Who would Maimonides vote for?
Your cut-out-and-keep guide (okay, your bookmark and reopen guide) to the runners and riders (sorry, parties and politicians) who’ll be running our lives
The Haredi world also frowns on frivolous use of the Internet, which is why UTJ does not have an official website. It did, however, film a television ad, which, because very few of the party’s usual constituents will see it, focuses on topics of importance to everyone. For instance, the clip claims UTJ is the only party that “really fights for senior citizens in a country that has lost it values.” Surprisingly, the political message is followed by a catchy pop jingle promoting “[United] Torah Judaism, because we’re all haredim[devout] for the future of society.” Needless to say, this is sung by an all-male group.
Meretz
Led by Zahava Gal-On
Hebrew ballot sign: מרצ
Seats in 18th Knesset: 3
Projected seats in 19th Knesset: 4-6
Meretz is the Knesset’s only Zionist left-wing party, advocating the immediate implementation of a two-state solution based on the Arab Peace Initiative. A recent poll published by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University found 100% support among Meretz voters for a peace treaty based on the principle of two states for two peoples. To compare, 88 percent of Hatnua and 80 percent of Labor voters support a two-state solution based on these terms.
Founded in 1992 as an alliance of left-wing parties Mapam, Ratz and Shinui, Meretz has also long fought for a stricter separation of church and state, advocating public transportation on Shabbat and the granting of equal legal status to all streams of Judaism. Neither peace nor religious pluralism are topics of particular importance to most Israeli voters these days, so a fair showing is expected, but nothing to compare with the glory days when Meretz had a dozen MKs.
Hadash
Led by Mohammad Barakeh
Hebrew ballot sign: ו
Seats in 18th Knesset: 4
Projected seats in 19th Knesset: 4
Hadash — an acronym for Democratic Front for Peace and Equality — is an Arab-Israeli non-Zionist party hoping to rebuild “an effective, radical left within Israeli society.”
The biggest faction making up this list is Maki, Israel’s Communist party, yet Hadash’s parliamentary work doesn’t focus on disseminating the teachings of Lenin and Marx. Rather, it engages heavily in environmental and societal matters. For instance, MK Dov Khenin, No. 3 on the list, is credited with the law that extended maternity leave to 14 weeks. The party calls for a total Israeli withdrawal from territories gained in 1967, full civil equality of Arabs and Jews, women’s and workers’ rights and economic reforms. Hadash wants to set minimum wages at 60 percent of the average wage and raise benefits for families with children by 40 percent.
Ra’am-Ta’al
Led by Ibrahim Sarsur
Hebrew ballot sign: עם
Seats in 18th Knesset: 4
Projected seats in 19th Knesset: 4
No Arab party has participated in any of the 32 governments that have ruled this country since 1949, and that is not going to change in 2013. This faction is probably best known for the often controversial statements and actions of Deputy Knesset Speaker Ahmad Tibi. A physician by profession, Tibi was an adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and has been an MK since 1999. According to its platform, the party fights for full equality of Israel’s Arab minority as well as the establishment of a Palestinian state, including a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees.
Balad
Led by Jamal Zahalka
Hebrew ballot sign: ד
Seats in 18th Knesset: 3
Projected seats in 19th Knesset: 3-4
Founded in 1996, Balad (an acronym for National Democratic Assembly) is another Arab-Israeli party that will never make it into the government. Its founder Azmi Bishara adopted the cry for “a state of all its citizens” — calling for equal rights for Jews and Arabs; some of the party’s MKs are known for more antagonistic attitudes.
Bishara himself now lives in Qatar, having fled Israel under suspicion of helping the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon. And Hanin Zoabi, in 2010, sailed aboard the Mavi Marmara, the flagship vessel of the flotilla that tried to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. Right-wing MKs got the Central Elections Committee to ban her from running this time, but the High Court of Justice overturned the decision, to the applause of Israeli legal experts, who argued a strong democracy must tolerate even extremist views.
