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Rosner’s Domain: United in Not Feeling United

The less united we feel, the more we cling to our "camp," and thus we further sharpen the feeling of division.
[additional-authors]
August 3, 2022
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On the eve of Tisha B’Av — the day the Temple was destroyed, and a day on which we remember internal divides that brought about the catastrophe — Israel feels fragmented, divided. How divided? We can start with the bad news: Most of Israel feels “strongly divided.” And of course, “Israeli society” is not an entity, but rather a collection of individuals. So most of them feel divided. And another caveat: They feel divided, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they are divided. We will get to that point soon.

In a survey we conducted and analyzed earlier this week, we offered Israelis four options, from “strongly divided” to “strongly united.” The choice of “strongly united” is negligible to non-existent. The choice of “a little unified” is less than ten percent. The outcome is almost a consensus. Here is one thing on which we are unified: Israel is the opposite of unified.

On the right end of the political spectrum, the largest camp in Israel, about half of the respondents (the figures are based on 1,300 questionnaires) say that Israel is “strongly divided.” Another third say “somewhat divided.” The more we move leftward on the political map, toward right-center, center, left-center and left, the more the proportion of those who identify a deep division increases and the proportion of those who identify a slight division or unity decreases. In fact, on the left-of-center there are no respondents at all who believe that Israel is “strongly united.” Only a tiny number believe that Israel is “somewhat united.” And we should say that even on the right the combination of “strongly united” and “somewhat united” gets little support — less than one-fifth. For example, only 11% of Likud voters say “united” (somewhat or strongly). 

But there is one exception: voters of the “Religious Zionism” party. Among its hawkish religious voters about a quarter believe that Israel is united. Compared to other groups that’s a rosy perception. And there’s one more exception to the voters of the “Religious Zionism” party: Much like Israel’s Arab voters, they think that the main tension in Israel isn’t the one between “Right” and “Left,” as most other Jewish voters say. They think it is the tension between Jews and Arabs. 

This is based on another question that we asked this week. We have shown that most Israelis believe that the country is divided. But we wanted to know: “divided by what?” In our questionnaire, five options were presented: Jews-Arabs, religious-secular, right-left, rich-poor, Mizrahi-Ashkenazi. Of these, two are more dominant than the others: right-left, which makes sense, especially in an election atmosphere; and Jews-Arabs, which also makes sense, unless you’re a visitor from outer space.

Looking at these two questions, two interesting social-political trends seem clear. 

A considerable proportion of Jews of the religious-right have difficulty recognizing to what extent the political divide affects the rest of Israeli society. Religious Zionist voters are the ones who tend more than others to underestimate the severity of the division. They are also more inclined than others to underestimate the severity of the left-right divide. In other words, religious Zionist voters are not aligned with the feelings of the majority of other Jews in Israel. That’s not insignificant for a party that is currently expected to be the fourth largest in the next Knesset. 

Just as the center-left tends to emphisize the feeling of division in society more than the right, it also has a much stronger tendency to choose the right-left divide as the main one in Israeli society. True, Likud voters also choose the right-left divide at a high rate. But among Likud voters the gap between the two leading causes of tension is not very large (6%); that is, a picture of a fairly close competition between two causes. In contrast, among Blue and White voters there are almost twice as many who rank the right-left divide compared to the next divide in line (Jews-Arabs), and the situation is similar among those who vote for Labor, Yesh Atid, Meretz, Yisrael Beitenu. In other words: As one moves to the left, excluding Arab voters, the resulting picture is of a deeper split — a split whose cause is political rather than national.

Is a feeling of divide equivalent to an actual divide?

And we can’t end this column without asking a crucial question: Is a feeling of divide equivalent to an actual divide? Maybe, but not necessarily. It may be that we feel a deep split, but that in a moment of crisis it will become clear that we were wrong, that an external threat quickly moves us from superficial division to deep unity. Of course, that’s the optimistic interpretation. The pessimistic one sends us to ponder the gloomy possibility that the public is right. Sometimes, the very feeling of a divide feeds a downward process that ends up with even more divide. The less united we feel, the more we cling to our “camp,” and thus we further sharpen the feeling of division. So the pessimistic option is the one that sends us back to thinking about Tisha B’Av.

Something I wrote in Hebrew

Four parties merged: New Hope with Blue and White, Yamina with Derech Eretz (now the new Zionist Spirit). So, what do we need to look at when we look at the polls? Here’s what I wrote:

Pointers for next week: The most important thing is whether the Netanyahu bloc is trending in the direction of 61 seats. If not, all other movements are largely a slight ripple in stagnant water. More: Does the Zionist Spirit party show signs of life? If this doesn’t happen quickly, if the Ayelet Shaked-Yoaz Hendel union doesn’t show quick impact, the party will collapse. More: Does the downward trend continue for Labor and the upward trend continue for Meretz. More: Pay attention to United Torah Judaism (UTJ) as well. It also trends downward. This will not affect Netanyahu’s bloc because the voters of UTJ do not move to center-left parties. But it may well affect the mood in the ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi parties, which are in a kind of silent war.

A week’s numbers

For what this means, see the above column.

A reader’s response:

Michael Schwartz writes in response to my last week’s column: “If the Jewish Agency is now a tool that Putin uses against Israel, that’s another reason (and there are many reasons) to close it down. The Jewish Agency was necessary when there was no state, now it is redundant.” 


Shmuel Rosner is senior political editor. For more analysis of Israeli and international politics, visit Rosner’s Domain at jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain.

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