DOCSLIB.ORG

Statistically Biased

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Statistically Biased Statistically Biased It’s election time again in Israel, and, once more, time for Israeli political polls to help strengthen Israeli Jewish prejudices towards Israel’s Palestinian Arab citizens. If you thought that public opinion polls only glean, analyze and report on political trends, well think again. Take a look, for example, at the results of the Smith Institute poll commissioned and reported on last week by the Jerusalem Post: Kadima 34-35 [seats]; Labor: 18; Likud: 17-18; Israel Beitenu: 9-10; National Union / NRP: 9-10; Shas: 9-10; Arab parties: 9-10; United Torah Judaism: 5-6; Meretz: 4-5. Notice anything funny? Try the third to the last party listing – “Arab parties”. Now, the last time I checked, there is no party running for elections known as “Arab parties”. There are, however, three major election slates currently running for Knesset that draw the vast majority of their support from the Israeli Palestinian Arab citizenry. They are Hadash, Balad, and the two-party alliance of United Arab List-Arab Renewal Movement (UAL- ARM). The competition between them (personal and political) is fierce, and the ideological gaps distinguishing them are significant – so much so that these parties were unable to unite in a joint slate for the upcoming elections, even though the recently raised vote threshold for entering the Knesset (2%) threatens to leave one or more of them without representation. But you’d never know any of this looking at some of the polls. The average, casual reader looking at this Smith Poll would naturally conclude: “Oh, there must be a bunch of Arab parties, and they’re basically all the same”. A natural extension of this line of thought is: “Oh, I guess the Israeli Arabs are all the same”, which is a close cousin of “all Arabs are all the same”, and its sidekick, “all the Arabs want to throw the Jews into the sea”. Imagine if a poll failed to distinguish between Shas and United Torah Judaism, and just lumped them together as “those ultra-orthodox parties”. But why stop there, why not throw Kadima, Labor, Likud, Meretz and all the others into the mix, and just report the poll results for the “Jewish parties” vs. the “Arab parties”? I’m personally not sure who’s to blame here. Are the pollsters not recording the specific preferences of (predominantly Arab) voters when they reply “Balad” or “Hadash” or “UAL-ARM”? Somehow, I find that hard to believe. But if the pollsters are doing their job, then it must be the media outlets that either do not care, or do not think their readers care, to differentiate. And it’s not just the Jerusalem Post. While the HaAretz/Channel 10/Dialog poll recognizes Hadash, Balad and UAL-ARM as individual parties, the polls as reported by the newspaper giants, Yediot Aharonot (Dahaf poll) and Maariv (Teleseker poll), do not. Neither does the IDF Radio website (Geocartographia poll). Is this a trivial matter? I think not. Prejudice comes in all forms, and sometimes the prejudice found in subtext is more dangerous than the kind found in outright bigotry. An open call by an Israeli fringe-rightist to deny Arab citizens their civil rights would arouse immediate opposition of the Israeli mainstream; unfortunately, the use of language that homogenizes and “monolithizes” some 20% of all Israeli citizens seems to fly under the radar, unnoticed, while it shapes, poll by poll, the political consciousness (or perhaps sub-consciousness) of Israel’s Jewish majority..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Freedom in the World 2019
    Freedom in the World 2019 https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2019/israel A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 12 / 12 A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4 A largely ceremonial president is elected by the Knesset for one seven-year term. In 2014, Reuven Rivlin of the right-leaning Likud party was elected to replace outgoing president Shimon Peres, receiving 63 votes in a runoff against Meir Sheetrit of the centrist Hatnuah party. The prime minister is usually the leader of the largest faction in the Knesset. In 2014, in a bid to create more stable governing coalitions, the electoral threshold for parties to win representation was raised from 2 percent to 3.25 percent, and the no- confidence procedure was revised so that opponents hoping to oust a sitting government must simultaneously vote in a new one. The incumbent prime minister in 2018, Benjamin Netanyahu of the conservative party Likud, had been in office since 2009, most recently securing reelection after the 2015 parliamentary polls. A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4 Members of the 120-seat Knesset are elected by party-list proportional representation for four-year terms, and elections are typically free and fair. In the 2015 contest, Likud secured 30 seats, followed by the center-left Zionist Union with 24. The Joint List—a coalition of parties representing Arab citizens of Israel, who often identify as Palestinian—earned 13 seats; the centrist Yesh Atid (There Is a Future), 11; Kulanu, also centrist, 10; Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home), 8; the ultra- Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, 7 and 6, respectively; the right- wing Yisrael Beiteinu, 6; and the left-wing Meretz party, 5.
