Israel’s Political Stalemate: The conflict between religious and secular Jews has now started.

American Thinker ^ | 10/29/2019 | Mike Konrad

[SeekAndFind]

It looks like Israel will be heading to a third election. It seems both sides, Netanyahu’s right and Gantz’s left-center cannot get the 61 votes needed to get a majority in the Knesset. There is one villain in this, and one victor.

The reason Netanyahu could not get a victory is that Avigdor Lieberman refuses to throw his weight behind a Netanyahu coalition, unless the special privileges tendered to the religious right are done away with. For years, the religious right have wrested a lot of concessions from the Israeli state, such as draft exemptions and control of marriage.

Secular Israelis complain that Haredim take advantage of social welfare but do not contribute to the military or the economy. - The Conversation

And then there are the marriage laws:

The Israeli government has granted authority over marriage only to the Orthodox rabbinate, not Reform, Conservative or any other more liberal denomination. And the Orthodox rabbinate’s strict rules bar many secular and Reform Jews from getting married at all. - Washington Post

The attitude of some of the Orthodox Rabbis towards the non-Orthodox can be incomprehensible. Israel’s Chief Rabbi would not refer to the Pittsburgh synagogue – where the massacre occurred last year – as a synagogue, as it was not Orthodox.

Israel’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau on Sunday condemned the killing of 11 American Jews in the Conservative Tree of Life Synagogue, but seemed to equivocate on calling the house of worship a synagogue, instead terming it “a place of clear Jewish character.” - Times of Israel

[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

[Wuli]

Great post; good analysis

[jjotto]

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/latest-population-statistics-for-israel

Of Israeli Jews, 43% self-identify as secular, 22% as traditional, 13% as traditional-religious, 11% as religious and 10% as ultra-Orthodox. According to the Israel Democracy Institute, the percentage of ultra-Orthodox is slightly higher.