Secularists Win Impressive Gains in Israeli Elections

c. 2003 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _ His sharp tongue has earned him the nickname of the “Archie Bunker” of Israeli politics. But last week, the short, pudgy Tommy Lapid, a former newspaper editor and outspoken defender of Israel’s secular “silent majority” transformed his acerbic tongue into a new political power base, bringing his tiny […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ His sharp tongue has earned him the nickname of the “Archie Bunker” of Israeli politics. But last week, the short, pudgy Tommy Lapid, a former newspaper editor and outspoken defender of Israel’s secular “silent majority” transformed his acerbic tongue into a new political power base, bringing his tiny Shinui, or “Change,” party to a third-place finish in Israel’s parliamentary elections.

It was a victory some pundits described as the biggest electoral upheaval since the right-wing Likud came to power in 1977. Shinui’s ascent has been described as the beginning of the end of the era in which a handful of powerful Orthodox religious parties _ and their rabbis _ could name prime ministers and topple governments by controlling the strategic swing votes between Israel’s stalemated political left and right.


Riding to victory on a platform that called for ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews to get off of the welfare roles and be drafted into military service, Lapid has clearly touched a deep chord of resentment among many rank-and-file Israelis, who identify themselves as secular.

That electorate, like the Shinui leader himself, is generally centrist, with regard to the Israeli-Arab conflict, tough on security, but ready for a territorial settlement with Palestinians should a real opportunity arise.

But their enduring grudge is toward Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority, which, according to Shinui’s campaign, pays too little in taxes and avoids the draft en masse. Ultra-Orthodox rabbis and politicans, meanwhile, maintain hegemony over rituals of marriage and burial in the Jewish state, and critical determinations of who is, by law, a Jew.

“What’s remarkable here isn’t that the secular Israeli majority revolted but that it took so long,” says Yossi Klein Halevi, a prominent Israeli-American author and religious commentator, and himself an observant Jew.

“The ultra-Orthodox offense against Israeli society is three-fold,” adds Halevi. “The ultra-Orthodox separate from the Israeli mainstream, they don’t participate in the communal burden. Secondly, they insist the mainstream subsidize their separation (by special tax breaks and stipends to yeshiva students), and then they go a final step by imposing religious demand on the lifestyle of their secular patrons.”

Ultra-Orthodox Jews, particularly the Sephardi-dominated Shas party, have complained that Shinui’s rhetoric against Orthodox Jews smacks of racism. And even Halevi chides the party for indulging in divisive policies that weaken Israel’s “national cohesion” during a period of political and economic crisis.

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But the numbers tend to bear out at least some of Shinui’s claims, notes Camil Fuchs, head of Tel Aviv University’s department of statistics and a pollster in the recent election campaign.


He notes that in 1960, 98 percent of household income in Israel was earned from productive labor, in comparison to only 77 percent in 2001. Today, some 13 percent of household income is derived from welfare payments and stipends _ many of those going to the ultra-Orthodox in the form of welfare supplements to large families and adult yeshiva students.

Such welfare payments rile the Israeli middle class, who pay income tax rates upward of 40 percent.

“The middle class regards itself as the ones who pay the taxes and keep the state afloat,” says Fuchs, “They feel that they are the backbone of society. And for the first time, people simply said, `enough is enough.’ The secularists have turned into a camp that will demand their rights, exactly as the religious parties did before them.”

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Yet despite Shinui’s strong showing in the polls _ it garnered 15 seats in the new Knesset against 18 for the Labor Party and 38 for the Likud _ it won’t be able to immediately impose its secular revolution on voters.

While Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon is both sympathetic to Shinui’s secular agenda and believes Shinui’s centrist orientation can grant his right-wing government greater legitimacy in the eyes of the international community, he will be loathe to sluff off the ultra-Orthodox.

So chances are, Shinui will be forced to join a Sharon-led coalition that includes at least one ultra-Orthodox party partner.


“Shinui will have to make the transition from a revolution party to a coalition partner,” says Halevi. “What Shinui has to decide now is not only who will it sit with in a coalition government, but what are its most important demands and what is it willing to defer. Is it more interested in instituting a program for civil marriage right now, or public transport on the Sabbath? Or does it want to reduce welfare subsidies to large ultra-Orthodox families and draft the ultra-Orthodox?”

Halevi also hopes Lapid, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary and a chess master, will learn how to play the political board more adroitly. In particular, he will need to tone down some of the anti-religious rhetoric which once made him the darling of the television talk show circuit, but may not be useful to Lapid, the government minister.

“Lapid is not the `anti-Semite’ the ultra-Orthodox make him out to be,” says Halevi. “He is a Holocaust survivor who has a very deep sense of Jewish solidarity and identity. Throughout his journalism career, he was always known for his stridency. Regardless of the issue, Lapid would always manage to be offensive. But besides Sharon, he understands the soul of mainstream Israel better than any politician on the left or the right.”

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