Israels Elections: A Quick Summary of What You May Have Missed

 There are many good summaries of Israel’s upcoming election available. With this, there have been both facts ignored or lies told. Here are five facts for the upcoming election which tackle some of what you need to know:

1. 

Religious Zionism (ט), is a Religious and Zionist party (shocker) that is poised to become the backbone of Bibi’s coalition right-wing coalition. Bezalel Smotrich, a founder of the Zionist NGO Regavim, is the party’s leader. 

Religious Zionism was formed as a coalition of three parties; Religious Zionism (the namesake and largest of the parties at the time of its founding), Noam (a small party for social conservatism), and Otzma Yehudit. Otzma advocates one Jewish State in all of Judea and Samaria, expelling anyone from Israel who supports terrorism, and a promise not to let Hamas off easy next time a mini-war erupts.

Otzma Yehudit has become famous internationally. It's been attacked as every bad thing in the book by lying journalists abroad (including Reuters and AP), the lying-factory website that is wikipedia, and even left-wing press in Israel. Ironically, many foreign journalists have leveraged Ben-Gvir to the forefront of Religious Zionism by unfactually stating he is the parties leader. This foreign attraction seems to be to the parties advantage in name-recognition. Back in the world of sanity, this “Anti-Arab” party has gotten support (and retweets) from a surprising source: Saudi Arabia. 

2.

Shas (שס), the semi-sectarian Sephardic/Mizrahi Orthodox Jewish identity party, is expected to lose many of its voters to Religious Zionism and in particular Ben Gvir’s party. The result is the party is expected to be close in number of MKs to the Ashkenazi Orthodox Party, United Torah Judaism (ג). 

3.

Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party (ל), long slandered as an “*Anti-Arab Racist” (what international media called opposing Hamas and supporting land swaps with Fatah as a solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict), has a plank of his party platform committed to “equality” in Israel. 

Currently, Liebermans party has also been pushing to increase the scope of the Law of Return in the Knesset. The party's stated desire is any Russians with Jewish heritage going back four generations should be able to immigrate to Israel. 

4.

Balad, an explicitly anti-Zionist, explicitly pro-terrorism party of Arabs in Israel, is projected not to enter the Knesset. The Joint List, another explicitly pro-terrorism party (in Arabic at least), is teetering on the edge. Ra’am, a largely Bedouin Arab and Islamic identity party which was in Naftali Bennets coalition, also hovers on the edge. 

On the right-side, Ayalet Shaked’s Zionist Spirit party (ב) is fighting to enter the Knesset. Polls consistently show that if Shakeds party, arguably a more right-wing continuation of Naftali Bennets Yamina, passes the threshold, Bibi Netanyahu will have the votes to form a strong, right-wing government. 

5. 

Israel has 14 parties with a conceivable (even if extremely far-fetched) chance of passing the 3.25% threshold and entering the Knesset. But there are also 25 small parties with very little chance of passing the threshold to enter the Knesset. 

Major themes in these parties are:

1. Parties whose focus is cost of living issues.

2. Parties to help or represent the elderly.

3. Pro-Israel Ethnic or Religious Minority Parties (in one case a Judeo-Christian party).

4. Extreme Libertarians.   

Parties which may conceivably enter the Knesset also share many of these views, or have factions inside them which do. 

*This is, of course, the same media which thinks Shoah Survivors like Walter Bingham should be forced out of Judea and Samaria.