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Politics is a bit similar everywhere, in that people don’t actually vote on policy and the resulting government is nobody’s 1st choice. But when reporting on Israel, suddenly this fact is forgotten.
Israeli politics is tribal, and foreigners don’t understand the tribal landscape. The religious right gets most of its power from the “zionist religious” portion of the population, which is mostly a religious caste. There’s competition over who gets to wield this power, but it’s basically a constant portion of the population that they get to “represent”. That’s with a small caveat, that Likud also has representation from the religious right these days so they’ve also started siphoning those votes a bit.
Nope. Want me to explain why not?
Aside from that, you are making a fully general argument against trusting any sort of institutional reporting, ever. I wouldn't blame you for not reading the article - it's long - but I don't see how you can be this critical in good faith without having read it.
As for the NYT, it gets plenty of details wrong, but it's better than most other American institutional media, and most of its bias comes from selective omission and overt editorializing. If the NYT says that Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, I'll believe them. If NYT says that Trump fell down the steps and hit his head and died, I'll believe them. If they print a quote saying "Trump will take the vote away from women", I'll believe them that someone said those words, although the person might have been reading from a script provided by the reporter.
Why do you think they said that? I certainly didn't say that, and I don't recall them saying it either. But again, it's a long article, maybe it's in there somewhere. Someone would have to read it again to find out.
Again a fully general counterargument with no reference to any details.
This isn't new, or unique to Israel. It has a history in America, although it's harder to see with our FPTP system incentivizing 2 parties, and the increasing nationalization of politics is destroying it, but I remember people who lived in it. It didn't always have the religious angle, but most were close enough. There've been political machines, one-party counties, locally dominant religious groups, political dynasties, and in general, groups of people who vote one way because that's just what people like them do. The ones I'm most familiar with are varieties of "yellow dog Democrat" types in the South. They voted for a particular type of person, for particular reasons. Some of those reasons were more innocent ("I don't like my home being burnt to the ground") and some were not.
And a relevant similarity is that some people categorized as this group were also associated with low-grade terrorism against a disenfranchised population. That is, the various incarnations of the KKK, other similar groups, and independent actors. You can think of it as concentric circles. The circle of people who actually went out and did terrorist stuff was small. The circle of people who provided support and aid was larger. The circle who did neither, but approved of the results of the terrorism, was larger still. And largest was the circle of people who didn't participate, didn't help, didn't even approve, but still provided cover and stonewalled any attempt to stop the terrorism. Because they were still members of the group, and loyalty to the group is a high virtue, and you don't betray members of the group to outsiders.
And that's exactly what the article reminds me of. (Notice I didn't say that the article said that?)
It is generally true that unless you live in a culture, you don’t actually understand it. This is why an anthropologist who wants to have any meaningful understanding of a different society will embed himself in it, and why those who don’t can’t produce any meaningful insight. I don’t mind this point being “fully general” and don’t see this is a counter argument at all. Until you actually get a different culture, you can only project your own background axioms on it.
By the way, it’s almost equally hard to explain American culture (or sub-cultures) to Israelis. Since American media reigns supreme, many Israelis assume that they understand America. In truth they just think of Americans as being Israelis that live in a different place and speak English. The first thing I try to explain to other Israelis about the US is how socially distant your society is in relation to us (no offense, but I usually say “socially retarded” to get the point across). That usually doesn’t help, they’ll still assume that the modal American has e.g a group chat with other parents at day care, or that you talk politics at work, or that everyone wants kids and talks about it openly, or whatever else small background details that they take for granted but is missing in the states (and if you don’t think they’re missing, you’re proving the point).
Also, yes, you shouldn’t trust institutional media. In general, I’d say that most of the world outside one’s close realm of knowledge is almost unknowable without investing considerable effort. I think we only delude ourselves into thinking we know anything about far-away places and domains because it’s hard to admit the opposite.
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What's the tribal landscape like? It it Ashkenazi vote one way while Mizrahi vote another way, or do things split in some other way?
Complex. I’ll try to simplify as much as possible, and keep in mind these are general statements that obviously won’t apply to every individual voter.
First order: Jewish or Arab. Arabs vote for Arab lists (or the Arab list when they unify). Other groups are slightly represented in Jewish parties, but are very minor blocs anyway.
Second order: Jewish religiosity. There are several factions, but in general various Mizrahi-Haredi vote Shas, various Ashkenazi-Haredi vote Yehadut HaTorah (or don’t vote at all, if they’re anti-Zionist), Zionist Religious vote whatever current flavor of Zionist Religious list in this cycle or Likud. Secular and Traditional are the remaining majority.
Third order: Left-Right. This is almost meaningless in terms of policy, and doesn’t conform well to the American Left-Right dynamic, despite that influence continuously seeping in. For example, the right-coded government just implemented food stamps, and the left-coded Meretz stated they’d lower taxes last cycle (they didn’t get in). In broad strokes, ‘right’ leans slightly Mizrahi, slightly poor, rural-but-not-farming, urban poor, and a hawkish rhetoric. Left is the opposite: urban middle-class, rural-farmer and kibbutzim, slightly Ashkenazi, rhetoric can be anything re: Arabs. There are more flavors of left and centre to choose from than right, since Likud ate up most of the right (and is now being eaten from the inside by various pressure groups).
Cool!
If i can bother you for more info - what tribal allegiances have shifted as Israel has moved to the right? E.g. who do all the people who used to vote Labour vote for now?
I don’t know if I’m qualified enough to give you a good answer, to be honest. Labour was strongest before I was born, I wasn’t there to see it.
As far as I can tell, the Israeli left gradually lost power both due to demographic changes and because socialism in Israel failed economically. The biggest turning point was in the late ‘70s when labour lost the plurality vote for the first time, following… a whole bunch of stuff, really. Wiki has a long list under ‘history’ on the 1977 election. As I understand it, and again I wasn’t there, hyper-inflation was one of the biggest factors here. Older people tell of going back to a barter system for some items.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Israeli_legislative_election
I’d say the second biggest inflection point was the stabilization program in the mid 80’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Israel_Economic_Stabilization_Plan
After the Labour-led government distanced itself from socialism in practice, it lost the ideology it was previously offering. Today Labour is less socialist than Shas, and mostly serves as a vehicle for whoever wins leadership there to enter politics. Case in point, Yair Golan just won leadership of Labour - two years ago he lost when trying to gain leadership in Meretz. He just won because he’s perceived as a hero (rightly, I think) due to his actions on October 7.
The same tribe who used to vote Labour today vote for Yesh Atid (Yair Lapid) or Benny Gantz (I don’t even remember his party’s bame off the top of my head). They’re both kinda generic ‘centre’ parties, saying they like good things and dislike bad things. It’s not a good time for Israeli politics, honestly. The tribe’s biggest issue is that they (we?) don’t have as many children as everyone else, so over time the left-urban section of the population has lost a lot of electoral power.
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