With low voter turnout, Israel is no democracy
Op-ed: Why are those who carry the state on their shoulders, go to the army and pay taxes, incapable of doing a simple thing like voting? Why are they letting the minority force its will on the majority?
It's not exactly "we." It's only part of us. The part which carries the state on its shoulders. The part which works and goes to reserve service and pays taxes and wants a sane country. The part which is usually not affiliated with any political extreme. The Zionist, national, Jewish-democratic part.
And it is precisely that sector, the sector which can change and make Israel more normal and less radical, which is abandoning the state.
The figures are astonishing: The highest voter turnout in the latest Knesset elections was recorded in Modiin Illit and in Elad – two ultra-Orthodox communities in which about 90% of the residents went out to vote. The voter turnout in the Jewish community in Hebron was 88%. The other top spots are held by additional haredi communities.
We should salute them. They are much more democratic than Tel Aviv or Holon, where nearly 40% failed to vote, or Eilat, where almost 60% did not vote.
The result is that Israel is not a democracy. Most of the time, it is a state in which the minority succeeds in dictating its agenda while disregarding the majority.
For example, the majority in Israel is against a haredi monopoly on conversion, but the suffocating grip of the radical wing in the haredi sector paralyzes the majority. In the Israeli democracy, the majority objects to a bi-national state, but in the past few decades a small minority has succeeded in forcing its will on the majority.
This is happening for two reasons: Because of the form of government and because the ideological minorities have become the deciding factor in recent decades. Their political power is much bigger than their percentage in the population because they know what they want. They are not choosing lawlessness and despair. They are flocking to the polls in masses in order to make an impact.
Why the hell are those who go to reserve service and pay taxes incapable of doing a simple thing like voting? Why is the percentage of non-voters highest among the hundreds of thousands who took the streets in 2011? Why can't those who flooded the virtual domain with cottage cheese and pudding protests unable to take a further step and go the voting station?
This is one of Israel's greatest tragedies, because if all these people had voted, the political map would be different, with fewer extremist parties and a bit more stability. And mainly, a Knesset which represents the voters with a decent representation for those who carry the state on their shoulders. But that isn't happening. Lawlessness is winning.
The surveys were wrong last time, and they are wrong again. It's not a done deal yet. A significant part of the non-voters party belongs to the political center, and they are the ones who should be worried about the minority's growing strength because they are the ones who will pay the price for it.
But they can make a change, they can prevent a coalition which depends on the radical left, just like they can prevent a coalition which depends on the hared-nationalistic wing. All they have to do is vote. Not for the state, for themselves.
