Rachel Gur: Thank you very much.

Rachel Gur: So, yes, Israel is a parliamentary democracy, which is actually the most common form of government around the world. Though it is very dissimilar from the U.S. system, and perhaps it’s one of the reasons that many an American audience kind of look at us oddly. Israel is what you call–if we use our exact term–we’re a parliamentary, single-constituency, party-list, proportional-representation electoral system. So, that’s a bit of a mouthful, but basically what it means is that we have one house–that we don’t have an upper legislature or lower legislature–and we have one house. We have 120 MKs [Members of Knesset], and they are elected vis-a-vis party lists, i.e.,–

Rachel Gur: Correct, it’s MK. It’s actually interesting why we have 120, which is it’s a throwback to the Second Temple period, where there was a Council of Elders that had 120 members. And, that’s actually how we got to the number of 120. Which [?] as a sign is a bit of a problem, because there were not nearly as many citizens in the Second Temple period of ancient Judea as there are today in modern Israel. And, one of the many frustrations with the Israeli system of government is that ironically there are actually too few MKs–too few members of Knesset or MPs [Members of Parliament].

If you look at a European or other parliamentary democracy of similar size–we have currently about 8 million Israelis who can vote. And, we will have–can vote at the moment or potentially will have the vote when they come of age–we will soon hit 10 million. And, if you look at other European countries of similar size, we should have somewhere between 300, 350, even up to 400 MKs.

So, although the historical throwback or mention is romantic and is fascinating, like many things with Israel, and especially the Israeli democracy raises the question whether that it is relevant today and whether it is an effective form of governance.

So, what we said was we have party-list systems. So, it basically means that Israelis don’t vote directly for anyone who represents them, at least not on the national level. On the municipal level, it’s a bit more direct, but even then not much. And they basically–when in Israeli goes into the voting booth, they vote for the party. They don’t vote for a specific individual. The head of the party’s name might be on the ballot, but they’re voting for the party.

And, the party list is made up either by an internal vote of the party members in a primary; or what’s become much, much, much more common in the last decade, the parties are simply appointed by the head of the party. So, basically, what we’ve seen over the last 10 years is that the internal democratic mechanisms of all of the major parties have been phased out. And, if we’re looking at difficulties within a democratic system, I would start from that.

Rachel Gur: It’s very old school. It actually comes out of one of our videos, in one of our famous cultural movies called Sallah Shabati, in which he mocks the Israeli system and how easily it can be turned because it’s basically little paper ballots. It actually is little paper ballots that you stuff into a little paper envelope and then you put it in a big cardboard box. I mean, it looks more like an election in a middle school–

Rachel Gur: than modern democracy. But, yeah, that is still the way we do it.

Rachel Gur: Correct. I would say the list number is really problematic for two reasons. One is the fact that we are appointed on a list as opposed to having–we have no geographic elections: we have no representation in that sense. Israeli MPs don’t have a district.

For example, if you’re a British MP and you’re very popular within your home district, you can oppose your own party leader. Right? Because you have your own independent base of power; and you have a specific demographic, a specific group of people to whom you are answerable. In Israel, unfortunately for MPs, that’s not the case. You can’t say I am–there is a little bit of geographic representation as in the sense that in some of the major parties, they have slots that are saved for immigrants, women, someone who represents the South, the North, kind of the Central district. But those are voluntary positions. And once you’ve been elected, you can’t be re-elected as the representative of the North or the South. So, obviously, there’s very little incentive for you to actually in fact be their representative.

So, that’s the first problem with the party list: is that in the end, you’re not answerable to anyone.

And you have very limited independence. And, that is indeed the second problem. When people talk about the lack of balance of power between the Executive and the Legislature in Israel, generally what they’re talking about is the fact that the Legislature appoints the government, right? We have 120 MKs, of which about approximately 30 to 40 become the Government, the Cabinet, the Ministers, while still simultaneously serving as Members of the Knesset. That’s changed a little bit in the past decade with what’s called the Norwegian Law, but not significantly.

And, that’s often the reason that Israel is criticized for a lack of clear balance or clear checks-and-balances between the Legislature and the Executive, because essentially the Legislature appoints the Executive.

