The Israeli Electoral System: Explained
EXPLAINED
THE ISRAELI ELECTORAL SYSTEM
Israel has only one house in its legislature, the Knesset. Elected representatives are referred to as MKs, Members of the Knesset.
The voting system is entirely proportional, and the number of seats is directly related to the number of votes each party gets.
Just as in the UK, Israelis over the age of 18 vote for 120 seats in the Knesset on a paper ballot.
Citizens vote for the list of candidates put forward by the party of their choice rather than an individual. The system is designed to produce a coalition with the goal of producing more political consensus.
A single party has never achieved an outright majority of 61.
The largest number of seats a single party has got in an election was the Alignment party (now part of Labor) in 1969 with 56 seats.
This proportional system ensures that the political, religious and ethnic diversity of Israeli society is represented in the legislature.
However, this system can give small parties an outsized influence as they often hold the balance of power.
There is a “threshold” of 3.25% which parties have to reach to get any seats, the most recent election in 2022 was affected by a leftwing party and an Arab party both just missing this bar and losing all their MKs.
As the government is made up of many political parties with competing priorities, the governments often aren't very stable.
Between 2018 and 2022 there were 5 snap elections in four years.
Whilst this system does keep politicians in tune with the needs of Israeli people, it does make long term policy change difficult. As the system is entirely proportional, there are no constituencies. Individuals who want to get in touch with an elected representative would simply choose any of the 120 MKs to approach.
New campaign calling on the UK to ban the political wing of Hamas
https://www.israelbritain.org.uk/wbbanhamas/
I am sure you will be surprised and disappointed to hear that the British Government only proscribes the military wing of Hamas, and that its political wing is not banned by the UK.
Please join our campaign with IBA to change this and get Hamas banned in its entirety in the UK by using this link to email your MP and the Home Secretary:
https://www.israelbritain.org.uk/wbbanhamas/
Since 2006 has been responsible for igniting four major conflicts and the death of more than six thousand civilians.
Hamas has committed a multitude of war crimes: the direct and indiscriminate targeting of civilian populations, use of human shields, enlistment of children and hostage-taking.
The military and political infrastructures of Hamas are inseparable. However, in 2001 The Home Office proscribed only its military wing as a terror group, leaving its so-called political wing operating freely.
By contrast, Hamas has been outlawed in its entirety by other nations including Canada, the USA and Japan.
Consequently, the UK has become a safe harbour for Hamas to operate in, spreading its hateful antisemitic ideology with impunity.
The biggest losers from our government’s failure to proscribe Hamas in its entirety are the people of Gaza who are living under its oppression.
Allowing Hamas’ political wing to operate in the UK serves to legitimise the organisation.
Join the campaign to get it banned here: https://www.israelbritain.org.uk/wbbanhamas/
Please share the link with your friends and family by email, Facebook and Twitter.
Please note that the system depends on you entering your postcode to find your address and MP. Type in your postcode slowly – do not allow it to autocomplete – and a list of addresses will appear that you can pick your address from.
A call to SOCIALS action
Since last week I have been glued to my phone and laptop, and yes it is my job to do just that, as Campaign Manager for We Believe in Israel.
I need to know what is going on, I want to know what is going on, both from a professional and personal point of view. My sister lives in Tel Aviv and I feel helpless.
Israel and the Palestinians: A Guide to the Debate 2020
We are delighted to be publishing a brand new, updated 2020 edition of our most popular booklet today: “Israel and the Palestinians: A Guide to the Debate” by Professor Alan Johnson, editor of Fathom Journal. This is an essential resource for anyone who wants to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The new booklet is a guide to the most pressing, and difficult topics in what can often be an emotive debate, and has been updated to include events including Israel’s deal with the UAE.
Want to learn about the history? It explains the background to Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel.
Want to learn about the peace process? It provides the history, the context, the arguments and the options going forward.
Want to understand the situation in Gaza? Our guide provides a measured reflection on the humanitarian crisis there.
Want to understand why calling Israel an apartheid state is such a misrepresentation of reality? Our guide provides an honest, and critical, study of Israel, but explains the extraordinary challenges Israel faces in the West Bank.
Want to learn more about the anti-Israel boycott movement? Our guide explains the reasons why this movement is misguided at best and malignant at worst.
Want to understand the rise of the new antisemitism and antisemitic anti-Zionism? Particularly as it is found on the left? Our guide explains all.
There no shortage of information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What we now have, is a hugely insightful guide to the debate.
UK General Election 2019
Please ask your local General Election candidates to sign our “Pledge for Israel”
https://www.israelbritain.org.uk/wb/
With our partner organisations in the Israel Britain Alliance, we are today launching our General Election “Pledge for Israel”.
We want candidates in the General Election to sign up to this pledge:
“If elected to the United Kingdom Parliament I Pledge…
- To oppose the extremists who challenge Israel's right to exist.
- To support the right of people in the United Kingdom to enjoy Israeli culture and promote business, educational, religious and other connections with the Jewish State without fear of discrimination, boycotts, harassment and/or intimidation.
- To support those who genuinely seek to promote and establish a permanent, just and comprehensive peace between Israel and its neighbours.
- To celebrate the fact that Israel is a free society and parliamentary democracy that extends to all its citizens the right to practise their religion and have access to religious sites in Jerusalem.
- To support the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.
- To encourage HM Government to promote trade with Israel that will increase investment and jobs for people in both countries.”
