Elections In Israel Research Articles

Jews and Christians

This review article of the collection of essays edited by M Van Campen and G C den Hertog deals with the question of the relationship between Jews and Christians. The publication, Israël, volk, land en staat, by the Centre for Israel Studies in the Netherlands is discussed. This article also summarises and comments on the views in the publication regarding the need for a dialogue between Christians and Jews, the election of Israel, its identity and alienation, the role of history and the meaning of the land and the State of Israel.

The 2003 Elections in Israel: Has the Return to the ‘Old’ System Reduced Party System Fragmentation?

This article examines the relationship between electoral systems and party system fragmentation. Focusing on the two electoral reforms that Israel adopted in the last decade, it first sets out how electoral system change can influence voter behaviour and party strategy. It then uses ‘the effective number of parties’ index to show the extent of party system change in Israel following these reforms. The article proceeds with a description of the legislative processes that led to the adoption of the direct election system and to its abandonment several years later and analyzes the consequences of these reforms. It concludes by arguing that the adoption of the direct election system undeniably contributed to a rise in party system fragmentation, while the recent return to a one-vote, proportional electoral system might have the reverse effect.

Does Paul Need to Be Saved?

AbstractWhile many liberal Jews have endorsed Jesus as one of their own for at least a century, Paul has often borne the blame for injecting anti-Judaism into early Christianity. The work of these scholars helps overturn these judgments against Paul. Several emphases of their work help us to better appreciate Paul as a pedagogue of multiple identities. 1) Being "in Christ" and being part of Israel are compatible, not contradictory identities for Paul. 2) Paul believes that Gentiles, by being "in Christ" come under the umbrella of Israel, even without circumcision or conversion. 3) Paul's mission as the teacher to the Gentiles shapes every aspect of his rhetoric and message. 4) Paul is animated by the question of Gentile inclusion in God's people, not the existential guilt of the individual. This article also poses four questions as we pursue this approach to Paul. 1) Why does Paul, the robust Jew who continues to believe in Israel's election, so virulently oppose Gentile circumcision or conversion, which was part of the Judaism of his time? 2) What is the role of the cross, which does not spring from the language and myths of Israel, in Paul's thought? 3) Does Paul think he is doing anything new, particularly since he uses the language of novelty? 4) How much does Paul need to be "saved," i.e. made to conform to our contemporary standards, for us to appreciate him as part of our experience and traditions?

The Media Campaign in the 2003 Israeli Elections

The main characteristics of the media campaign in the 2003 Israeli elections include the coverage and implications of political scandals and a limited retreat from postmodern campaign communication...

The parliamentary elections in Israel, January 2003

The parliamentary elections in Israel, January 2003

Israel's election and God's silence: Jewish destiny's peculiarity and exemplarity

Israel's election and God's silence: Jewish destiny's peculiarity and exemplarity

The 2001 Prime Ministerial election in Israel

The 2001 Prime Ministerial election in Israel

Scripture, revelation and Platonism in C. S. Lewis

Noting that C. S. Lewis's writings do not contain a systematic statement of his understanding of the relationship between scripture and revelation, this essay exposes the literary, theological and philosophical undergirding of his approach to scripture, which was neither fundamentalist nor modernist. It then outlines his treatment of six ‘modes’ of revelation: five general and incomplete (the numinous, the notion of Sehnsucht, conscience/the moral law, the election of Israel, pagan myths), the sixth particular and perfect – Jesus Christ. After considering Lewis's notion of ‘transposition’ and delineating the trajectory of his philosophical idealism, the essay contends that Lewis's tendency to Platonise reality leads him to articulate some unfortunate and unsatisfactory theological expressions.

