for peace, the current system does not provide effective mechanisms for holding those politicians who fail to fulfill their mandate accountable.

Despite these difficulties, some analysts believe that Netanyahu’s current governing coalition may be more stable than it appears. First, they argue that minority coalition parties have a vested interest in remaining in government. There is certainly some truth to this. Smaller, single-issueOrthodox parties like Shas, for example, are primarily concerned with issues such as yeshiva funding. Walking away from the government would entail a high risk of losing their“share of the pie.” For a rightist party like Yisrael Beitenu, it is unlikely that they would be included in a more centrist governing coalition (Friedman, 2009). Furthermore, the coalition has demography on its side: settlers and ultra-Orthodox Jews are biggest growing segments in Israeli society in addition to the one-million plus Russian immigrants and children of North African immigrants that favor Likud.

And while the announcement by Netanyahu in April that a unity government had been created with main opposition party, Kadema, the facts of ultra-Orthodox and ultra-

nationalist political party importance is not diminished. The new government has political not sociological implications. Such a government formulation now ahead of thescheduled 2013 elections enhances Prime Minister Netanhayu position within the Israeli electorate. Therefore, there is more a personal political gain than anything else. Most important, as elections since 1996 have shown, ultra-Orthodox and ultra-nationalist political parties are the deciding numbers in any Coalition government: Labor, Likud or Kadima.

Israel is multicultural but not multiculturalist (Yehezkely,2008). The political factor that undermines multiculturalismin Israel is the definition of Israel as an ethno-national state, as opposed to a nation state, which is a prerequisitefor multiculturalism. More specifically, Israel is founded on the equation between religion-culture and nationality, thus is defined as the Church- state of the religion-nation to which many of its citizens do not belong. This renders Israel a fundamentalist theocracy, thus precluding multiculturalism.

Conclusion

Religion, as a source of influence in politics is not a new concept. In the United States of America one of the unique qualities of its creation is the separation of church and state. The founding fathers, while many of them personally religious, saw the importance of limiting religions influence on legislation. The State of Israel is unique not for the secular and pluralist democracy it espouses, but rather that the nation was created for a particular religion.

The real dilemma of the Israeli political system is that it has a highly proportional representative structure generating unstable multi-party coalitions. This makes it unable to take the decisions needed to forward the peace process, particularly regarding Palestine, in such matters

as dismantling settlements in the West Bank, sharing Jerusalem as a two-state capital and the return of Palestinian refugees. The tensions and instability generatedby the intense Arab-Israeli conflict preclude the conditionsneeded to reform the political system and create one capableof taking the decisions necessary for restoring peace. In Israel, the Left views itself as the embodiment of rationalism and of the movement of history espousing itself as democratic, humanistic and tolerant of the identity of a post-nationalist Israel that is opposite to those on the right. For the religious-nationalists and the orthodox, Israel is the biblical commitment to the land that is Israel. In fact, what is occurring is a cultural war betweentwo parts of society…the secular “Israeli” and the religious“Jew”…both believing it is they who should determine the nature and character of the State of Israel.

In the US it is also important to judge the religious-moral vote against the background of American religiosity in general with 80% of Americans holding the belief in God and 60% agreeing that “religion plays an important part in my life”. What arguably is changing is that the US has become forceful in its religious beliefs. Moreover, in the US tolerance of religious involvement in the public sphere has occurred. A study by the Pew Research Centre reported that the number of those who “agree strongly” with core items of Christian dogma rose substantially between 1965 and 2003. Sodid the number of those who believe that there are clear guidelines about good and evil, and that these guidelines apply regardless of circumstances. Gallup polls in the 1960sfound that over half of all Americans thought that churches should not be involved in politics. Now, over half think that they can be (see footnote #8).

The Republican Party in the US had fissures within its ranksbetween the free-market individualists and Christian conservatives since the 1970s, but for forty years had a common enemy, Soviet communism. Since the end of the Cold War this unifying power has not existed. There has been no

new unifier found. In 2009 at the conclusion of George W. Bush’s term in office the awkward alliances within the conservative movement were badly broken. The split between free-marketers and social conservatives underlines the conservative identity crisis, a crisis similar in its severity to that found within Israel. A severe and irreparable schism, that forces in the election cycles of 2012 and 2013 respectfully, will illustrate a purging of soul and cause a decision in both Republican and Likud parties regarding the influence of religion; either as a faction of the party or as a transition that returns them back to their traditional place as a key player within theirparty, but with an independent identity.

The primary finding of the comparative study suggests a political reality reflected accurately in the increase of religious and national influence in both nations. In Israel,inextricably bound to the concepts of power and security, a discounting of the multicultural aspects of Israeli society and culture is having a negative affect on the peace processwith Palestinians and in general the relationship between Arab-Palestinians and Jews.

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The Economist, “That wobbly balance”, September 23, 2010. Online: http://www.economist.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/node/17104001

“What People Do and Do Not Believe In”. (December 15, 2009) Harris Interactive. Online: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris_Poll_2009_12_1

5.pdf

Yehezkely, Chen. Ph.D. WHAT BLOCKS MULTICULTURALISM IN ISRAEL? Online: http://www.aisisraelstudies.org/papers/AIS2007_Yehezkely.pdf

Endnotes