Please use the IBA website system to email the candidates in your constituency: https://www.israelbritain.org.uk/wb/
Even if you already know which way you are going to vote, please still participate in this campaign, as we need to know which candidates support the pledge and we need candidates to know that lots of voters care about Israel – they will be receiving emails from anti-Israel campaigners too.
If you haven’t used the system before, you need to add your name, surname and email address on the first page. On the next page, add your postcode and click “search” and the system will find the addresses associated with that postcode. Click on your address and the system will automatically find all the candidates whose email addresses are in the public domain. You can view and alter the text of the email but please don’t change the text of the actual six pledges as these have been agreed nationally with IBA. Press “submit” and you’ll send the email to them.
Please send any responses you receive to [email protected]
Every email counts so please join our campaign and forward it to your friends and family as well as sharing it on Facebook and Twitter:
https://www.israelbritain.org.uk/wb/
Absolute return is incompatible with a peaceful solution
On Saturday 11th May the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) will hold a rally in London supported by ten British trade unions and Momentum, the pro-Corbyn faction in the Labour Party. The rally is not campaigning for the establishment of a Palestinian State or improving the situation in Gaza. Instead it is focused on the return of Palestinian refugees. One advert for the rally is a raised hand clutching a large house key (representing the house keys Palestinians say they took into exile with them in 1948).
This is a call for an absolute “Right of Return”, to give the seven million descendants of Palestinians who left Israel during the 1948 War of Independence the right to go to Israel. This is not a call for peace, it is a call for the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
There is no similar “right of return” for the 50 per cent of Israeli Jews who are descendants of a similar original number of Jewish refugees who fled for their lives from North African and Middle Eastern countries in the same period.
This demand for an absolute right of return is not compatible with the concept of two states for two peoples – a Jewish-majority State alongside a Palestinian-majority state – the only way to resolve the conflict and respect the right to national self-determination of both the Jews and the Palestinians.
“Return” as demanded by this demonstration would either create two majority Palestinian states next to each other, or a one state solution. Either would result in the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
It would lead to violent escalation, not a resolution to the conflict. Rather than just sating the Palestinian desire for statehood and national liberation, it would negate Zionism, the Jewish movement for statehood and national liberation.
Israel can never agree to this and the demand acts as a barrier to negotiating a final peace settlement. Demanding something impossible locks the Palestinians into a status quo where they are stateless and suffering.
It’s a cynical tactic of radical movements since the Bolsheviks to make “transitional demands”, seemingly reasonable slogans that are in fact undeliverable in practice through peaceful means, and hence persuade their supporters that only violent change can deliver the wishes in the slogans.
For demonstrators living in the comfort of London to march behind slogans that trap Palestinians in their current situation by making demands that are only possible through the destruction of Israel is shameful.
Descendants of Palestinian refugees need help and support, but their only way to resolve their status is through a negotiated peace agreement. This might include return for a limited number of humanitarian cases, compensation, return to the West Bank, and full citizenship in other Arab countries (other refugee communities from the 1940s are fully integrated into their host societies, not languishing as second class citizens in permanent limbo as Palestinians do in the Arab world).
Bringing justice to and peace between the Palestinians and Israelis requires serious policy solutions acceptable to both sides, not fantasy slogans about mass return to Israel.
The message from this demonstration is not negotiations and peace. It is a recipe for more violence.
Grahame Morris brings nothing to the debate about Israel-Palestine
It’s a bank holiday Monday and you are a Labour MP.
Do you spend the day in the sunshine, do a bit of campaigning for the local elections or tweet false accusations about Israel?
Grahame Morris, MP for Easington, went for the Israel option when he retweeted a video, supposedly showing Israeli soldiers beating a teenager, posted by “Rachael Swindon”, a high-profile pro-Corbyn Twitter account previously caught sharing hate speech about the Rothschilds.
Morris said: “Marvellous, absolutely marvellous the Israeli Army, the best financed, best trained, best equipped army in the world caught on camera beating up Palestinian children for the fun of it. May God forgive them.”
Within an hour it was made clear to him that the video was from Guatemala. It took him 17 hours to apologise properly.
Morris should know a lot about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was the Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East (LFPME) for five years and has visited the area many times. You would think he had developed some basic understanding of the issues and how dangerous these kind of lies can be. Not a chance.
His intervention was ignorant. But once his lies were exposed, he left the tweet up for several hours after he knew the video had nothing to do with Israel. His action was inflammatory and designed to stir up anger towards Israel.
It was also evidence of a double-standard – once informed it was Guatemalan soldiers, Morris didn’t express any opinion or condemnation of the actual incident, or inquisitiveness about the situation there, it was only when he thought it was about Israel that he cared.
Grahame Morris has form for this kind of dangerous intervention, calling in 2014 for British Jews who serve in the IDF to be treated as IS-style suspected terrorists, and issuing a clumsy tweet the same year with a picture of Israeli flags and the words: “Nazis in my village, do you see the flag they fly.”
These are not the actions of a man who has anything useful to offer in a debate about Israel and the Palestinians in the UK. The Palestinians deserve better advocates than these in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
They deserve MPs making their case who have the common sense to check sources before tweeting anything this contentious, and the common decency to apologise immediately when they are alerted to the fact that their video shows something completely different to the claim they were making about it.
LFPME’s list of 128 parliamentary supporters includes people who make vociferous, intelligent interventions on behalf of the Palestinians without ever making offensive gaffes like this.
Grahame Morris brings nothing to this debate, he should be ashamed.
