Israel: Land of Milk and Honeys

Nowadays, (almost) every thread about the judicial reforms has the same comments: Haredim bad! They don't even work or serve in the army! We're about to become Saudi Arabia!

When any other right-wing group is mentioned at all, it's usually the cursory "Datin leumim bad too, they enabled Smotrich/Ben Gvir!"

I hate it to break it to you guys, but there is way more going on with these reforms than just Haredim (or religious people in general), and bashing them for it makes no sense. Let's take a look:

1. Haredi parties aren't even uniformly right-wing. Shas, for example, supports social welfare programs and spending. They're only in a coalition with Bibi for tactical reasons: they get power and so does he. But ideologically, they have more in common with Meretz (on some issues) than they do with Bibi.

2. A lot of Mizrahim voted for Bibi, a fact that gets zero analysis or recognition here, for some reason.

3. There are secular people - a non-trivial amount of them - who voted for Ben Gvir. People, religious or not, don't like it when Acco and Lord burn to the ground, the police don't respond, and the subsequent coalition has a weak-on-security policy that leads to more terror attacks.

Which brings to my main point: the Left didn't only lose in this election between Avodah and Meretz split; they also lost because they have no security policies or plans that most people trust.

Seriously - when was the last time that a non-right party (even centrist Yesh Atid) got lots of people excited about a security plan? Can anyone name a single example?

As for the claim that we're about to become a theocracy: even in 40 years from now, Haredim will make up anywhere 25 to 36% of the total population. They will probably fracture into more political parties. Will they single-handedly decide elections?

If the left continues to come up with useless and impractical ideas, maybe. But whose fault is that?