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A majority of Knesset voting for a coalition government is ... a majority of the Knesset. You may not like it, you may even hate it, the majority of Israelis ma

A majority of Knesset voting for a coalition government is ... a majority of the Knesset. You may not like it, you may even hate it, the majority of Israelis may hate it, but they vote for representatives, representatives vote for the executive. This is not some undemocratic power grab that happened here, it is in fact how most of the words democratic countries operate and form governments.

dijit 2y ago
Nothing you said contradicts the original message at all though. It's also true that the british government has some of the lowest support in history, losing the popular vote many times over and only attained power (marginally) due to vote splitting and gerrymandering. It's not fair to say that "the british people want to bring back mandatory military service" (for example) because the conservative governments do, and the situation in Israel is even more dire in that regard.
- flanked-evergl 2y ago
  I'm fairly sure vote splitting and gerrymandering does not apply to Israel, as they don't have districts for representatives. If you have any data to back up your claim that the popular vote is vastly different from the composition of the knesset, please share it. But as far as I can tell from Wikipedia this is not the case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_elect... And the claim was not as to the popularity of policies, the claim was that the government does not represent the electorate, which is categorically false in this case, and would have been even if there were electoral districts. If a government is elected by the representatives of the people, then that government represents the people. If the government did not represent the representatives and the population that elected the representatives, who does it represent then?
arp242 2y ago
You are of course right. However, I also think it's a but more complex than that. For example, if this is everyone in parliament, from left to right: [ex] [ centre ] [ex] And the government votes are like so: < votes > [ex] [ centre ] [ex] Then you need to wonder how representative the coalition is, especially if those on the hard-right have a rather outsized influence. By and large people voted for the centre/centre-right, not hard-right. Significantly more people voted for left-wing parties than the hard-right parties. Democracy is never perfect, and normally it's a "shrug, next time we'll be a bit more advantages, so whatever" kind of affair. But when small hard-right parties are being enabled for what seems to be mostly power games (what Netanyahu seems to want more than anything else is to stay in power), I think it's fair to say things are perhaps not working entirely at their best.
- flanked-evergl 2y ago
  > Significantly more people voted for left-wing parties than the hard-right parties. Is this really the case? I have not really tallied up the numbers but from a brief glance at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_elect... it does not seem to quite check out. edit: I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-seventh_government_of_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-seventh_government_of_I... > The right-wing bloc of parties, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, known in Israel as the national camp, won 64 of the 120 seats in the elections for the Knesset, while the coalition led by the incumbent prime minister Yair Lapid won 51 seats.[9] The new majority has been variously described as the most right-wing government in Israeli history,[10] as well as Israel's most religious government.[11][12][13] But to be fair you said hard-right parties, and I think in this you may be right. Still, most people voted conservative/right-wing I think.
  - arp242 2y ago
    > But to be fair you said hard-right parties, and I think in this you may be right. Still, most people voted conservative/right-wing I think. Yes, I just meant the hard-right extremists, who are on a mission from God to reclaim all the lands of Israel for the Jewish people (RZP and Otzma). Or to put it this way: there are tons of possible coalitions in this kind of democracies to arrive at a majority. This: < coalition > [ex] [ centre ] [ex] Is just as much a majority as: < coalition > [ex] [ centre ] [ex] Every country has their extremists of various shapes, and they mostly get excluded from real power, or when they are excluded their influence is very limited. By and large I think that's healthy. This is also one reason almost all democracies have "checks and balances" in the form of supermajorities, courts, and/or bicameral system. To prevent a simple majority from pushing through changes. Remember, those "checks and balances" the Netanyahu government wanted to abolish before 7 Oct shelved those plans.

dijit 2y ago

Nothing you said contradicts the original message at all though. It's also true that the british government has some of the lowest support in history, losing the popular vote many times over and only attained power (marginally) due to vote splitting and gerrymandering. It's not fair to say that "the british people want to bring back mandatory military service" (for example) because the conservative governments do, and the situation in Israel is even more dire in that regard.

flanked-evergl 2y ago
I'm fairly sure vote splitting and gerrymandering does not apply to Israel, as they don't have districts for representatives. If you have any data to back up your claim that the popular vote is vastly different from the composition of the knesset, please share it. But as far as I can tell from Wikipedia this is not the case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_elect... And the claim was not as to the popularity of policies, the claim was that the government does not represent the electorate, which is categorically false in this case, and would have been even if there were electoral districts. If a government is elected by the representatives of the people, then that government represents the people. If the government did not represent the representatives and the population that elected the representatives, who does it represent then?

arp242 2y ago

You are of course right. However, I also think it's a but more complex than that. For example, if this is everyone in parliament, from left to right: [ex] [ centre ] [ex] And the government votes are like so: < votes > [ex] [ centre ] [ex] Then you need to wonder how representative the coalition is, especially if those on the hard-right have a rather outsized influence. By and large people voted for the centre/centre-right, not hard-right. Significantly more people voted for left-wing parties than the hard-right parties. Democracy is never perfect, and normally it's a "shrug, next time we'll be a bit more advantages, so whatever" kind of affair. But when small hard-right parties are being enabled for what seems to be mostly power games (what Netanyahu seems to want more than anything else is to stay in power), I think it's fair to say things are perhaps not working entirely at their best.

flanked-evergl 2y ago
> Significantly more people voted for left-wing parties than the hard-right parties. Is this really the case? I have not really tallied up the numbers but from a brief glance at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_elect... it does not seem to quite check out. edit: I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-seventh_government_of_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-seventh_government_of_I... > The right-wing bloc of parties, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, known in Israel as the national camp, won 64 of the 120 seats in the elections for the Knesset, while the coalition led by the incumbent prime minister Yair Lapid won 51 seats.[9] The new majority has been variously described as the most right-wing government in Israeli history,[10] as well as Israel's most religious government.[11][12][13] But to be fair you said hard-right parties, and I think in this you may be right. Still, most people voted conservative/right-wing I think.
- arp242 2y ago
  > But to be fair you said hard-right parties, and I think in this you may be right. Still, most people voted conservative/right-wing I think. Yes, I just meant the hard-right extremists, who are on a mission from God to reclaim all the lands of Israel for the Jewish people (RZP and Otzma). Or to put it this way: there are tons of possible coalitions in this kind of democracies to arrive at a majority. This: < coalition > [ex] [ centre ] [ex] Is just as much a majority as: < coalition > [ex] [ centre ] [ex] Every country has their extremists of various shapes, and they mostly get excluded from real power, or when they are excluded their influence is very limited. By and large I think that's healthy. This is also one reason almost all democracies have "checks and balances" in the form of supermajorities, courts, and/or bicameral system. To prevent a simple majority from pushing through changes. Remember, those "checks and balances" the Netanyahu government wanted to abolish before 7 Oct shelved those plans.