Elections (from 2/10/09)

Today I voted for the first time. I haven’t been able to vote in an American election because every time one has come up, I’ve been out of the country. Both presidential elections I tried to get absentee ballots, but it never worked out (in 2004 it arrived too late, this time I just never got it at all).

The elections for the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) and Prime Minister. The system is completely different here - it’s a proportional representation of the whole country, rather than winner-takes-all from various areas. So if a party gets 10% of the national vote, that means they get 10% of the 120 seats in the Knesset (that’s 12 seats, for those of you playing the home game). Whichever party gets the most seats is invited to create a government, either by themselves if they have over 50% of the seats (I don’t think this has ever happened) or by creating a coalition with other parties.

A while before the elections, each party gives it’s list of candidates. Depending on how many seats the party gets, the first X people on the list get to be in the Knesset. And if the party gets the most votes, their #1 candidate will become Prime Minister. The other important aspect here is that you don’t vote directly for the Prime Minister (they tried that twice and it didn’t really work), but just for a party.

On the other hand, this leads to much more of a multi-party system. I’ve heard that Israel has more political parties than any other country - this year there are 33 running. Because of the way the system works, people that would start interest groups or lobbies in America tend to create political parties in Israel in the hopes of having a say in the government. This can lead to some unexpected difficulties - in the last election the Pensioners’ Party received more votes than they were prepared for, had to grab MKs (Member of Knesset, like MPs in Britain or Senators in America) wherever they could find them, and ended up being a strong voice in the government from a one-issue party.

I personally like the Israeli system better. Perhaps it’s because I’ve always been an absentee ballot voter (or not) from Connecticut, but I’ve never felt like my vote was important. Whether I agree with them or not, Connecticut will vote Democrat, and all its electoral votes will go to the Democratic candidate. And even if most of the country votes for a certain candidate, they can lose the election because their voters were from the wrong state (ask Andrew Jackson, Samuel J Tilden, Grover Cleveland, or Al Gore).

So back to Israel. There are three main parties - Kadima (currently in power), Labor, and Likud. I won’t go into left/right, because it has a different meaning here than everywhere else - there have been right-wing communist parties, and so on. Left/right in Israel means how they stand with regard to just security and dealing with Arabs. In short, the Left believes in discussions and Land For Peace, while the Right believes in taking a harder line.

Kadima has been in power since its creation in 2005. It was originally created by Ariel Sharon basically as his party (this is the third party he’s at least partially created, after ShlomTzion and the Likud in the ’70’s). It’s unofficial philosophy was “We trust Sharon,” and his candidate list was mostly people who would go along with whatever he said. On one hand, Sharon was probably the only person left in Israel who could do this successfully (Ben Gurion took the same approach for a long time when the State was first created, Begin did it for even longer, although most of the time as opposition), but on the other hand he didn’t plan for getting a stroke and being unconscious for nearly all of his term.

Because of how he set up the party, there were very few strong people to take over after him. The deputy who took over as Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, didn’t have the will or the trust of the people to continue with Sharon’s plans, and things basically went to hell. I think he’s doing better now, especially after the last war, but for a while his approval rating was arouind 3%. In any case, he was caught up in too much corruption (there seems to be only one major politician who isn’t corrupt - Benny Begin, Menachem’s son) and is not allowed to run.

Labor and Likud are older parties, both effectively the two main parties from the State’s creation, just after absorbing smaller parties. Both their leaders, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, are former Prime Ministers (which leads to Kadima’s main ad, “A different Prime Minister”). Neither of them had great terms as Prime Minister, although Barak’s was cut short when he announced early elections and Sharon came into power. This doesn’t necessarily disqualify them from doing well in the future - Yitzhak Rabin followed a similar path and ended up having a very significant run until he was assassinated. Kadima’s main candidate is pretty much the only effective person they have - Tzipi Livni, the current Foreign Minister.

The other significant party right now is “Israel, Our Home,” the Russian racist (against Arabs) party with its leader, Avigdor Lieberman. They aren’t going to get a majority, but there’s a fear that they will be significant enough (currently polling at 14 seats according to Jerusalem Post) that they will be included in a coalition. Which has led to the Meretz (very left party) ad - “Vote Meretz, less Bibi [Netanyahu]-Liberman.”

In my opinion, Israel needs a strong Prime Minister whom the country can trust (note: I see a difference between “trust” and “agree with.” For example, I feel most people can trust George Bush - they feel they know what he will do, although they may disagree strongly - while they couldn’t trust John Kerry - I have friends that worked on his campaign but couldn’t tell me what he stood for), like David Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, or Ariel Sharon. Barak could fit this description, but his last time as Prime Minister seemed to be characterized by the usual “Do this or else… Please do this or else… Fine, don’t do anything, we’ll keep doing our side of the agreement.”

I talked to my kibbutz family the other day, and they told me to vote for either Jewish Home or Labor. The Jewish Home Party seems to be a moderate break off from another large party - they support “education, the Jewish character of the State of Israel, and to strengthen greater Israel while fighting the sociological gaps. Wants the Oslo accords repealed… Will strive to increase Israel’s Jewishness by influencing non-religious citizens through deeds, education and by serving as examples of what religious Judaism has to offer” (from Jerusalem Post). As for Labor, they said they don’t want Barak to be Prime Minister, but they hope he gets enough significance to be in the government because he makes a good Defense Minister (his current job) and they have the best overall candidate list.

My main trouble is finding out about where each party stands. My Hebrew’s still not good enough for Hebrew newspapers, and there’s only one (perhaps two) major English paper, The Jerusalem Post (Ha’aretz also has an English version). With something like elections, I want information from more than one source and in any case, The Jerusalem Post has a lot of problems. The other night, though, I found a copy of their paper from this past Friday in which they gave a summary of each party’s platform (exactly what I had been searching for).

Going through this, there was another party that stuck out to me - Green Movement/Meimad (an acronym for “Jewish State, Democratic State”). I went through their website, and from what I can understand, they stand for the environment (which needs a lot of help here) as well as supporting the Jewishness of Israel without coercing anyone (letting people be what they want, whether Jewish/Muslim/not religious, while supporting Jewishness in Jewish areas - it’s hard to explain). Their explanation in JPost is “The green Movement/Meimad calls for reduction of air pollution by 50% over the nex four years, public conservation policies to reduce energy consumption by 25%, more funding for public transportation, empowering teachers, fighting social gaps, and promoting Jewish identity through education instead of coercive legislation.”

In the end I went with Green Movement-Meimad. There’s already enough people around here worrying about security and the financial situation.

Just a quick addition: I’m entertained by some of the very small parties (probably too small to pass the 2% threshold for into the Knesset), such as Tzomet (”giving soldiers a year of university for free, drafting haredim [very religious] and separating religion from state”), Or (that’s their name - “secularist party that supports a universal draft, bu only after the education system has been universalized to give hardfeim and Israeli Arabs a Zionist Education that would make them fit inwith the army)”, Holocaust Survivors Party (”support[s] legalizing Marijuana… also wants more benefits for survivors”), Men’s Rights Party (”fights for divorced dads”), Power For The Handicapped Party, Power of Money party (”struggles against the banks”)…