But, I think that that’s a misnomer because that is more or less the way all Parliamentary Democracies work, to a greater or lesser extent.

So, while that may be an oddity to the American eye or to the French eye, that is not the issue. I think the greater issue is that in essence, the Executive appoints the Legislature in Israel, right? Because who is in the Executive? Those are the heads of the parties who are making up the party lists, who are the one and only person who will decide if you, Junior MP, make it into the next Knesset or not. Right? So, how are you supposed to check your boss, basically, when you are in the Legislature and they are in the Executive? And, that creates a problem.

So, we have a Legislature who appoints an Executive; an Executive who appoints a Legislature. And, this incestuous loop often loops out the public. And therein lies the issue.

Rachel Gur: A hundred percent. I mean, in fact, if you look at the Israeli political system today, the majority of the mid-sized parties, like Bennett presumably will return to politics, or Lieberman, or Gideon Sa’ar, or to some extent Benny Gantz, right? The people who are running the major parties are all people who have had a personal falling out with Benjamin Netanyahu, and as a result, have formed their own parties. Starting with Yisrael Beiteinu–Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu was the first. But this has become a trend in which we have–with the exception of the Arab parties and in the traditional center/center-left parties like Labor or Meretz–the majority of the Israeli political system is consistent of Netanyahu and those Netanyahu used to employ and has isolated or fallen out with over the years. So, it’s a deeply personal political system.

Rachel Gur: There’s actually a fair amount of pluralism even within the ultra-orthodox parties, which is interesting. There are parts that lean left, let’s say, economically. There are parts that lean, let’s say, right economically.

There are parts that lean left–for example, Aryeh Deri, a leader of the Shas Party, a phenomenon within the world of Haredi politics–he’s been a kingmaker for almost 30 years now–is personally identified politically in terms of security, questions of security and foreign affairs, as a left-winger. While, the Haredi public as a whole, especially younger generation, has kind of slid right in their own opinions when it comes to questions of security.

Rachel Gur: the ultra-orthodox–

Rachel Gur: It’s incredibly contentious. I would note though that a great deal of the Shas voters–the Haredi world, like any other world, has an enormous amount of real and vivid internal politics. And, those who are represented within the Shas Party, many, many, many of them do serve. Not comparable to the rates of the general public or the religious Zionist public, but many do serve. As opposed, for example, to UJT [Yahadut HaTora, United Torah Judaism], or what they call the Ashkenazi–the other half of the Haredi world–which serves in much, much, much lower numbers. So, even within the Haredi world, there is a spectrum.

Rachel Gur: There’s no formal constitution.

Rachel Gur: The laws that were sort of maybe recognized starting in the mid-nineties, retroactively, as a kind of a [?prec?] constitution or a pre-constitution or having constitutional status–it depends who you ask and what time of day you ask it at. But, no, there was no formal constitution: certainly nothing similar to the American model of one single document that creates–a founding document from a founding father.

Rachel Gur: [?] So, first of all, in Israel you only almost-only ever have a plurality. Not since the early days of the state has any single party won an actual absolute majority, which in this case would be a majority of the 120 seats. So, i.e., you’ve got to have 61.

So, in Israel, we are always looking at a plurality. And, perhaps what’s interesting is that the party that forms the–and this kind of highlights how important personal politics and coalition building is in the Israeli system–which is that the largest party is often, but not necessarily, the party that forms the government.

If you recall, there were the elections of, I believe it was in 2000 and–let me think, I think it was 2013, [inaudible, a few words in Hebrew, 00:20:25], when Tzipi Livni actually became the largest party. Her party, Kadima, at the time had one seat above Likud, which was then run by Netanyahu as it is today. But, she couldn’t find partners that would bring her over the 61 threshold. And, in the end she had to basically abdicate the mandate that’s given by the President. It’s one of the President’s–the President in Israel is a largely ceremonial role. And, that’s kind of one of the few points of actual involvement in the political system, where the President gives the Party Leader in the Knesset–not the largest, not the leader of the largest party, but the leader of the party most likely to be able to form a coalition–the mandate to form a government. So, again, kind of the wheeling and dealing is not just a formality: it is really essential to the Israeli political system.

