The Right Choice:  Israeli Voters’ Defining Dilemma

Who should get my vote?

When Americans ask themselves that question, it’s typically a straight-up decision about which of the two main candidates they want to see elected, whether to the statehouse, Congress, or the White House. You don’t need a keen political mind or particularly strong math skills to make your decision – just basic knowledge of where the candidates stand on the issues you care about and an instinctive read on their level of integrity.

In Israel, now heading into its 26th election for the Knesset, figuring out whom to support is a much more complicated story.

First off, our multiparty parliamentary system treats the entire country as a single district. “One person, one vote” means something very different when you are not choosing a specific person to represent you in the Knesset – or preside over it as prime minister – but a party. One vote for one party out of many.

Most of the 38 parties registered this time around have no chance of getting anywhere near the Knesset unless they sign up for a tour of the building. And even among the larger parties, not all are guaranteed to pass the threshold of receiving 3.25% of the vote. For those that do meet that hurdle, how many of the names on their ranked lists will get to take up seats in the legislature? Under proportional representation, it’s anybody’s guess. And there is a whole lot of guessing disguised as punditry going on.

More important, there are precious few candidates with more than a snowball’s chance in Eilat of replacing our current, long-serving prime minister. On the left, there is Gadi Eisenkot, with his new Yashar party. On the right, there is Naftali Bennett – that is, if you still view him as solidly right after his infamous capitulation negotiating Arab parties into the coalition during his brief turn as P.M.

Viewed another way, however, the decision of whom to vote for is, for Israelis, not that different from the American voter’s. Which direction do you want the country to go in? Whose agenda do you want to carry the day – and whose is so anathema to your values that the other side is preferable despite its own failings?

Love Bibi or detest him, the inescapable truth is that for those (like this writer) who want a right-wing government in place to safeguard the Jewishness of the Jewish State, voting for Likud or one of its surefire partners is the only way to go.

If Likud doesn’t beat or come close to Yashar’s electoral share – with the difference to be made up by smaller, politically aligned parties – then it’s game over for the right. The buses and trains will start running through the streets of Jerusalem on Shabbat, marriage will become a civil matter, and Judea and Samaria will turn into the whipping boy of the state, serving up a plateful of schadenfreude for the frothing-at-the-mouth Europeans. If Eisenkot receives the mandate, it’s also possible that he will broker a deal with the Arab parties to form a government.

Those are red lines for most right-leaning voters. They certainly are for me.

But I’m not threatening to leave the country, and I won’t be doing so regardless of the outcome of the election. My loyalties go much deeper, and they have nothing to do with politics.

The same can’t be said for some on the left. Writing in The Jerusalem Post last week, Brian Blum quoted a Channel 12 survey that found 23% of Israelis might emigrate if Bibi wangles another term (a fourth, if anyone’s counting). Blum wrote: “I’m not planning to leave Israel, regardless of the outcome. But my children might. My doctors might. Our tax-paying techies and overburdened reservists might.”

There are many reasons to want change at the top: Netanyahu is getting on in years; he’s not in the best of health; his personal battles might be clouding his judgment; the country needs a clean slate and even a reckoning in the aftermath of October 7th.

And that’s just among voters in his own camp.

But until a new leader with the right (in both senses of the word) qualities emerges, we need to focus on the bigger picture. As much resentment as we may feel toward the freeloading charedim, aligning with them is a lesser evil than aligning with our existential adversaries.

This means that only right-leaning voters suffering from acute BDS – Bibi Derangement Syndrome – will cast their votes against him or his natural coalition partners.

That still leaves room for choice, including the Religious Zionist Party (HaTzionut HaDatit), Otzma Yehudit, Noam L’Yisrael, and even the new pro-change Haredi Public Party (HaTzibur HaCharedi), which is, gratifyingly, attracting support from outside that community as well.

Still, casting a ballot for a right-wing party other than Likud carries a risk. The party that started out as a joint list of five parties back in 1973 and has dominated the national camp in the decades since must receive enough votes, or the results will go to the leftist bloc. Voters for any of the smaller, Bibi-aligned right-wing lists have to hope that die-hard Likudniks will fill out the electoral landscape to ensure that President Herzog gives their leader – and not the left’s – the mandate to form a government.

That’s the other wild card in the Israeli system: The president, whose role is otherwise almost entirely ceremonial, can – technically – hand the mandate to whomever he sees as having the best chance of forming a governing coalition.

Thus, the ultimate outcome comes down to more than simply counting votes. The system involves a haggling-at-the-shuk element (appropriate for this part of the world, I suppose), which makes it exceedingly difficult to predict the outcome, despite polls upon polls claiming to do just that.

With all this in mind, I will go ahead and vote my conscience, then wait and see what unfolds – and most important, pray for the right leadership for the State of Israel.

Ziona Greenwald, J.D., is an editor at The Jewish Press and the author of the children's books “Kalman's Big Questions,” “Tzippi Inside/Out,” and most recently, the two-books-in-one “We Help Ima & We Help Abba.”