Why do People Trust Media Pre-Election Polls? Evidence from the Israeli 1996 Elections

Although much research has been dedicated to the potential impact of media publication of poll results on various aspects of democratic life (e.g. Beniger 1976, Broh 1983, Mutz 1995), there is surprisingly little research on how people react to polls. Virtually all polls published in the media in the month prior to the May 29, 1996, election in Israel predicted that Labor Party candidate Shimon Peres would overcome Likud candidate Benjamin Netanyahu in the prime‐ministerial race. However, despite the unanimous predictions, and despite the fact that the media underscored Peres' advantage in the polls in their campaign coverage, most Israelis did not believe the polls then. Why do people trust, or mistrust, pre‐election polls? This is the question I address in this study.

The Elections in Israel 1996 (review)

Reviewed by: The Elections in Israel 1996 David H. Goldberg, Ph.D. The Elections in Israel 1996, edited by Asher Arian and Michal Shamir. Albany: State University of New York Press, in conjunction with The Israel Democracy Institute (Jerusalem), 1999. 318 pp. $25.95. Elections in Israel, as in other democratic countries, are normally determined by a complex blend of factors. This point is illustrated in elaborate detail in The Elections in Israel 1996. The editors are doyens of political analysis in Israel, having individually or collaboratively studied the results of the country’s elections since the late 1960s. The current publication is divided into two parts. Part One, entitled “Politics of Identity,” examines the impact on the 1996 Israeli elections of such issues as collective identity, religion, and “old” versus “new” politics, as well as the voting behavior of the Israeli Arab and Russian immigrant communities. Part Two, entitled “Political Reform, Parties, Candidates,” focuses on the reform of Israel’s electoral system, the use by major political parties of U.S.-style primaries for selecting their electoral lists, the Likud [End Page 125] party’s campaign strategy, the electoral performance of Shimon Peres, and media coverage of the 1996 election. The common thread linking many of these topics is the reform in Israel’s electoral system. On March 18, 1992, the Knesset adopted an amended version of the Basic Law: the Government (1968), providing for the direct election of the prime minister, to occur simultaneously with the election of the Knesset. (Heretofore the Prime Minister normally was the leader of the largest Knesset faction, who was invited by the President to form a government.) Although the amended law was passed prior to the election of the 13th Knesset (in June 1992), it did not take effect until the election of the 14th Knesset on May 29, 1996. The first direct election of Israel’s Prime Minister was determined by less than 1% of the popular vote (50.4% went to Benjamin Netanyahu, 49.5% to Shimon Peres). However, among Jewish voters there was an 11% differential in Netanyahu’s favor. This differential was explained by two factors. First, the Hamas terror campaign of late February-early March 1996 caused elements of the “fluid center” of the Jewish electorate to shift away from the “peace candidate” Peres and toward the conservative Netanyahu. Of course, no one could have predicted the Hamas terror spree, the goal of which was to inflict maximum death and destruction among Israelis rather than affect the outcome of the country’s election. Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s political handlers, headed by the American political consultant Arthur Finkelstein, are to be credited with seizing the political moment by launching an advertising campaign that tweaked longstanding popular uncertainty about Peres’s credibility on security matters. Moreover, credit Netanyahu’s team with the strategic decision to temper their candidate’s well-publicized opposition to the Oslo peace accords in favor of his pledge to deliver “peace with security,” thereby tapping into the Jewish electorate’s over whelming desire for a continuation of the peace process but with greater attention to matters of personal security than had seemingly been the case under Peres. The breakdown of the Jewish vote was also explained by the attitude toward the prime ministerial candidates adopted by Israel’s major Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox political parties. The leaders of these parties were uniformly opposed to the candidacy of Shimon Peres because of his perceived association with the “anti-Jewish” agenda promoted by the secularist Meretz party (Labor’s 1992–1996 coalition partner) as well as Peres’s declared readiness to cede additional parts of Eretz Israel. However, taking nothing for granted, Netanyahu struck generous pre-election deals with the religious parties in order to ensure their support for him in the balloting for Prime Minister; the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Jewry party reciprocated by plastering the country with posters declaring “Netanyahu is good for the Jews.” The religious community’s solid turnout for Netanyahu was made all the more significant by the voting behavior of two additional voting blocs: the Russian immigrant community and Israeli Arabs. Of the 400,000 immigrants who voted in 1996...

