Many want to say 'Enough is enough' to the ultra-Orthodox

Fri, Dec. 20, 2002
URI DROMI

Many want to say 'Enough is enough' to the ultra-Orthodox

JERUSALEM -- For more than 30 years, the mock Knesset elections held by 11th and 12th graders at the Blich High School in Ramat Gan prior to every Israeli election have attracted attention nationwide because they are seen as a grand rehearsal for the real thing. It is said that the results of these mock elections accurately predict the true ones, held a month later.

In the last campaigns, politicians fought to come to the high school to win the students' hearts and minds, hoping that favorable results would be translated to voting patterns in the real elections. This year, Principal Yisrael Zinger has banned the politicians from coming in person, allowing only election propaganda booths. Still, the parties took it so seriously that one of them -- the Green Leaf Party (calling for free use of soft drugs), which was not allowed to participate -- appealed to the Supreme Court, claiming that the Blich mock elections have become a self-fulfilling prophecy; thus the mere participation in them is an asset not to be denied.

In fact, the Blich myth is only partially true.

Indeed, in 1977 the students predicted the first ever turnover from Labor to Likud under Menachem Begin, and in 1992, the victory of Labor under Yitzhak Rabin. In 1996, however, they were wrong to predict that Shimon Peres would defeat Benjamin Netanyahu (Peres, as always, lost); and in 2001, according to the Blich ballots, Ehud Barak should have continued to be prime minister, while in reality, Ariel Sharon was the winner. These goofs notwithstanding, the myth of the Blich students as elections clairvoyants still holds.

That's why I watched this week's ''elections'' in Blich with some interest, which actually turned into concern when the results were announced.

The reason for my alarm was not the fact that the Likud came in first, with 38 out of the 120 seats in the Knesset, and Labor garnered only 21 seats. These results basically resemble actual polls taken among the public, and I believe they generally reflect the mood of the electorate. What bothered me was that the party that came in second at Blich -- with 32 seats! -- was Shinui (Change), a relatively new party whose platform boils down to one issue: down with the excessive power of the ultra- religious Jews in Israel.

I asked my daughter Yael what she thought about it. Since she first began voting in 1992, on the eve of every election she and I have conducted endless discussions: Should we vote for a big party, so that our candidate, should he win, becomes the next prime minister? Or, should we vote for a small party, thus ensuring that our stand will be expressed more precisely? Big party or small -- what my daughter and I always shared was a feeling for inclusiveness. In other words, voting for, not against, someone.

Shinui? I don't know, she said. Maybe it's about time that someone tells the ultra-Orthodox: ``Enough is enough.''

The truth is that the ultra-Orthodox in Israel have no one to blame for that but themselves. Their marrying of religion to politics was the primal sin, and they compounded this by claiming the rights, but not sharing equally, in the obligations of society: Many of them don't work but do receive tax-supported welfare payments, and many others don't serve in the army. In a society hard pressed like Israel, no wonder many non-Orthodox Jews feel like jerks, and there is nothing the Israelis hate more than to be taken as jerks. Shinui, then, is their response.

Israeli society, however, already plagued by schisms -- Arabs vs. Jews, religious vs. nonreligious, haves vs. have-nots -- needs healing, not more fragmentation and negative voting. Under the auspices of the Israel Democracy Institute, two Israeli Jews from opposite ends of the religious spectrum -- Professor Ruth Gavison and Rabbi Moshe Medan -- have come up with a proposal for a covenant between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews in Israel. The covenant covers all aspects of life, especially the public sphere on the Sabbath, where a balance should be reached between the sensibilities of religious people and the liberties of the nonreligious.

Next year, the Gavison-Medan covenant will be published and presented to the public as an example of how rifts in society can be breached through dialogue and compromise. In light of the Blich elections, I hope that we don't miss the train.

Uri Dromi is the director of outreach at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem.