According to recent polls, Benyamin Netanyahu (Bibi) is leading the Likud Party to a likely victory in the February election. For the time being, however, his greatest problem is with voters who identify most strongly with his party, i.e., members who paid their dues and voted in the party primary. A new and cumbersome computer voting program caused long lines, and gruesome scenes of congestion. An emergency meeting of party leaders kept the polls open until 1 AM. Nonetheless, less than 50 percent of registered members kept at it until they reached a console and figured out how to use it.
Netanyahu did not like the results, and he has been twisting and dodging to find a reason that will change the line up of potential Knesset members.
His problem is Moshe Feiglin, a gadfly who has been a thorn in the side of establishment politicians, and finally found a way (according to the rules before Netanyahu sought to change them) to penetrate one of the country's major parties.
Feiglin stands outside of the dominant categories of Israeli politics. He is a religious nationalist, who does not fit in the conventional religious or nationalist parties. Among his aspirations is a state governed by religious law, which would make Israel into a Jewish Iran or Saudi Arabia. His preferred treatment of those who attack Jews resembles what the Nazis did when resistance fighters killed their soldiers. Feiglin would have left no stone standing upon another stone in the city of Ramallah, where residents lynched two Israeli soldiers early in the most recent intifada. His model of education would be Jewish in the extreme. Israel would not use international dates. Only the Jewish calendar would do for his country, leaving aside the issue that Hebrew names for the months came from our Babylonian neighbors some 2,500 years ago. Feiglin has used the Biblical term Amalek to refer to Arabs, and he has advocated their transfer to Jordan (which he refers to as the Palestinian state) or elsewhere, either by force or by economic incentives. The Amalekites were a desert tribe that harassed the Israelites and figure in some of the least politically correct passages in the Bible: "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." (I Samuel 15)
Feiglin's people proved themselves dedicated in Likud's cumbersome primary. He received enough votes to be ranked 20th on the party list, which would assure him a Knesset seat if the party lives up to recent polls. Feiglin distributed a recommended list of nominees to his voters, some of whom were also on Netanyahu's list of favorites. A number of people on both lists did even better than Feiglin in the polling, which presents a problem for deciding how much influence he actually has in the party.
Whatever he has is too much for Netanyahu. He campaigned against Feiglin in the run-up to the primary, and now has mounted a case in party tribunals to alter the list so that Feiglin drops below the number of Kneset seats Likud is likely to win in the general election.
(Each of Israel's parties that operates a primary does so according to their own rules, and each on a different day.)
Netanyahu's campaigns against Feiglin have not been elegant, and may have increased the outlier's prominence. Likud's standing in the national polls declined after its primary, which differs from the bounce upward that a party often receives due to the publicity surrounding a primary. Either Feiglin's success, or antipathy to Netanyahu's blunders, may account for the decline of the party's support. From all the signs, Netanyahu is right in concluding that Feiglin is too extreme for Israel's voters, and his place in Likud is likely to hurt the party.
Why is Feiglin playing on Likud's turf, rather than in one of the parties more overtly religious and nationalistic?
Feiglin is too extreme for the religious parties. There is some doubt as to whether he studied in a yeshiva. "He is not one of us" according to a rabbi well plugged into religious politics. If Feiglin had studied in a yeshiva, according to this informant, he would have learned to respect authorities and adversaries, and not to push himself to the front. Overt antipathy to Israel's Arab minorities is also beyond the pale among the religious establishment. It is also a direct challenge to what is politically correct among Western democracies. Jewish tradition has long concerned itself with acting according to the expectations of dominant powers.
Beyond his doubtful status in the eyes of the religious, there are practical reasons for Feiglin's choice of Likud.
None of the religious parties, or the nationalist party to the right of Likud (Israel Our Home) select their Knesset nominees by primaries. They rely on a council of distinguished rabbis, a council of elders, or a committee beholden to the party leader. Likud's Knesset list is open to an organized campaign, and Likud is likely to be one of the leading parties. If it does not gain a plurality and the right to form a government, it is most likely to be a member of the coalition, or--at the worst--the most prominent party in the opposition.
Those who might be searching for something even more extreme than Moshe Feiglin may appreciate an e-mail that came to me recently. The author was protesting the removal of Jewish settlers for a building in Hebron:
Myopic and coward Politicians, who castrate themselves by expelling circumcised Jews from Abraham, and who not dare the vision of rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem on its authentic Site, will soon be swept out of History by the irrepressible Destiny of true Israel.
The sender identified himself as the author "of the sole authentic History of the Jews (2.500 pages), since the colossal Work of Flavius Josephus."
What can we do? Israel attracts the otherworldly, like the sender of this message, or extremists who aspire to play in the dominant game, like Moshe Feiglin. By no means is it the only country that has its outliers. Location and history affect the details of those on Israel's fringe.
Arguably Israeli politics are less soaked by religious extremism than the politics of the United States. Religious parties with weight in the governing coalition limit their demands to money for their schools, and housing for their neighborhoods. Occasionally a religious politician speaks publicly about personal morality, but there is nothing like the pressures in the United States to deny opportunities for abortions, or to deny gays and lesbians civil unions, the recognition of marriages performed elsewhere, or adoptions.
Israelis should not feel threatened by someone comparing himself to Josephus, or by Moshe Feiglin. Hamas and Hizbollah are more worrisome, and Iran even moreso.
Due to spam, I do not permit comments on the blog. I do welcome comments sent to my e-mail address below.
Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Department of Political Science
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tel: +972-2-532-2725
Fax +972-2-582-9144
msira@mscc.huji.ac.il