Amit Segal Warns: Could Chareidi Parties Be Headed for a Historic Election Collapse?

Amit Segal Warns: Could Chareidi Parties Be Headed for a Historic Election Collapse?

Political commentator Amit Segal is raising the possibility that Israel’s chareidi parties could suffer an unprecedented setback in the next national election, warning that dramatically lower voter turnout in the chareidi community could significantly reduce their representation in the Knesset. At the same time, he says an entirely different scenario could actually strengthen the sector’s political influence. In his weekly column in Yisroel Hayom, Segal argues that one of the principal reasons the right-wing bloc has consistently outperformed pre-election polls is the exceptionally high voter turnout among chareidi voters. “Take sky-high voter turnout, multiply it by the highest natural population growth in the Western world, and you’ve got two additional mandates,” he wrote. Segal noted that the chareidi parties won the equivalent of 17.5 Knesset seats in the last election, ultimately receiving an 18th seat under Israel’s Bader-Ofer electoral allocation system. Current polling, however, generally gives them only 16 seats. Under normal circumstances, he wrote, many observers would expect that gap to disappear on Election Day, “unless the surprise works in the opposite direction this time.” According to Segal, there are growing concerns within the chareidi political world that turnout could fall sharply. “Chareidi politicians, journalists and influencers are pointing to the possibility that voter turnout could collapse,” he wrote. He said many in the community are deeply disappointed with their elected representatives, “most of whom have been around since the previous millennium,” and believe they bear responsibility for the sanctions and arrests of yeshiva bochurim who refused military enlistment. Many voters, he wrote, feel their representatives “failed badly during the outgoing term.” Segal also argued that the recent wave of legislation advanced by the chareidi parties should not be viewed merely as an aggressive political power play. “The legislative blitz that is described in the general media as greed and hubris on the part of the chareidim is more of a panicked race by Shas and United Torah Judaism to prove to their voters that they are, after all, doing something,” he wrote. He added that “This is also the reason why the mainstream Agudas Yisroel initiated the massive disruptions on Israel’s highways, in cooperation with the fanatical Jerusalem Faction.” Despite those concerns, Segal outlined a second scenario that could produce the opposite result. He suggested that the recent cooperation between Agudas Yisroel and Peleg Yerushalmi may actually point to the possibility that Degel HaTorah and Agudas Yisroel will split and run on separate tickets in the next election. To support that theory, Segal cited Yated Ne’eman editor Aryeh Zisman, who recently suggested that the latest political developments may signal an impending separation between the Litvishe Degel HaTorah and the Chassidishe Agudas Yisroel. Segal concluded that if Agudas Yisroel ultimately runs independently, it could clear the electoral threshold with the support of Peleg voters, many of whom traditionally boycott elections. In that case, he argued, “the mutual hatred will drive everyone to the polls, recreating the 1988 election.” He noted that when Degel HaTorah and Agudas Yisroel ran separately that year, their combined vote total nearly doubled their previous joint strength, marking the emergence of a powerful independent chareidi political force. On the other hand, it is noted that the Peleg representation is very small. {Matzav.com}