Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Prime Minister

This week, much of my time was consumed by two very important political events: On stage, it was the vote for American independence from Great Britain, ala 1776. Not so coincidentally, our opening night happened to take place at the same time as the pivotal modern-day election for a new leader of the State of Israel.

We all know how 1776 turns out, with the birth of a new nation promising “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all its citizens. Unfortunately, there is still no clear answer as to who will become the next Israeli Prime Minister, despite the fact that the votes were cast and counted two days ago. While Tzipi Livni’s Kadima party narrowly earned the largest number of seats in Knesset, it remains unclear whether she will be able to form the majority coalition that she needs to secure the position of Prime Minister. Given the number of right-wing parties who also gained seats in the Knesset, it seems increasingly likely that Bibi Netanyahu and his Likkud party will muster up enough support for him to obtain the Israeli government’s top job.

Despite the fact that I’ve attended several lectures on Israeli politics, it has admittedly taken me a while to understand how Israel’s convoluted party system works. Fortunately, our HUC Israel Seminar class has spent the past two weeks focusing intensely on the elections. In fact, we all consider ourselves very lucky to be living in Israel during such an exciting time, disregarding the fact that Israeli elections happen much more than we would probably like them to happen (very few Israeli Prime Ministers have held office for their full four-year term).

Since none of us students could vote in the real elections because we don’t actually hold Israeli citizenship, we partook in our own mock elections at HUC. We were each assigned to a party and had to compile a voters’ guide based on our political principles. I became a member of Hadash, a left-wing minority group made up predominantly of Arabs. It was interesting to research the ideology of a party that I would ordinarily ignore simply by virtue of the fact that it is run by Arabs. After doing some research, however, it seems like some of Hadash’s policies could serve to benefit the Jews as well, particularly its goals towards improving education, workers’ rights, and protecting the environment. Still, I realize that most of them are too idealistic to actually be viable, which is why my own vote ultimately went to Kadima. Regardless, Hadash ended up receiving quite a few seats in the HUC elections, which were skewed overwhelmingly towards the left (Kadima ultimately emerged as the victor). This, of course, is not surprising given the fact that we’re all passionate proponents of liberal Judaism!

Now comes the hard part: It is not enough for a potential candidate for Prime Minister to win the majority of Knesset seats via election – hence the reason why Tzipi Livni may ultimately not end up as Prime Minister despite the fact that her Kadima party emerged victorious. Based on our HUC election results, it seems like it would have been easy for us to form a left-leaning coalition. However, our teachers threw a curve ball at us by altering the results to more closely mirror the results of the actual election.

Being a member of a minority party like Hadash is what really helped me to understand the challenges involved in building a coalition. When my party members and I sat down to do the math, we realized that it would be impossible for us to have a place in the government unless we made concessions and joined up with an unlikely alliance. With this in mind, we attempted to join a coalition between Kadima, Labor, and Shas, the party for Sephardic Haredi Jews. However, this coalition was deemed infeasible when we received a mock “news update” claiming that Hadash supporters were demonstrating against the party’s alliance with religious Jews. Apparently this is not something that would ever happen in real life -- and in hindsight we were definitely naive for trying to make such cooperation happen! With the tables turned, the Knesset majority Kadima then turned to join a coalition with the right-wing Likkud and Yisrael Biteinu – two groups that Hadash would never in a million years associate with.

At this point, our party slowly accepted the fact that we stood no chance at obtaining significant position in the government. We felt so powerless as we realized that this must be what so many of the smaller parties go through in the Israeli electoral system. I now have a greater appreciation for how difficult it must be for the Israeli Knesset to create unity. Here's hoping that it won't take them too long this time around and that it moves ever to the left, never to the right (sorry, couldn't resist the reverse 1776 quote...)