It’s neither the return of Netanyahu nor the rise of the political right. It’s religious demography.
It is not Netanyahu’s return to power, with a majority coalition of the Knesset’s 120 seats.
It is not the potential conflicts between Israel and its allies.
It is not the deletion of the radical left from the Knesset and the rise of the radical right in the Knesset.
It is not the disappearance from the Knesset of one the Arab parties.
It is not the first (apparently) stable government in Israel in three years.
It is not a double reversal: now, the rise in Netanyahu’s fortunes and the corresponding fall in Biden’s fortunes, contrary to one year ago, the fall in Netanyahu’s fortunes and the rise in Biden’s fortunes.
None of this captures the meaning of Israel’s election, at least not in the long term. All of this is surely important, but only in the short term. The long-term meaning of the election is in the middle of these three electoral scores:
Likud (Netanyahu): 34 seats.
Religious parties: 31 seats.
Yesh Atid (Netanyahu’s chief opponent, Yair Lapid): 24 seats.
The dramatic electoral shift is in the rise of the religious parties. The dramatic electoral shift reflects the dramatic demographic shift. Birth rate.
Example: In the 1970s, haredi parties took three or four seats. In 2022, they took 17 seats. Add to that the National Religious Party’s 14 seats.
This is not to say that the religious parties are all of one mind on religious or political matters. Not at all.
But the issues that animate them, the general approach to Jewish life, bespeak a different Israeli future than the predominantly secular Zionist roots of, and 75-year governance of, Israel.
This, too, represents a double reversal: now, the rise in the religious public’s fortunes and the corresponding fall in the Diaspora’s fortunes, contrary to decades ago, the fall in the religious public’s fortunes and the rise in secular Jewry’s fortunes.
Consider:
- There is now a haredi unit in the Israel Defense Forces. Unthinkable decades ago.
- There is now a statistically disproportionate religious leadership in the IDF’s officer corps.
- There is now a far greater proportion of government spending on housing going to the religious sector.
- There is a growing percentage of haredi Jews living on the West Bank entirely unrelated to ideological considerations, but simply for the less expensive housing there.
- There are some holes in the once uniformly strong pride in Zionism and the State of Israel in the secular Zionist public, alongside some opposite growth in interest in Jewish religion per se, that make it harder to see a uniformly secular Israeli public.
All of these developments do not determine the overall character of Israel today — but they signal the direction in which it is moving.
The bottom line is demography. For those concerned about this direction, all of the counterarguments together do not wield the same power as: birth rate.
Some regard the number of American Jews as much higher than the formal data show by adding to the count all types of people associated as Jewish one way or another. However valid some may assume this type of counting to be, one thing is clear: the further from the Jewish center, the more tenuous the passion and the influence. The power of high birth rates — at least as far as Diaspora influence over the policies of Israel are concerned — cannot be equalized by reconceiving the data. When synagogues in the US are closing, when the popularity of Jewish identity groups outside the synagogue and outside the major Jewish philanthropic organizations is growing, when rabbinical candidates are harder to find, when funds are harder to raise, when individual philanthropic foundations supplant interest in community-centered philanthropy, when inmarriage is no longer considered the standard, then the demographic trends in Israel loom all the more dominant.
That is the story of the recent election in Israel, hiding in plain sight: a gathering demographic shift that promises an Israel that may look very different in a few decades from how it looks now.
The current demographic shift toward religious parties is not a projection. It is a reality. That is, a reality not likely to change, since it is founded not on the shifting sands of political ideology and economic policy, but on birth rates.
Some will celebrate this.
Some will bemoan this.
Either way, this is the trend. This is the meaning in the recent Israeli election.
Copyright © 2022 by the Intermountain Jewish News
