A clandestine undertaking on behalf of Israel, the Jets and the Jews.

 
Marginalizing the Right

After the Rabin assasination, it is reasonable to expect Israelis opposed to their government's decisions to express verbal restraint. Calling Prime Minister Sharon a traitor, for example, is absolutely unacceptable. References to leftist leaders in a similar regard are no less repugnant.

The Israeli right may, however, protest and oppose the government through legitimate political means. And thus far, the protests by the Yesha Council and others have not come close to crossing the line.

Unfortunately, some on the Israeli left feel a need to sensationalize the fact that a tiny minority of Israelis may have dangerously extremist views. While that fringe must be condemned and isolated, there is a disturbing tendency to greatly exaggerate the number of those holding fanatical positions.

For example, in this week's Jerusalem Report , Ina Friedman interviews Dr. Ami Pedahzur of Haifa University. Pedahzur claims that support for the Kahane ideology is growing within both the charedi and the national religious public, and that more than 20 percent of all Israelis now support that ideology. As proof, he cites the purported notion that "most of those who voted last January for the radical right-wing Herut party -- featuring Kahane protégé Baruch Marzel -- were ultra-Orthodox citizens. Gush Emunim [the original spearhead of the religious Zionist settler movement] abhorred Kahane, but more recently there’s been a slide of parts of the religious-Zionist camp toward Kahanist views, and Marzel is the darling of the extremist settlers." Rather than challenging these statements, Friedman validates them, responding: "Your findings on the support for Kahane’s views among the general population are startling."

Pedahzur's claims are absolute nonsense. The Herut party, after all, did not even receive enough votes to join the Knesset. Instead, only 36,202 Israelis, or 1.1 percent of those voting, voted for Herut. If there were any truth to Pedahzur's statement, Herut would have receiveed at least a few seats and a few hundred thousand votes. Instead, Herut's total failure in the elections is evidence of even very right-wing Israelis' rejection of fanaticism. While it may be true that a majority of Herut's voters were charedim, it is obvious that the overwhelming number of charedim voted for either Shas (11 Knesset seats, 258,879 votes) or United Torah Judaism (5 Knesset seats, 135,087). That a majority of Herut's voters were religious is about as relevant as the fact that a majority of KKK supporters are white and Christian.

Ultimately, the ideologically motivated drivel of Pedahzur and similar "experts" and the acceptance of such false statements by media members with similar dispositions is as much a threat to democracy as are the small number of extremists to whom Pedahzur refers.
posted on 6/30/2003