Israel’s majority-minority problem

Last week, at 67, Israel celebrated its Independence Day as a majority-minority country. And this is becoming a problem. A country needs a majority to lead it, to establish a narrative that guides it, to be able to make necessary reforms, and to tame trends that disrupt further development. Yet Israel does not have such a majority. It only has minorities that battle with one another in an attempt to gain more power. If one could get to make a wish for one's country’s birthday, mine would be simple: that some of these minorities would step up to jointly create a cohesive majority.

Most of the people who follow Israel, and possibly many Israelis as well, don’t think about Israel as a majority-minority state. They think that about California. In Israel, there is a clear majority: the Jews, who share a history and a religion, culture and traditions, language and a homeland. They are more than seventy percent of the country, and the minority consists of Arab Israelis, most of them Muslim, that are about a fifth of the population.

That picture of Israel is not wrong, but it’s incomplete. That is, because Jewish majority is not a coherent one. And within that majority, there is no one force that is dominant enough to be able to provide for an Israeli mainstream.

One of the results of this phenomenon – which I wrote about here last month – was evident in the recent elections. Israel has many midsize parties and no large parties, a fact which makes the building of parliamentary coalitions more complicated. Israel’s elections were held more than a month ago, and there is still no coalition because of the complexities this electoral outcome creates.

But this is hardly the most disturbing result of Israel’s lack of a mainstream majority. The real problem is the tendency of too many Israelis – and their representatives – to also think and act in their daily lives as a minority. Namely, to think about what is good for the group they belong to rather than about the country. To frequently engage in unnecessary turf battles with other groups. To fear other groups, often to the extent of demonizing them. To lack the confidence in action that is typical of a majority.

This lack of a majority wasn’t always the case for Israel, but it has been the case for a long time now. Too long. When the state was established, the Labor movement was dominant and its constituency were a majority. Later, its power began to erode, both politically and numerically, to the point that the once-majority became just another minority. Other groups gained more influence in Israel’s public life: The birthrate of Ultra-Orthodox Jews was suddenly more pronounced. The emergence of a more confident Zionist-religious movement, following the Six Day War, had a huge impact on government policies. The Arab minority gradually got over the shock of Israel’s establishment and began to assert itself in certain areas. A Sephardic population demanded, rightly, to have a larger presence. A wave of immigrants from the Soviet Union created a new bloc of newcomers with new needs and, at times, different viewpoints.

These groups often cooperated with one another, and used their newly-found power to change Israel in dramatic ways, but all of them also kept the instinctive survival aggressiveness of a minority. Quick on their feet to see enemies in every corner, not prone to calm compromise.

Examples are in abundance: In recent weeks, Israelis engaged in a tone-deaf debate about whether the country should have public transportation on Shabbat. It is an important debate that is part of a larger one about the proper ways for Israel to manifest its Jewish character. It is also a practical matter that could be solved by imperfect compromise. Alas, Israel’s minorities don’t really want compromise, they want victories. And even more than victories, they want to vent their anger with the views of other groups. Thus – these are examples found on my Facebook page – if you support transportation on Shabbat you are “a meager imitation of a Jew”, and if you oppose transportation on Shabbat “you should go back to the dark ages”.

Israel’s minorities have turned the insult of other groups into an art form, into an obsession: we saw examples of this recently, when two minor celebrities stirred a scandal for putting their mouths before their brains. A professor-provocateur insulted Moroccan Jews; a theatre actor used derogatory terms to describe right-wing voters. You’d expect Israelis, Moroccan and other, to ignore the juvenile call for attention. You’d expect right-wing voters – who just came out victorious from another round of elections – to not pay attention to a miserable expression of frustration. But Israelis preferred to waste precious time and a whole lot of ink condemning and defending and debating these two.

The case of right-wing voters is especially telling, as it is typical of a behavior that repeats itself in many occasions. One might think that if Israel has a majority, it is the majority of a right-wing political camp that has won most of the elections since 1977.

Alas, watching the right-wing camp in action clarifies that its leaders and voters alike refuser to accept their new status as a potential majority. The right has maintained – for close to forty years – a mentality of a struggling minority that has to keep battling resistant forces, true or imaginary. It battles against the courts, and against a hostile media, and against the elites, and academia. Indeed, right-wing complaints against these establishments often have merit. And yet, battling them with the zealotry of a persecuted minority, when the right has been effectively in power for the last forty years, is strange and disturbing. It is a testimony to the fact that the “right” is also not ready to assume the role of a majority, and the responsibilities that come with it.

The result is too much bickering. The result is too many policy battles that end in a victory for one side that alienates the others, and too many important issues remain unresolved – and there are too few debates that end in a reasonable compromise. The result is an Israeli society that at times, when it really counts, can feel united, but that spends most of its daily existence feeling fractured and divided.

So my wish for Israel’s 67^th year is majority. And I know, it is much to ask.