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Israel had its first general election since 2022 on Tuesday. Israel is an experiment in ethnonationalism, but it is also an experiment in proportional representation. Every conceivable minority group or special interest has their own political party. There is a party for Russian immigrants, a party for Ashkenazi Haredim, and a separate party for Mizrahi Haredim. Arabs of course vote for entirely separate parties from Jews (by custom, not law).
Israel is the most right-wing democracy in the world. In Israel, you can vote for the racist party (Likud), the extremely racist party (Religious Zionism), or the racism über alles party (Otzma Yehudit, literally "Jewish Power"). You can even vote for the pro-racism but anti-Netanyahu party (Together), or the pretending-not-to-be-racist party (Yashar). If you feel like sticking it to the man, there is at least one viable actually-not-racist party (The Democrats). Some would argue the Arab parties (Joint List and Ra'am) are non-racist, but others would say that they are just as racist but in the opposite direction.
The Knesset has 120 seats, so 61 seats are needed for a majority to form a government. Most of the results are in, and it's looking like deadlock.
Estimated seats by bloc
Netanyahu Bloc - 53
"Change" Bloc - 48
Arab Bloc - 19
In European legislatures, is is customary to have a cordon sanitaire against parties perceived as far-right. In Israel, there is a cordon sanitaire against the Arab parties. The Netanyahu bloc has lost its majority, but there is no clear opposition bloc large enough to form a government. Israeli Arab turnout was through the roof.* Bedouin nomads rode into town on camels to vote. The conventional wisdom seems to be that forming a coalition with any of the Arab parties post-October 7th is political suicide. If no one can form a majority, there could be another election as soon as next year.
*Netanyahu is accusing the Arabs of voter fraud. I have no idea if this means anything.
Lately, I've seen a meme on X about "Japan A" and "Japan B". The Japan A is the one we think of when we think of Japan. But there is also a Japan B: vulgar, rural, bad-food eating, modded-car driving, high school dropouts, etc...
Almost every country has a B side. There is a France B, Italy B, as well as the much more famous England B and United States B.
In any case, Israel B is hilarious. It's like 9 million Bronze Age tribespeople and shtetl dwellers attached to 1 million of the most high agency, high IQ people on Earth. They hitched their wagon to a very bright star, but the load gets heavier every year.
Israel's fundamental weakness is that Judaism is not a proselytizing religion, meaning they are unable to absorb or subjugate their defeated enemies quickly. Instead, they are forced to integrate Sephardi and Mizrahi to bolster their numbers, diluting the purity of their Ashkenazi brain trust. The permanent welfare handouts for the Haredi, though, is what really dims Israel's future. I expect the Ashkenazi to flee Israel in significant numbers to the US as soon as the Haredi obtain primary leadership within a governing coalition.
How these future "refugee" Ashkenazi integrate politically in the US will be interesting.
I don't know how big of an advantage this really is. After all, Muslims conquered and absorbed pretty aggressively more than a thousand years ago and there is still massive intramural conflict within the Muslim world.
I think that by "Ashkenazi" you mean Ashkenazi who are either secular or religious but not ultra Orthodox. But anyway, yeah it seems like the ultra-Orthodox are on track to take control of Israeli democracy. Will that actually happen? That's the sort of straight-line type prediction (ok, straight line on a logarithmic graph) which is never quite as certain as it seems.
I remember back in the 70s it was widely believed that sooner or later Israeli Arabs would become a majority and get control of Israel's government.
Haredi parties got 13 seats out of 120, down from 18 four years ago. Israeli media suggests that this is about Shas (the Sephardic Haredi party, but also the only party specifically dedicated to protecting Sephardi and Mizrahi interests) losing non-Haredi Sephardim to Likud as the war in Gaza makes the Haredi draft-dodging issue more salient. Religious Zionist parties also got 13 (down 1, possibly because a joint list broke up) - the vast majority of religious Zionist in Israel are Modern Orthodox in their faith, and the vast majority of Modern Orthodox Jews are religious Zionist in their politics. In addition, a lot of religious Zionists voted for Likud, and some for Together - a right-liberal joint list combining Naftali Bennet's otherwise right-liberal religious Zionist party and Yair Lapid's secular right-liberal party.
In terms of long-term trends, MO Jews also have high birth rates (though not quite as high as Haredim) and are also benefitting from religious-Zionism motivated immigration of (mostly MO) diaspora Jews. The MO/RZ bloc is therefore growing about as fast as the Haredi bloc. The question is whether the MO/RZ bloc remains allied with the Haredim against secular Jews (which is what Netanyahu has built his career on), or whether they ally with the secular right to strengthen Israel by eliminating Haredi parasitism (which is what Bennet wants). If the Netanyahu coalition holds together, then I expect the most economically productive secular Ashkenazim to feel increasingly unwelcome until they start moving to America, while the Haredim eat Israel from the inside.
The real question would then be 'does this process play out before netanyahu dies of natural causes?' It's kinda obvious he isn't going anywhere.
The basic logic of a religious-right coalition built around Likud is going to survive Netanyahu as long as the religious Zionist parties are willing to work with the Haredim.
Although I agree with you that if Netanyahu was eaten by a landshark tomorrow, we would see the rapid formation of an all-Zionist "unity" coalition (i.e. no Arabs, left or Haredi) with his successor as Likud leader becoming PM (possibly with an agreement to rotate with Eisenkot), and most Jewish Israelis would breathe a sigh of relief. There are 80 MKs to work with and you need 61, so I suspect the incoming PM is looking to cut rather than recruit partners.
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