Published on The National Interest (http://nationalinterest.org)

Source URL (retrieved on Jan 28, 2013): http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-demographic-roots-israels-right-turn-8023

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The Demographic Roots of Israel's Right Turn

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Leon Hadar [2]

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January 28, 2013

Leon Hadar [2]

The Israeli parliamentary election has resulted in an electoral deadlock between two electoral blocs: the parties representing the nationalist and religious right and those that are associated with political center and left. But as in American politics, applying the right/left dichotomy to the current Israeli political system doesn’t provide an accurate perspective, one that goes beyond simple ideological labels. Such a narrow view fails to take into account long-term demographic changes and cultural splits that are producing a lasting political transformation.
Take for example America’s Silicon Valley and its Israeli equivalent, the Silicon Wadi, a chain of high-tech start-ups and Internet companies that stretches from Tel-Aviv along the throughway leading to Haifa in the north. These enterprises are the driving force behind the current Israeli economic miracle. You would assume that the programmers, engineers and executives who work here benefited from the free-market policies initiated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and thus would cast their ballots for his Likud (and its ally this election, Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu).
But then you could have made similar predictions about the entrepreneurs residing in America’s Silicon Valley, who by a huge margin didn’t vote for the pro-business Mitt Romney. Instead they were fans of government intervention in the economy as represented by Barack Obama.