The Fun Has Begun Pt. 2

I decided a while ago, that instead of just being mad all the time about the situation of religious coercion in Israel, that perhaps I should try to do something about it. In reality, I think I knew that there is not much that can be done, but I decided to come up with a plan and then try to see if it could be implemented.

I started with the premise that most Israeli's, from Dati Leumi to completely secular, do not like the fact that a small majority ( less than 15% currently) has so much influence on their lives. I wanted to know if this issue  is akin to security issues and cost of living issues, which are now the biggest concern. I also wanted to find out how important and to what extent. I commissioned a survey with a company called Panels Politics. They are one of the largest polling companies in Israel. We developed a questioneer to see if my premise was correct and to collect other information.

We tried to determine a few things. Firstly are people aware of how big the Haredi ( I am going back to this word as no other works either) community population in Israel is. Do they know how big this community will be in 30 years. How do they feel the state treats haredim. Would the issue of voting for a party that will make a coalition with the Haredim affect how you vote. This is some of it. There were over 40 questions and close to 4000 people took the survey. I was told that this is a lot and that  the margin of error  was about +/- 3.5%.

Many things were obvious. Groups felt closest to people of their own group. The left and secular population worry about the demography ( and the direction of the country in general) and the right less so. I could spend a lot of time detailing all the results but I won't. If anyone wants a copy of the power point please email me and I will send it to you ( but please do not send it around to other people, as I am not sure what I am going to do with it and it was not cheap). I learned two things , one expected and one not. The expected one was that although I used a very reputable, professional and expensive polling company, no one really know how to spell anything in English in Israel. The other thing I learned, which was shocking to me, is that the majority of the Dati Leumi community does not care about any of the issues concerning the Haredim.

This blew me away.

I speak to many people about this subject, here and the USA. For the most part people agree that this is a big problem ( not everyone and you know who you are, but most). I was not expecting this result at all. I thought that most Israelis who were not Haredi would at least acknowledge that this is a problem. Step two was to see what could be done to establish a sort of pledge from politicians and parties not to join a coalition with Haredi parties in them. It seems step two will not happen. Without the support of Dati Luemi voters, it mathematically can't work.

I will need to figure out a different way to approach this, but if anyone has suggestions, I would be more than happy to hear them.

This whole episode has been a bit trying ( only a bit), so I think that I need to lighten the blog up a bit and I will return to some lighter fare next time.....