Why this Israeli Jew is voting for an Arab party

ELANA SZTOKMAN will be casting her vote with Israel's Arab minority because she believes that's the best path to the kind of Israel she wants.

Several years ago, when a ground-breaking study about the health of Haredi women in Israel was released, the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women opened a special session to talk about this long-overlooked topic. The committee, run by an Arab member of the Knesset, Aida Touma-Suleiman of Hadash, was hailed by religious women, feminist organisations, and health advocates around Israel.

The one group whose representatives did not comment or even bother to attend the Knesset session was Haredi lawmakers, who are also all men. In one of many strange realities of Israeli parliamentary politics, it was an Arab woman lawmaker who took care of the needs of a community that mostly reviles and dismisses her party.

This story is at the forefront of my mind as I plan who to vote for in next week’s elections. While most Israelis are apathetic and cynical, with many reporting they have nobody to trust or vote for, I have made a decision that is based on ideology, strategy and my interest in protecting women.

This “strategy vs ideology” computation may be a particularly Israeli phenomenon. The multiplicity of small, niche parties, combined with rules about high thresholds, mean that people are often reluctant to vote for parties they believe in that are at risk of not gaining any seats or power. As such, many people vote “strategically” to enable a particular candidate to form a coalition, rather than the candidate they align with ideologically.

This practice was particularly popular in the many elections of the past three years, which were seen by many voters as vital for removing Bibi Netanyahu from power. Benny Gantz was often cast as the only alternative, despite the fact that even when he had a massive 35 mandates, he failed to form a coalition, and has at times seemed to be more willing to sit with Netanyahu than, say, with Arab parties.

Gantz is a cautionary tale for voting strategically. (Nobody voted for Gantz ideologically since he literally had no platform to speak of for those first few elections.) Gantz became the big “vote strategically” fail.

This time, however, I am voting for a party that suits me on both counts, and which is also in the best interest of Israeli women.

I’m voting for Hadash, the Arab socialist party led by Ayman Odeh and Aida Touma-Suleiman.

Ideologically, Hadash promotes a vision for Israel that I deeply align with - one in which Arabs and all other groups are treated as full citizens whose needs and interests must be attended to. Although there are many things that I love about living in Israel, the underlying racism and everyday oppression that is so deeply rooted in politics and culture need to be fixed if we are going to consider ourselves a true democracy.

I understand that this is a difficult position to argue for right now, especially in light of my candidate’s recent comments in support of Palestinian resistance, even violent resistance. These were difficult comments to digest, and I wish Suleiman had been more clear about her own position, which has always been in favor of non-violent resistance and working for change within the system, values that she is dedicating her entire life to in her work in the Knesset. I have much more to say about the difficult tightrope that Arab lawmakers walk along, but I will leave that detailed analysis to a future article.

Ultimately, Suleiman is right in her assessment that the only way to end the violence is for Israel to address the real injustices that happen here, and to stop gaslighting the Palestinians and the world with endless rhetoric that tries to justify unjustifiable policies such as home demolitions and martial law.

If Israel is going to be a Jewish state, it should represent our values and be humane and compassionate. Hadash is the party that best represents that vision of how Israel can be. It is a sad irony that the Jewish state needs its Arab citizens to school us on what should be a core Jewish ethos.

Strategically, the only way the current Israeli demographic can support a non-Netanyahu government is if Arab parties are in the coalition. We saw with the previous coalition – the only one out of four elections that actually worked, even if briefly – that Arab parties are vital. Yet, at the moment, many Arab Israelis are too disgusted to vote, and with good reason.

Several organisations are running campaigns to encourage Arabs to vote, and I hope they are effective. But in the meantime, the best thing I can do strategically to encourage a sane coalition is to bolster the Arab parties.

Finally, as a Jewish woman and as a feminist activist, I try to vote based on gender issues. I voted for the Haredi women’s party when they ran, I actively campaigned for the women’s party Pashut Ahava in 2019, and I even ran for Knesset once myself with the women’s party, Kol Hanashim, in March 2020, a minute before the pandemic.

However, it is hard to vote on gender because not all female Knesset members are good for women. The Likud, for example, has very few women on their list, and the women who are running are mostly terrible for women and other living creatures. Tally Gottlieb supports men accused of sexual abuse, and calls victims whingey liars. Others, such as Miri Regev or Idit Silman, have unethical track records of putting politics over the needs of their constituents.

That said, today, three parties are headed by women, which is a record in Israel. Labor is headed by lifelong feminist Merav Michaeli, Meretz is headed by progressive activist Zehava Galon, and Jewish Home is run by Ayelet Shaked, who has an appalling record on protecting democracy and who helped pull down the previous government. Thankfully, Jewish Home is polling very badly and may not make it into the Knesset.

If I were voting exclusively on gender, I would consider both Labor and Meretz. But even with those considerations, I think the best feminist legislator, who has run the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women with the most vision, clarity, and determination, is MK Aida Touma-Souleiman of Hadash. She represents the needs of women of all sectors better than anyone else we have seen.

I'm voting for her, for Hadash. And I am completely happy with this choice.

Photo: Aida Touma-Suleiman