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Every day i hear about another fight in Israel, another defector, and another politician blasting someone else. Is there anything positive going on there? Is yishai making the threshold?
Yes. Unlike in America, there is no attempt to systematically deny voting rights to people who might vote the way that the leaders don’t like.
charliehall: Even Arabs and hareidim who oppose the existence state are allowed to vote (though many choose not to). Also unlike America, there has never been a serious problem of dead people voting, or of fictitious voters (having a population registry helps), whereas in America one party (the Democrats) have frequently relied on all sorts of shenangians.
Israel does have free elections, with the ruling party frequently being voted out of office. That’s fairly rare outside of western Europe and North America. And due to proportional representation, every ideology has a chance at being in the kenesset (even with a 3% threshold, in the US the threshold is 50%).
charliehall: Israel most certainly does disenfranchise voters of minority parties by repeatedly raising the threshold that parties (including minority voters and arab parties) require to enter the kenesset, thus putting to waste votes for parties that missed the threshold.
Lior: Raising the threshold is not really a bad thing. Even with doing so, Israeli politics is still a three ring circus.
We live in a dangerous neighborhood and need a cohesive government to function. Whether that happens is still a big question mark.
If a party can’t get a minimum amount of support and the threshold isn’t that much, of what value are they? Also, there is musical chairs between parties and the people in them, so the level of disenfranchisement, if any, is miniscule.
Lior: The American threshold is 50% (in some states you can squeak with about 40% in a three way race). The truth, is under the American system, none of the small parties would be in the kenesset – only Labor and Likud (and only a handful of others). The chaotic Israeli system reflects a Jewish tradition of trying to include all factions in the community.
akuperma,
that is not true,
its possible to have 1 democrat in a congress of republicans (unlikely) and vice versa (just as unlikely) the knesset is like congress
@aperkupurma the israeli system is proof that Israel is a unsuccessful experiment
Of course, one positive of the Israeli political scene is the kavod Torah and respect for talmidei chachamim that it engenders…
In America, a minority ideology that is, say, 20% of the country, will end up with little or no representation in the Congress, since you need a majority in any district to get elected. In Israel, such a minority would get 20% of the seats.
For example, Hareidim are roughly 10% of Israel. They typically get 10% of the seats. If Israel has a single member system, you would probably get an hareidi elected from Bnei Brak, and maybe two or three for Jerusalem (depending on how district lines are drawn), but that’s it. There average district in Israel would be over 50000 people, and in the rest of the country you won’t find areas that size that are majority hareidi. You would have perhaps three hareidim in the kenesset (there were 18 in the outgoing one), all focused on the local interests Bnei Brak and Jerusalem.
Parliament should be abolished and a monarchy established with a ben Dovid as melech, as the Torah provides.
yybc: Nooooooo….
I mean, seriously, for a community which defines itself by its respect for Torah and gedolei Torah, to also simultaneously mix this world of Torah with the sordid world of parliamentary politics, which inherently causes machlokes and the besmirching of Torah scholars and Hashem’s name- it’s disgraceful.
Just go to Israel and see.
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