Representation, Electoral Reform, and Democracy

This article argues that researchers must broaden their definition of representation if they are to expand their understanding of electoral reform. The authors use the 1996 case of inter- and intraparty electoral reform in Israel to illustrate their claim. These reforms were designed either to enhance the circle of participation or to improve governability, without damaging representation. However, the type of representation that was supposed to be maintained by the reforms was different in each case. Party primaries were supposed to preserve representation as presence, whereas direct election of the prime minister was supposed to uphold the representation of ideas. The reformers did not perceive this distinction and felt that representation (defined as proportionality) would not be affected by both reforms. The result of the 1996 elections in Israel was that both reforms damaged representation, and both missed their targets.

Violence and electoral polarization in divided societies: Three cases in comparative perspective

Three elections, all of which took place at the end of May 1996, are examined in order to analyze the impact of violence on political attitudes in deeply divided societies. They are the Israeli general election of 29 May 1996; the Northern Ireland forum elections of 30 May 1996; and local elections in the Western Cape province in South Africa on 29 May 1996. It is argued that what the outcome of the elections in Israel and Northern Ireland demonstrates is the capacity of the continuing threat of violence (and not just actual episodes of violence) to polarize opinion even in the context of ongoing peace processes. Further, it is argued that fear of change may influence the electoral behaviour of members of the dominant (or previously dominant) community as profoundly as the prospect or even the reality of an end to the conflict, as the case of the local elections in the Western Cape underlines.

The 1999 Knesset and prime ministerial elections in Israel

This election note delineates the outcome of the 1999 elections in Israel, in which the Prime Minister was directly elected — for only the second time — concurrently with the parliamentary election. It then analyzes the election results produced by Israel's unique electoral system, and assesses their immediate ramifications.

The unintended consequences of extemporaneous electoral reform: The 1999 elections in Israel

This article analyses the results of the 1999 elections in Israel, in which the Prime Minister was directly elected for only the second time, and assesses the consequences of this unique electoral system.

The implications of the direct elections in Israel

The implications of the direct elections in Israel

The middle east peace process: The prospects for progress after wye?

Although May's General Election in Israel represents a hiatus in the Middle East peace process, which has been stalled since the 1996 elections brought Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Coalition government came to power, 1999 may mark a new stage in the quest for stability. The Netanyahu government, even though it accepted the letter of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, thwarted them in spirit, dragging out the negotiations with the Palestine Authority and continuing with the expansion of settlements on the West Bank. The Wye Plantation agreement on October 1998 represented a re-starting of the talks, some two-and-a-half years behind schedule.