And I would also say, I think that’s part of what leads to–there’s a lot of disenfranchisement. I think this happens in the United States as well over the last, at least 10 years, maybe 15 years, where a lot of people feel very frustrated with the political system. They feel that they vote, but they don’t get what they voted for. They vote, but their votes don’t influence, they don’t hold–like, they’re unable through a voting mechanism to get the government that they hoped for or to hold their political leaders accountable. There’s a growing sense of frustration. Which I think is, in Israel–and not just in Israel, but a larger global phenomenon as is the move rightwards, which is a global phenomenon, which Israel is part of.

But, yes, what happens is, is basically you form a government; and you do that by one of two measures. One is money and the second is positions.

So, the head of the largest party or the party that is spearheading the negotiations then sits down at the negotiating table with generally two, three, even four or five partners. And, what they do is they offer them a bit or a block or a portion of the sovereignty of the nation in return for their participation within the government. So, they offer them positions in government.

And, the larger the party or the more important the partner party, the better or the more prestigious positions they’ll be offered. Most prestigious being a Minister of Finance or a Minister of Justice, right? These are very senior positions which have–a Minister of Defense in Israel is critical. These are kind of positions that have independent power sources or independent bases. They control the largest ministries, the largest budgets.

And so, an ideal system: The head of the major party–the party that’s going to put forth the Prime Minister–would want to keep those positions within their own party. But, the reality is different: You need to bring in your partners. And so, you do that by giving them ministries and giving them positions. And you also do that by giving them money–what’s called coalition money.

So, in Israel we have a budget. The budget is tightly controlled–much more so [?than?] in the United States. We’re a small country; we don’t have the luxury of enormous deficit. And, one of the lessons learned from the runaway inflation of the 1980s is very tight control by the Treasury–a professional level of the Treasury, not the political level of the national budget. And, every item in that budget is closely scrutinized.

But–and then you get to the asterisk–you have the coalition money.

Coalition money is money that is allotted from the Treasury, generally not to the parties, but to organizations that the party is a patron of. Right? So, if we’re in the religious Zionist world or in Haredi world, this would be NGOs [Non-government Organizations] or generally educational institutions, military prep institutions. We’re talking about religious Zionists, yeshivot, or, these institutions of higher education or lifelong education that the ultra-orthodox world is part of. It can be day schools, it could be community centers, it really could be almost anything.

Rachel Gur: We have DOGE on steroids.

Rachel Gur: In reverse, right? We’re not cutting, we’re giving.

Rachel Gur: Yeah. I would even go more so. We have huge education–I mean, there’s huge parts of the ultra-orthodox world that, without government funding, fall apart. I mean, it’s not even a majority: it’s everything. It’s 90-plus percent of the funding. And that is coalition money.

I would note, perhaps–to raise a question–I know that this sort of thing has become very unpopular in the United States–I actually think the coalition money, ironically, is a positive thing for the Israeli democracy. And, I think it’s a positive thing because, well, I guess, in Israel, any problem you can solve with money is a small problem, an easy problem to some extent. We live in a difficult region, and problems you can solve with money are somewhat easier.

But also, because I think it creates buy-in.

When the Haredi parties–when the ultra-orthodox parties–started becoming part of the inner workings, the wheeling and the dealing of the Israeli system 20, 30 years ago, their populations were largely detached from the general Israeli public. Their children didn’t necessarily speak Hebrew: many spoke Yiddish. Right? They learned in their separate schools. They worked–in-as-much as they worked–in a separate environment. They didn’t have a press system or newspapers or television or internet sites that covered the workings of the Israeli government or the society in general. And, today that has completely and utterly revolutionized. I mean, if you want to see a free kicking, screaming, biting, free press, you go to the Haredi world. It is cruel and critical and brilliant in its ability to follow, analyze, and pick apart Israeli society and politics.

And, now mainstream Israeli society is in the house. Whether it’s in print or the Internet, and yes, they have computers in much greater percentages than one would realize, or whether it’s podcasts or radio shows, the money, the coalition money has brought political buy-in from the parties, but it has also bought a cultural buy-in from the man on the street. And, I think that it would be very, very hard for the Haredi subsections of society to backpedal that and become less interwoven into the general Israeli society.

