Rafi Demogge
Mosaic Magazine, Aug. 3, 2023
“Most importantly for the question presently at issue: Jews are extremely politically polarized along self-ascribed secular vs. non-secular identities.”
In my essay “The Looming War over Israel’s War of Return,” I predicted that Israel’s immigration regime would become increasingly controversial and politicized. I based this forecast on the underlying fears of both the right and the center-left camp, and on the fact that given these fears, both sides have an interest in tinkering with which immigrants they allow into the country. Ofir Haivry and Yehoshua Pfeffer present criticisms of my analysis whose overall tenor is very similar: they both criticize the factual basis of these fears, as well as the demographic categories I use to analyze them, and suggest that Israel may not be quite as divided as I make it out.
Ironically, this kind of response—that Israel’s social crisis isn’t as deep as my article suggested—while Clearly well-intentioned, exemplifies the very problem whose seriousness it questions. To show why, I will cite yet another poll (by Channel 12).
Shockingly, as of mid-July, 67 percent of Israelis worry about the possibility of a civil war. But here’s a catch: among Israelis who voted for the bloc that opposes Netanyahu, 85 percent now worry about a civil war, while among supporters of the Netanyahu bloc, that number is a much-lower 49 percent (this latter number wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the article, but we can calculate it based on Knesset seats). This means that while not all voters of the right-religious bloc are optimists, almost all of the optimists are supporters of this bloc (perhaps including, and admittedly I’m going out on a limb here, Haivry and Pfeffer themselves).
However, if one side overwhelmingly believes that Israeli society is polarized enough to be in danger of civil war, then Israeli society is in fact extremely polarized, even if the other side is more optimistic. If anything, such a stark difference between the two blocs is itself evidence of polarization (even if not evidence of the true likelihood of civil war).
Haivry contends that the category of secular Jew in Israel is too elastic to be useful, since most secular Jews observe at least some religious practices; thus, secular Jews should be seen as continuous with traditionalists. Pfeffer makes a similar point, citing Tommy Lapid’s witticism that 20 percent of Israeli Jews are secular, 20 percent are Orthodox, and 60 percent are Orthodox but non-observant. Both Pfeffer and Haivry note that the 2016 Pew survey shows that religious practices have deep inroads into the world of secular Jews.
.… [To read the full article, click here]