What Good is the Holocaust? On Suffering and Evil

theological explanation evil, theodicy, that evil willed by God, willed by an absolute God, an absolutely benevolent God.' logic may be painful, in sense that it outrages moral reason, but it remains logical all that. Since God wills all things, God willed Holocaust. Because all things willed by God are good, Holocaust too was good. Not just that good comes from Holocaust, but that Holocaust itself was good, as repentance, sacrifice, purification, sign, redemption, punishment, perhaps all of these, but ultimately good in itself. Not only do such scandalous conclusions necessarily follow from logic of a philosophical God, from an absolute omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and benevolence, but even more painfully and intimately, follow from personal God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, from His special covenant with Jews, and in our day with Israel, in its Passion under Adolph Hitler.2 Part of holy history (Heilsgeschichte), Holocaust above all-where Jews once again take center stage, not only in locale of Middle East, or of Europe, but globally-would have been willed by God, and thus would be good. It would have to be good, or it would be meaningless, and Jews forsaken. As we know, this very line of thought, enunciated in 1961 by a leading German cleric whose moral heroism had earlier been proven by saving Jews during nazi period, so shocked Richard Rubenstein that he rejected altogether any belief in special election of Israel.3 Emmanuel Levinas too was shocked by this sound but appalling logic. Like Rubenstein, he too rejected theodicy, vindication of evil in terms of divine justice. But he did not, in contrast, reject God or idea of Jewish election. How can one affirm God, Israel's election, and ethics after Holocaust? We are driven to ask anew what sense, if any, do religion and morality have if human affairs are divorced from divine justice. Is a God who hides His face, or eclipsed, any different than no God at all? Are we to become like those agnostics whose mendaciousness Nietzsche derides because they now worship question mark itself as God?' If rejection of theodicy leaves those whom God still meaningful with a tremendum, it no more than a clouding of consciousness, an elliptical but false gesture, a brave but empty stubbornness? Levinas answered in negative. After Holocaust, to be sure, he rejected But Levinas meaning of Holocaust precisely end of theodicy. The most revolutionary fact of our twentieth century, Levinas wrote, is that of destruction of all balance between. . . theodicy . . . and forms which suffering and evil take.5 The Holocaust of Jewish people, he continued, paradigm of gratuitous human suffering, where evil appears in all its horror.6 Auschwitz, he wrote, the radical rupture between evil and mercy, between evil and sense.7 But question of evil remains. This most questionable question, older than Job, in fact newly deepened, newly sharpened, radicalized by Holocaust. Levinas did not shirk from asking: What can suffering mean when suffering rendered so obviously (inutile), useless to its core? What can suffering mean when it for nothing, when it heralds and leads only to death and intended only obliteration? Friedrich Nietzsche was also troubled by the meaninglessness of suffering.8 Like Levinas, but of course decades before Holocaust, he too rejected as false and self-deceptive all justifications of suffering as theodicy, example, punishment sin, or a necessary piece of a hidden but divinely ordained whole. But with same stroke, with same hammer blow, Nietzsche rejected all interpretations whatsoever suffering. `Why so hard?' charcoal once said to diamond; `for are we not close relations?' Why so soft? Nietzsche has diamond answer, for are you not-my brothers? …

The Origin of 'I Am' in Exodus 3.14

The over-crowded text Exod. 3.13-15 is examined and v. 14 identified as an interpolation derived from Hos. 1.9. As part of the emerging covenant theology associated with Hosea, the prophet created a pun on the divine name to signify termination of Israel's election. In their revision of the Sinai narrative, the Proto-Deuteronomists introduced v. 14 into Exod. 3.13-15 to indicate that even though judgment had fallen on the Northern Kingdom, Yahweh was still 'ehyeh to Judah, if the covenant as set out in Exod. 19-24, 32-34 was maintained.

Electronic Journalism in Segmented Societies: Lessons from the 1996 Israeli Elections

A study of the part played by the media in the 1996 elections in Israel reflects on the evolution of new practices of electronic journalism in segmenting democracies. Contrary to prevailing perceptions about the direct barrages of television influences-such as spot advertising, and the televisual promotion of politicians-we show the following: (1) By making it their job to challenge the rhetoric of political advertising, journalists now reduce the effectiveness of the political campaign on television. (2) At the same time, recent news coverage, especially stories that are treated as ''disaster marathons," maximize television journalists' tendency toward melodramatic coverage, thus creating an atmosphere that undermines the public's ability to form a considered opinion. (3) Recent developments of identity politics cause national television gradually to lose its function as the common public sphere for the various factions of society, shifting the public debate to multicultural public ''spherecules," operating in alternative, community media. (4) Whereas nationwide television is pushed to emotional titillation as it competes for the attention of viewers as consumers, community media, expected to appeal to the emotions of their audiences as members of the collectivity, also carry out a lively, ideological (though partisan), debate. During the Israeli elections, it was the coverage of disaster, not the frontal influences of television, that determined the voting patterns. Moreover, the community media of the various cultural enclaves were more effective than nationwide media in carrying out the admittedly fragmented political debate, and in mobilizing voters.

Three levels of elections in Israel: The 1996 party, parliamentary and prime ministerial elections

This article explains the methods used to select parliamentary candidates for Israeli's national list system of PR and assesses the effects on parliament and the political parties of electing the prime minister in a separate ballot.