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of Ultra-Orthodox Political Parties in Israeli Democracy
    Luke Howson University of Liverpool The Role of Ultra-Orthodox Political Parties in Israeli Democracy Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy By Luke Howson July 2014 Committee: Clive Jones, BA (Hons) MA, PhD Prof Jon Tonge, PhD 1 Luke Howson University of Liverpool © 2014 Luke Howson All Rights Reserved 2 Luke Howson University of Liverpool Abstract This thesis focuses on the role of ultra-orthodox party Shas within the Israeli state as a means to explore wider themes and divisions in Israeli society. Without underestimating the significance of security and conflict within the structure of the Israeli state, in this thesis the Arab–Jewish relationship is viewed as just one important cleavage within the Israeli state. Instead of focusing on this single cleavage, this thesis explores the complex structure of cleavages at the heart of the Israeli political system. It introduces the concept of a ‘cleavage pyramid’, whereby divisions are of different saliency to different groups. At the top of the pyramid is division between Arabs and Jews, but one rung down from this are the intra-Jewish divisions, be they religious, ethnic or political in nature. In the case of Shas, the religious and ethnic elements are the most salient. The secular–religious divide is a key fault line in Israel and one in which ultra-orthodox parties like Shas are at the forefront. They and their politically secular counterparts form a key division in Israel, and an exploration of Shas is an insightful means of exploring this division further, its history and causes, and how these groups interact politically.
    [Show full text]
  • Israel 2019 International Religious Freedom Report
    ISRAEL 2019 INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM REPORT Executive Summary This section covers Israel, including Jerusalem. In December 2017, the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. It is the position of the United States that the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem are subject to final status negotiations between the parties. The Palestinian Authority (PA) exercises no authority over Jerusalem. In March 2019, the United States recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. A report on the West Bank and Gaza, including areas subject to the jurisdiction of the PA, is appended at the end of this report. The country’s laws and Supreme Court rulings protect the freedoms of conscience, faith, religion, and worship, regardless of an individual’s religious affiliation, and the 1992 “Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty” protects additional individual rights. In 2018, the Knesset passed the “Basic Law: Israel – The Nation State of the Jewish People.” According to the government, that “law determines, among other things, that the Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people; the State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People, in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination; and exercising the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish People.” The government continued to allow controlled access to religious sites, including the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif (the site containing the foundation of the first and second Jewish temple and the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque).
    [Show full text]
  • Israel's Do-Over Election
    Your Shabbat source of Israeli News– September 6th 2019 Israel’s Do -over Election: A Guide to All the Parties Israeli politics has been reshaped by new alliances after the entire political firmament learned a harsh lesson from the April election just five months earlier: Unity among ideological allies is crucial. Smaller parties flying solo learned the hard way that independence meant risk falling below the electoral threshold and not making it into the Knesset. By doing so, they not only hurt themselves but mortally wound their entire political camp by “wasting” votes that could help them build a bloc large enough to construct a government. With only nine parties seemingly in a position to cross the electoral threshold, the next Knesset is set to feature the fewest number of parties in Israel’s history. Here are the main contenders: • Likud: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - fighting a second re-election campaign under the shadow of pending corruption indictments, moved early to reinforce Likud by merging it with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon’s party giving himself one less party to wrestle with in governing coalition negotiations. Later in the race, he convinced Moshe Feiglin, leader of the far-right Zehut party, to pull out of the elections in order to give larger right-wing parties the precious votes he was taking. In exchange, Feiglin was promised a ministry in a future Likud-led government. • Kahol Lavan: The largest of the multi-party players in the race, Kahol Lavan has continued with its four man alliance formed ahead of the April election.
