Is Israel Moving to the Right? https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/israel-zionism/2015/03/is-israel-moving-to-the-right/

March 6, 2015 | Evelyn Gordon
About the author: Evelyn Gordon is a commentator and former legal-affairs reporter who immigrated to Israel in 1987. In addition to Mosaic, she has published in the Jerusalem Post, Azure, Commentary, and elsewhere. She blogs at Evelyn Gordon.

Not at all, argues Evelyn Gordon. Despite constant declarations to the contrary, and the evidence of poorly-interpreted polling data, the only political shift Israel is undergoing is leftward. Similarly, and again despite hysterical pronouncements to the contrary, Israel’s Arab population is becoming better integrated into society and suffering from less discrimination than ever before. Gordon explains:

[W]hy do many people nevertheless think that Israel has moved to the right? Presumably due to one seemingly anomalous fact: a change in how Israelis identify themselves. According to the Peace Index, a regular poll begun in 1994, only 12 percent of Israeli Jews self-identified as being on the left this past August, while 62 percent self-identified as being on the right—a dramatic change from the roughly even split of twenty years ago. This change was reflected in the last two Knesset elections, which gave a majority of seats to parties that self-identify as rightist or religious.

But this is misleading; because of the leftward shift of the past twenty years, the term “right” no longer means what it used to. Once, the right opposed any territorial concessions. Today, the right’s acknowledged leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, publicly supports a Palestinian state. Many Israelis, therefore, now see no contradiction between supporting a two-state solution and self-identifying as “right” or voting for a self-identified center-right party such as Likud. . . .

To many Israelis, [however,] the left increasingly looks delusional, because it’s propounding a conclusion that, in their view, contradicts the accumulated experience of the past twenty years. And since most people don’t want to identify themselves as delusional, Israelis are increasingly saying they’re on the right. This, coupled with their desire not to repeat the disastrous territorial pullouts of the past two decades, has also led many to shun parties that explicitly place themselves on the left.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Israelis still overwhelmingly support a two-state solution. Today’s “right-wing” Israel is a country where the majority hold political positions found only among Hadash, the Arab–Jewish Communist party, two decades ago.

Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/israels-left-wing-right-wing/