Everyone loves the Interwebs

[eumelia]

The Israeli Blogosphere makes the Guardian.

"If bloggers were representative of the mainstream ...", our next elections would be focused on social issues, environmental issues, have a distinctly Socialist-Democratic economic agenda and with a focus on Jewish-Arab co-operation.

Hard to believe that we're most likely going to be electing Bibi and the Hawkes.
Again.

Oh, well...

If bloggers were representative of the mainstream ...

While polls show the Israeli electorate heading to the right, liberals online talks up environmentalism and opposition to the Gaza war

Assuming the polls are accurate – and they have been quite consistent – Israeli voters are poised to elect a rightwing government in next week's elections. But if bloggers were representative of the mainstream, Israel's next government would probably be a Jewish-Arab coalition of socialists, social democrats and environmentalists.

The disparity between the polls and the blogosphere is quite remarkable – especially in Tel Aviv, Israel's liberal heartland, where the two parties vying for the votes of hipsters and leftist intellectuals are the Green Movement-Meimad, an environmentalist–religious partnership headed by a liberal rabbi; and Hadash, a Jewish-Arab socialist party [the party I'm voting for, eumelia].

The Hebrew-language blogger Ori Katzir made a survey of 92 prominent political bloggers. According to the final breakdown, the Green Movement-Meimad leads with 30 supporters, while Hadash comes in second with 27. It is the polar opposite of the opinion polls, which show Likud leading and Avigdor Lieberman's hardline Yisrael Beiteinu poised to tie with Labour.

Hadash's rise among liberal-left, urban Jewish voters is particularly interesting. By definition a non-Zionist party that attracted most of its support from Arabs, Hadash traditionally won three or four seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Even in ultra-liberal Tel Aviv, a vote for Hadash was, until these elections, considered a radical vote.

Now this has changed, partly because of the recently ended Gaza military offensive, and partly because Dov Khenin, number three on the Hadash list, recently ran a failed but vigorous campaign for mayor of Tel Aviv.

Khenin's campaign brought together a diverse list of candidates that ran the gamut from Mizrachi Likud supporters to Arab feminists; the unifying factors were affordable housing, clean air and green public spaces. With that campaign, they succeeded in gathering enough support to threaten the three-term incumbent. Khenin garnered most of his support from local bloggers, who campaigned on his behalf via social media such as YouTube and Facebook. Many of them spent a lot of time with Khenin, and were impressed by the soft-spoken, modest politician and his social-democratic, inclusive agenda.

But it was the Gaza war that seems to have been a deciding factor for many of its new supporters – Hadash was the only party that led opposition to the war from the very first day of the offensive. English-language Israeli bloggers tend to be heavily weighted with new immigrants whose political opinions are to the right of the mainstream, so I have taken the following sampling from the Hebrew blogosphere, which is larger and more active.

Gil Rimon, a screenwriter and journalist, writes: "When all the parties vote for war, it's good to know that there is one political home that makes my voice heard." Journalist Dror Feuer bases his position on Hadash's Jewish-Arab partnership – arguing that it is particularly important to raise the flag of equality now "when the artillery cannons have barely gone quiet and the atmosphere is as anti-cooperation as it has ever been." Itamar Shaaltiel says there are many things that bother him about Hadash – including its communist roots and its habit of sending Jewish candidates to speak to Jewish voters, and Arab candidates to Arab voters – but he is voting for them because Hadash is the only party that opposed the war.

For Uri Sabach the issue is the same.

The reason is very simple: I do not want my representatives in the Knesset voting automatically for the next war (and believe me, there will be another war). I want them to vote automatically against. To my sorrow, I can no longer trust Meretz [the leftwing party formerly led by Yossi Beilin]. Meretz is very good at being quiet when we are going to war, hugging our brave soldiers during the war, and crying over the results after it's all over.

The Green Movement-Meimad, meanwhile, does not mention the conflict with Hamas at all – although it gives emphatic support to equality between Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens. In fact, part of the movement's platform is to decry the neglect of social justice, education and welfare services in the name of security considerations.

Rabbi Michael Melchior is originally from Denmark, where his family served as chief rabbis for eight generations, and he served as chief rabbi of Norway. Melchior has been a Knesset member for Meimad, a liberal Jewish party, for nearly a decade. In that time he has earned himself a reputation as an unusually courteous, intelligent man whose agenda is strongly social democratic. In teaming up with the Green Movement, he has managed to attract a following of liberals, both secular and religious. The latter belong to a minority of religious Israeli Jews who feel that their Judaism has been hijacked by the religious-nationalist settler movement. The theme of the campaign is that the state of Israel has deviated from its original social-democratic, tolerant values.

At a recent campaign event that can be viewed on YouTube, Melchior shouts the following at his enthusiastic audience to rapturous applause.

A state with 280,000 children living in poverty is not a Jewish state! A country with air pollution levels that lead to 1,400 related deaths from various forms of cancer is not a Jewish state! A state that abandons its elderly is not a Jewish state!

It too has its online supporters. Yoav Lerman calls it "the only party that has a serious urban plan"; Michaly says she is attracted to the party for its environmental platform, but also because she is "sick of the endless battle between religious and secular people". A religious-Jewish architect and urban planner who calls himself Juden Rofeh, or Jewish doctor, gives the nod to environmentalism and religious-secular tolerance, adding, "notice its position on Jewish-Arab relations".

One prominent blogger, Shooky Galili, who has been particularly active on behalf of the Green Movement-Meimad, links to a YouTube campaign clip that features an interview with a certain type of Tel Avivian – the type that spends time in ashrams in India and eats vegetarian food – who says the party has helped him overcome his cynicism about politics. He says:

Perhaps I'll be disappointed. But I look at it the way I look at falling in love with a woman. If it ends badly you're disappointed, but that doesn't mean you'll never love again.

Some see Tel Aviv, where such parties draw most of their support, as a bubble detached from the tough reality of the Middle East. For outside observers who view Israel through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there must be some cognitive dissonance in reading about a party that promotes a social-environmental platform appealing to ashram refugees and vegetarians.

For this type of Tel Avivian, however, the conflict seems insoluble. It also seems far away, even though Ramallah is only one hour away by car – give or take a checkpoint or two. A friend who works for a venture capital fund in Tel Aviv described the conflict as "background noise". In a way, the Green Movement-Meimad is an expression of denial. Yes, social justice and clean air are extremely important. But until the conflict is resolved, it will always take precedence.

That is something that the newly converted Hadash voters do understand. But while it is true that they are not living in denial, they are certainly a minority living within a majority that overwhelmingly supported the Gaza war.

It's always nice when your opinions aren't vilifies and de-legitimized by your environment... pity it comes all the way across the channel.

One thing that bothers me about this article, is that it replicates the idea that the Tel-Aviv Bubble is this some kind of un-touched and detached urbanite fantasy land.
Because the 90's and early 2000's were a real hoot with suicide bombers taking themselves out in markets, malls and cafe's - in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Netanya and other Centre (of the country) cities.
Yeah, my father was nearly shot in his shop by a militant and I still hold the opinions that co-operation between Jews and Arabs is the way to go and that negotiations with our enemies will stop the fighting.
I'm not so sure about Peace at this point because surely there's more to Peace than just making sure nobody dies.