    [Show full text]
  • The Increasingly Polarised and Fragmented Party System in Israel Will Make It Difficult for a Stable Government to Emerge from This Month’S Elections
    blo gs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/01/14/israel-elections-2013-israeli-party-system/ The increasingly polarised and fragmented party system in Israel will make it difficult for a stable government to emerge from this month’s elections. Blog Admin Israel’s next parliamentary elections are due to be held on 22 January. As part of EUROPP’s coverage of the European neighbourhood, André Krouwel and Daniel Rajmil give an overview of the country’s highly fragmented party system, noting that the results are likely to be significantly different from those in the last election in 2009. New parties have emerged in the last four years, while the largest party in the current parliament, Kadima, could well lose all of its seats. Of all established democracies, Israel has the highest electoral change per election over the post-war period. Only new democracies in Eastern Europe are more electorally volatile. On average almost a quarter of the Israeli electorate shif ts party allegiance per election. One of the main reasons f or this exceptional electoral volatility is that Israeli elections are held under a system of proportional representation (PR). This means that many political parties will enter the f ray, as it is relatively easy to enter parliament compared to majoritarian electoral systems. Parties will gain a number of seats equal to the proportion of the vote they gained in the election, albeit that Israel has introduced a 2 per cent threshold to avoid too much parliamentary f ragmentation. Nevertheless, over the last decade between 12 and 15 parties entered the Knesset in each election.
    [Show full text]
  • Withdrawal from the Withdrawal Plan?
    One Hundred Days After the Elections: Withdrawal from the Withdrawal Plan? Lars Hänsel / Katharina von Münster Executive Summary Israel's one-sided withdrawal from Gaza in the summer of 2005 has brought the country a period of profound changes. The evacuation of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, the historic motherland of Eretz Israel, which was initiated by the Sharon administration, constituted for many a breach of a national and religious taboo for which, however, there were reasons. On the one hand, the failure of the Oslo process had destroyed the trust between Israelis and Palestinians; on the other, demographic forecasts had already prognosticated that the Jewish population would lose its numerical majority in the region between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. After Sharon's retirement from policy, the subject of withdrawal – Tochnit HaHitkansut – became the central campaign issue under his successor, Ehud Olmert. Mr Olmert's convergence plan not only envisaged a complete evacuation of the settlements scattered all over the West Bank, but also the integration of all settlements situated close to the border into blocks belonging to Israel. The withdrawal has also changed the country's party landscape for good. At the end of November 2005, Ariel Sharon announced his resignation from the Likud and the foundation of his own party called Kadima, resulting in the collapse of the Likud. When the 73-year-old retired from politics after an apoplexy in January, Mr Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem who was little known until that day, took over the business of government– an administrator who represented a political style which differed greatly from that of the general.
    [Show full text]
  • The Haredim As a Challenge for the Jewish State. the Culture War Over Israel's Identity
    SWP Research Paper Peter Lintl The Haredim as a Challenge for the Jewish State The Culture War over Israel’s Identity Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik German Institute for International and Security Affairs SWP Research Paper 14 December 2020, Berlin Abstract ∎ A culture war is being waged in Israel: over the identity of the state, its guiding principles, the relationship between religion and the state, and generally over the question of what it means to be Jewish in the “Jewish State”. ∎ The Ultra-Orthodox community or Haredim are pitted against the rest of the Israeli population. The former has tripled in size from four to 12 per- cent of the total since 1980, and is projected to grow to over 20 percent by 2040. That projection has considerable consequences for the debate. ∎ The worldview of the Haredim is often diametrically opposed to that of the majority of the population. They accept only the Torah and religious laws (halakha) as the basis of Jewish life and Jewish identity, are critical of democratic principles, rely on hierarchical social structures with rabbis at the apex, and are largely a-Zionist. ∎ The Haredim nevertheless depend on the state and its institutions for safeguarding their lifeworld. Their (growing) “community of learners” of Torah students, who are exempt from military service and refrain from paid work, has to be funded; and their education system (a central pillar of ultra-Orthodoxy) has to be protected from external interventions. These can only be achieved by participation in the democratic process. ∎ Haredi parties are therefore caught between withdrawal and influence.