Parties that are fighting for their survival
In Israel’s still unreformed electoral system, MKs are elected by pure proportional representation. If a party gets, say, half the votes nationwide, it wins half the 120 seats in parliament (though no party has ever managed that). There is no constituency accountability for MKs, who are chosen by the parties by various more and less democratic means. A party needs to gain 2 percent of the national vote to clear the threshhold and gain representation in parliament.
The following three parties are hoping to clear that threshold — two are split-offs from larger lists and one, amazingly, was the outgoing Knesset’s biggest party. Our recent poll suggested none of them will make it. Another 20 or so parties are also running. We’ll tell you more about them after January 22… if they defy all conventional wisdom and win seats.
Am Shalem
Led by Haim Amsalem
Hebrew ballot sign: ץ
Seats in 18th Knesset: 0 (Amsalem was a Shas MK, who parted ways with the party)
Projected seats in 19th Knesset: 0-2
Created by Rabbi Haim Amsalem, the (almost) eponymous party presents itself as the enlightened, modern version of Shas. Born in 1959 in the Mediterranean port of Oran, Algeria, Amsalem moved to France as a child and served two years as the chief Sephardic rabbi in Geneva, Switzerland, before immigrating to Israel. After a falling out with the party due to his unorthodox views, especially regarding the ultra-Orthodox’s need to enter the military and workforce, he left Shas, claiming its leaders had “betrayed their voters.”
Shas “once had a reason to exist, but failed. It was created first of all to fight discrimination. It did a thousand other things, but not that,” he told The Times of Israel recently. Amsalem is the only recognizable name on his party’s list, which is “the vote of the brave,” according to its campaign slogan. This is topped by the hard-to-verify (or disprove) claim, made in Amsalem’s TV ad, that the medieval scholar Maimonides would vote Am Shalem if he were alive today.
Otzma Leyisrael
Led by Arye Eldad and Michael Ben Ari
Hebrew ballot sign: נץ
Seats in 18th Knesset: 0 (both men served as MKs, with the National Union)
Projected seats in 19th Knesset: 0-2 seats
After Jewish Home formed an alliance with the Tekuma party (which belonged to the National Union), two politicians from the faction’s more hawkish flanks split off to form this new party: the secular Arye Eldad, of Hatikva, and the skullcap-wearing Michael Ben Ari, of Eretz Yisrael Shelanu. They are joined by other far-right politicians, including the US-born Baruch Marzel, the list’s No. 3.
Some Jewish Home supporters encourage those right-wing activists for whom Jewish Home is deemed too moderate to support Otzma Leyisrael for strategic reasons: If Otzma Leyisrael enters the Knesset, some of Bennett’s supporters argue, it would make Jewish Home appear less extreme and thus render it more likely to get a Netanyahu coalition invite.
Kadima
Led by Shaul Mofaz
Hebrew ballot sign: כן
Seats in 18th Knesset: 28
Projected seats in the 19th Knesset: 0-2
Founded by Ariel Sharon in 2005, Kadima will most likely not live to see its 10th birthday. Only three out of 803 respondents, or 0.4 percent, in the recent Times of Israel survey said they would vote for the party, the largest in the outgoing Knesset.
Data from that survey shows how the list’s 28 seats are divided — with a vast 41 percent of former Kadima voters undecided as of a few days ago, and looking for a new party to support. Some 20 percent are switching to Labor, 13 percent to Yesh Atid, and about 10 percent each to Hatnua and Likud-Beytenu.
Kadima’s ads feature an array of local politicians vowing they’ll vote Kadima, plus former prime minister Olmert saying there is no worthier politician than its leader Shaul Mofaz. Presumably Olmert does believe one politician is more worthy and, some pundits say, would rather like Kadima to still be around if and when he is clear of his legal troubles and ready to make a political comeback — if not in the 19th Knesset, then maybe in the 20th.