And, that’s what gives me hope for the question of the draft that you mentioned earlier. I think in the end, they can’t backpedal. And, we will see, whether it’ll be in five years or in 10 years or in less than that, we will see a–and here I’m predicting the future, which is always a tricky thing–but I think that we will see a huge uptick in Haredi enlistment in the Israeli army, whether it’s in specific subsections, whether it’s more in the medical field. You know what I’m saying? No question that it’ll have to be adapted at some point, but the start of that process is in the coalition money.

Rachel Gur: It creates dependency in the end.

Rachel Gur: There’s a difference between–once you cross the line into dependency, then maybe you’re no longer milking the system, but the system owns you.

Rachel Gur: It’s an alien backroom with zero transparency to the public.

Rachel Gur: A hundred percent. Coalition agreements are published and they are published on the Knesset website. But, as the Supreme Court ruled back in the early days, in a seminal ruling, that although they are agreements–i.e., they look like contracts–they are not in any sense enforceable.

Rachel Gur: Exactly, it’s a handshake deal. And yes, that has been brought to the court by one party, claiming that another party didn’t fulfill their obligation. And, the court basically said, ‘This is between you guys.’

Rachel Gur: Politics is people. In a large country; and in a small country, all the more so. You can’t get more personal.

Rachel Gur: Up until 1992, you only needed 1% of the vote. Correct.

Rachel Gur: Wait: In 2004, they actually raised it to 2%. In 2014 to three and a quarter [inaudible]. And, at the time the idea was to get up to four or even above. It never happened. But the hope–the arc–that it was some very well-meaning political scientists of an American background who completely missed the mark when it comes to–

Rachel Gur: a parliamentary democracy. But, yeah, that was the idea, was to stabilize this chaotic coalition system to help build large parties so they wouldn’t be prey to manipulation, extortion, on the part of kind of very small parties that were able to control resources that was not proportional to their representation within the general society.

And so, that was the idea.

The big jump–the seminal jump–is, as you said, was 2014, from 2% to 3.5%.

Rachel Gur: Yeah, 3.25%. Correct.

Rachel Gur: Exactly. It’s actually worse than having your vote being thrown out, right?–

Rachel Gur: If you vote for a third party and your third party doesn’t make it in, then basically they just shred your vote. Right?

But in Israel, the way it works is it’s a percentage, right? You need 3.25 percent of the vote to get in.

So, if your party doesn’t get in, your votes are essentially redistributed between the parties that did make it into the Knesset.

And, the way the algorithm works–it’s a bit complicated–but the way it works is that it heavily favors the large parties. Which basically means that your seats are redistributed to your competition. Right?

So, for example, in January, 2023, Meretz drops below–this is the last election–below the threshold list, which is a far-left or center-left party, assuming where you fall on that spectrum. And their seats are redistributed between the major parties.

And, the way it ends up working out is Ben-Gvir, the far-right, actually ends up with an additional seat that more or less is the people who wanted to vote for the far-left. And, he inherits those votes. And, obviously, that is a source of enormous frustration within the Israeli political system; and, the necessity to game the system so that you are above the threshold and don’t fall below it. And if you fall below, don’t give your seats–right?–to your ideological opposition, has become a kind of a founding strategic principle of the Israeli system.

And you look back at this–let’s just go back a second. The purpose of this well-meaning and well-intended reform was to stabilize the system.

And, as you said, it passed in 2014; and it actually had almost entirely an opposite effect of just completely destabilizing the Israeli system. We start seeing that effect coming into place in 2019, when we go into the first of a maddening series–this must’ve been when he came to Israel–of five re-elections.

And what it starts with is: in April, 2019, Naftali Bennett, who was running on it was called the New Right Party then, it falls just, just, just under the threshold with 3.24% of the vote. Okay? So, it’s maddeningly close. And, in fact, when all those votes are tallied out, he short about 5,000 votes. Which is, I mean, it’s the blink of an eye. It’s nothing, right? They then re-tally the votes. You have to recalculate and it goes down to 3.22. But, the point stands: it’s incredibly close. [More to come, 39:45]