    [Show full text]
  • Israel (Includes West Bank and Gaza) 2020 International Religious Freedom Report
    ISRAEL (INCLUDES WEST BANK AND GAZA) 2020 INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM REPORT Executive Summary The country’s laws and Supreme Court rulings protect the freedoms of conscience, faith, religion, and worship, regardless of an individual’s religious affiliation. The 1992 Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty describes the country as a “Jewish and democratic state.” The 2018 Basic Law: Israel – The Nation State of the Jewish People law determines, according to the government, that “the Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people; the State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People, in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination; and exercising the right to national self- determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish People.” In June, authorities charged Zion Cohen for carrying out attacks on May 17 on religious institutions in Petah Tikva, Ashdod, Tel Aviv, and Kfar Saba. According to his indictment, Cohen sought to stop religious institutions from providing services to secular individuals, thereby furthering his goal of separating religion and the state. He was awaiting trial at year’s end. In July, the Haifa District Court upheld the 2019 conviction and sentencing for incitement of Raed Salah, head of the prohibited Islamic Movement, for speaking publicly in favor an attack by the group in 2017 that killed two police officers at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. In his defense, Salah stated that his views were religious opinions rooted in the Quran and that they did not include a direct call to violence.
    [Show full text]
  • Political Parties
    Political Parties: Political Parties and Interest Groups in Israel Gregory Mahler Earlham College Richmond, Indiana December 9-11, 2007 Parliamentary Government • “Westminister” vs. Presidential Government – 1. Split executive – 2. President symbolic; Prime Minister and Cabinet powerful – 3. Prime Minister and Cabinet from the Knesset – 4. Government responsible to the Knesset • The Knesset and the Prime Minister • The President Political Ideology • l. Private enterprise (a) vs. socialism (b); • 2. "Activist" Arab policy (c) vs. restraint (d); • 3. Torah oriented life (e) vs. secularism (f); • 4. Pro-Soviet Union (g) vs. pro-West (h); • 5. Zionist (i) vs. non-Zionist (j).* A---------------------------------------------------------------------B C---------------------------------------------------------------------D E---------------------------------------------------------------------F G---------------------------------------------------------------------H I----------------------------------------------------------------------J * Thomas Goodland, "A Mathematical Presentation of Israel's Political Parties," British Journal of Sociology 8 (1957): 263-66. Political Parties Functions of Political Parties – Personnel Agencies – Organize Groups and Articulate Demands – Frame of Reference – Linkage Mechanisms The Electoral System • Proportional Representation (Israel) vs. Single-Member-District Representation (U.S.) • Electoral Lists of Political Parties • Accuracy of Representation • The 1992 “Deviation” The Complexity of the Coalition-Formation Process • Situation I: Simplest Majority Possibilities – Parties: A (44), B (42), C (14) AB, AC, BC, ABC • Situation II: More Complex Majority Possibilities – Parties: A (38), B (20), C (17), D (15), E (10) AB, AC, AD, ABC, ABD, ABE, ADE, BCD, etc. • Situation III: Most Complex Majority Possibilities – Parties: A (30), B (19), C (12), D (9), E (8), F (8), G (7), H (7) ABC, ABD, ABE, ABF, ABG, BCDE, CDEFGH, etc. Approx. Life of Date of Govt. Knesset Prime Minister (Party) Coalition Partners Govt.
