Politics

Of course I was going to write a blog post about Israeli politics.  What you weren’t expecting is the short length and the relative lack of in depth reporting.  As anyone who knows me should know, while I have strong opinions on foreign policy and social issues I am motivated by economic issues.  This makes Israeli politics even more foreign to me, since traditionally the focus has been almost exclusively on security and what the parties mean by peace.

That may be changing.

Over the summer Israel experienced widespread protests over a variety of domestic economic problems, many of which were related to food price protests across the region (the same food price issues that may have helped fuel the Arab Spring).

At the same time, tensions between secular Israelis and the Ultra Orthodox continue to rise on the question of equality for women, with the Ultra Orthodox believing that everyone should endorse their 18^th century Talibanesque view of the world.

There has not been an election since the food price protests, and as those and other issues continue to bubble Israeli politics may become very interesting and much more volatile in coming years.  Should be very interesting to watch.

PS – In a really cool practice, apparently in the lead up to elections every party is given a certain amount of time cut out a 30 or 60 minute show to give voters their message.  The time is dependent upon how much of the vote they are expected to get. Imagine if once a week for the last month the DNC and RNC each got 15 minutes on every broadcast station in the country? FIREWORKS!