Religious moderates left orphaned by Israeli politics
Israel's progressive Zionist voters who are both religious and tolerant have no real political home these days.
What awaits, say, a young humanist religious Zionist who is revolted by racism as he stands in the privacy of his neighborhood ballot box on Sept. 17? Which Zionist party represents his religious and universal values? After all, his own brand of Zionism is alien to that of the two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and Yahadut HaTorah. The newly minted leftist Democratic Camp does not speak to his Jewish values, and the alliance on the political right features Rabbi Rafi Peretz, a self-declared homophobe. For that party, as for the Likud, territorial compromise is akin to worshiping idols.
Until the 1984 elections, our guy could have voted for the National Religious Party led at the time by Yosef Burg. Burg’s grandson, Hillel Ben-Sasson, the son of former Knesset member from centrist Kadima Menachem Ben-Sasson, is miles away in his views from the current arch-right messianic mutation of the old Mizrahi movement and National Religious Party, known these days as the “United Right.”