    [Show full text]
  • Israel's Haredim Effect
    ISRAEL’S HAREDIM EFFECT: THEOCRACY IN A DEMOCRATIC STATE A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of The School of Continuing Studies and of The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Liberal Studies By Shannan Butler Adler, B.A. Georgetown University Washington, D.C. April 1, 2014 ISRAEL’S HAREDIM EFFECT: THEOCRACY IN A DEMOCRATIC STATE Shannan Butler Adler, B.A. MALS Mentor: Ralph D. Nurnberger, Ph.D. ABSTRACT As the sole stable democracy in the Middle East and the only Jewish democratic country in the world, Israel faces unique challenges. The intersection of religion and civic responsibility has been a central internal conflict since Israel’s founding in 1948, and today has reached a critical breaking point. The Haredim are a rapidly growing insular Ultra-Orthodox segment of Israel’s Jewish population that have wielded disproportionate political influence since the birth of the nation. Refusing to seek jobs in a secular economy or participate in the military, these Jews perceive themselves as an independent religious community and actively seek to preserve that distinction. As Ultra-Orthodox, this community embraces only the most stringent interpretations of the Jewish bible, called the Torah, and insists that Israel’s democracy incorporate central tenets of biblical law within its governing bodies. The Haredim’s fervent rejection of the economic, educational, social, and military pillars that constitute the backbone of modern-day Israel comes at a high cost to the state. High unemployment rates and a refusal to participate in Israel’s conscription military place the Haredim at odds with the vast majority of Jewish Israelis who do not share their values and pay large sums of money to support them.
    [Show full text]
  • Israel's Religious Right and the Question of Settlements
    ISRAEL’S RELIGIOUS RIGHT AND THE QUESTION OF SETTLEMENTS Middle East Report N°89 – 20 July 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................................................... i I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 1 II. NATIONAL-RELIGIOUS FRAGMENTATION AND RADICALISATION............ 3 III. THE TIME OF THE ULTRA-ORTHODOX............................................................... 12 IV. JEWISH ACTIVIST TOOLS ........................................................................................ 17 A. RHETORIC OR REALITY? ............................................................................................................17 B. INSTITUTIONAL LEVERAGE ........................................................................................................17 1. Political representation...............................................................................................................17 2. The military................................................................................................................................20 3. Education ...................................................................................................................................24 C. A PARALLEL SYSTEM ................................................................................................................25 V. FROM CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE TO VIOLENCE ....................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Way Forward
    The Way Forward Israel and India as the two leading parliamentary democracies have traveled a long and difficult electoral terrain in the past 70 years toward political independence. Sharing commonalities on various socio- economic, religious and political issues, Israel and India also exhibit distinct differences on these issues. The successful holding of parliamen- tary elections from independence to date—twentieth in Israel and six- teenth in India—strengthens the spirit of their democratic survival. The political governance in the two nations in the twenty-first century assumes significance in view of transformation from politico–emotive issues to economico–pragmatic issues, especially in the aftermath of globalization of the 1980s. Their polities witness a unique feature of a shift from ‘one- party dominance’ to ‘multiparty coalition’, which came to be character- ized by the term, ‘Coalitional Multipolarity’. The focus of the book has been more on the changing dynamics of the parties and party systems of Israel and India. As both the countries share common historical and colonial experiences, the party formations in the two nations before and after independence get unprecedented signifi- cance. Researchers on parties and party systems might not have witnessed extensive commonalities in the systems of two parliamentary democratic © The Author(s) 2018 343 S.K. Choudhary, The Changing Face of Parties and Party Systems, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5175-3 344 The Way Forward nations in terms of their electoral behavior, democratic pattern of gover- nance, party dominance and uniform shifts in party systems. From this perspective, comparing democracies, parties and governance of Israel and India leave good scope for the new researchers to delve into the actual dynamics of the two systems.
    [Show full text]