The Ascendance of Right-Wing Populism in Israel: An Ethno-Class Analysis
Yoav Peled
As I argue in an article recently published in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, the analysis of election results over the past 20 years clearly reveals the existence of two major ethno-classes in Israeli society: an upper, mostly Ashkenazi ethno-class, secular in its own eyes, that supports the center-left political parties and opposes the current government’s attempted “judicial reform,” and a lower, mostly Mizrahi, ethno-class, religiously ranging from traditionalists to ultra-Orthodox, that supports the populist political parties – Likud, Shas, Jewish Power – and the government’s “judicial reform.”
The results of the November 2022 Knesset elections clearly demonstrate a direct relation between residence in a locality belonging to a particular socio-economic cluster and voting behavior: in localities belonging to clusters 1-7 (except for cluster 3, which includes many Arab localities) the current coalition parties won a majority of the vote and 72% of the people support the “judicial reform;” in localities belonging to clusters 8-10 (highest) the current opposition parties won a majority of the vote and 54% oppose the “judicial reform.”
According to economist Momi Dahan, who studies economic inequality between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim and its effects on Mizrahi voting behavior, in the nine election campaigns that took place between January 2003 and March 2021, voting share for Netanyahu’s bloc – Likud, Shas, Torah Judaism, Religious Zionism – in precincts with a Mizrahi majority was between 60% and 70%, with one exception, in March 2006 – 53.1%.
In the 2022 elections Dahan’s “right-wing bloc,” different from his “Netanyahu’s bloc” by the inclusion of Israel Our Home that caters mostly to Russian-speaking voters and the exclusion of 100% Mizrahi Shas, won 61% of the vote in Mizrahi-majority communities and only 36% of the vote in Ashkenazi-majority ones. This 25% difference was the largest of all the election campaigns studied by Dahan, in spite of the curious absence of Shas from Dahan’s counting in 2022, whereas the smallest gap, 5% only, was in the 2006 elections. In other words, it seems that the voting gap between the ethno-classes is widening, as the income gap between them is narrowing (see below).
The share of Mizrahim in the Jewish population is about 25%, yet in a survey conducted by Sammy Smooha in November 2021, 56.3% of those defining themselves as “Bibist” (i.e., Netanyahu supporters) were Mizrahim, and 37.2% of Mizrahim defined themselves as “Bibists.” Ashkenazim, whose share of the Jewish population is similar, constitute only about one quarter of “Bibists” and only 19% of them define themselves in this way. In a survey commissioned by the present author in the week before the 2022 elections 45% of second-generation Mizrahim and 50% of third-generation Mizrahim (both grandfathers born in a Moslem country), as against 36% of the general population, claimed that the charges against Netanyahu were trumped up. Among Ashkenazim only in the lowest income group (made up mostly of Haredim) agreement with the framing thesis slightly exceeded the disagreement.
Populism
Populism is not a coherent ideology but a discourse, a rhetorical device of political mobilization in formally democratic societies. It is a moralistic way of imagining politics that sets up against each other the cohesive and moral, but ultimately fictional “people,” as against the morally corrupt “elite.” Populist rhetoric can be used in pursuit of a wide range of social, political, and economic agendas. Its cannot, therefore, be judged by the commonly accepted academic or journalistic criteria (or those that were commonly accepted until recently) such as coherence, consistency, logical connection between cause and effect, or even adherence to factual truth.
Populism defines its key concept – “the people” – through both vertical and horizontal exclusion, by ascriptive markers as well as by class position (“elite” vs. “the people”), and even by political outlook – Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once famously averred that leftist Jewish Israelis “forgot how to be Jews.”
Another essential feature of populism is the adulation of a charismatic “savior” leader who, like the king in his time, structures, unites, mobilizes and embodies “the people.” As a result, in the populist conception there is no legitimate room in the social/political arena for rivals of the leader or for alternative movements; these are viewed as treacherous. In other words, in populism any opposition to the leader, or even criticism directed at them, is seen as opposition to “the people,” i.e., treason. In pluralist democratic conceptions, on the other hand, which lack a leader figure as an essential element, “the sovereign people” is a formal, amorphous, undefined concept, an “empty signifier” in Slavoi Zhizek’s characterization. Since populism fills this void with the personality of the leader, the populist electoral “base” is usually much more stable, coherent, and determined, not to say militant, than the support base of non-populist, pluralist democratic political parties or movements. This is clearly evident by comparing Trump’s supporters to supporters of the Democratic party in the US, or Netanyahu’s and Likud’s supporters to the supporters of center-left political parties in Israel. While ethno-national populism’s preferred political regime is majoritarian, or “illiberal” democracy, it displays strong authoritarian tendencies that may lead to the establishment of a hybrid regime, democratic in form and authoritarian in content.
Israeli Populism
Despite the class differences, unlike the situation in the West, in Israel Mizrahim’s support for populism does not stem mainly from current economic deprivation. The income gap between them and Ashkenazim has been narrowing since the mid-1990s, and in 2018 the median income of a Mizrahi man of the second generation aged 30-43 was 89% of his Ashkenazi counterpart, while that of a Mizrahi woman reached 95% of her Ashkenazi counterpart. Already by 2011 Mizrahim of both the first- and second-generation were represented in the top income decile in the same ratio as in the general population: 27%. This despite the fact that economic inequality in general had continued to widen in that period: In 1979 the gross income of the top income decile was 2.6 times the average income, while in 2011 it was 3 times the average income.
In view of these data it would be hard to argue that support for populism by 60%-70%of Mizrahim stems primarily from their being economically “left behind.” I argue, rather, that in Israel ethno-national populism feeds on several factors, negative and positive:
Resentment against the Ashkenazi-dominated Labor Zionist Movement, which governed the country at the time of the Mizrahim’s arrival in the 1950s and 1960s.
Resource competition with the Palestinians at both the working- and middle-class levels.
Existential insecurity that is common to all Israeli Jews because of the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Economic liberalization, introduced in 1985, after initially hurting Mizrahim economically, has subsequently benefited many of them.
Much of this beneficial effect occurred under the key populist leader, Netanyahu, as Prime Minister.
“Judicial Reform”
The purpose of the “judicial reform” is not only to undo the “constitutional revolution” of the 1990s but to prevent its resurrection. For that purpose the reform seeks to limit the authority of the judicial system and subject it to the elected branches (in practice to the executive) through changes in four essential spheres: the selection of judges, the status of the basic laws, the role of the attorney general, and the constitutional authority of the High Court of Justice.
The reaction of the upper ethno-class to these proposed changes stems from its fear that the lower ethno-class will take over politically, without any liberal gatekeepers and thus end Israeli democracy. This fear expresses not only philosophical liberal values but economic concerns as well. Without a stable democracy and an independent judicial system corruption will increase, the business atmosphere will be muddied, and foreign investments will decline.
The lower ethno-class’s conception of democracy, on the other hand, is a majoritarian conception, where the will of the sovereign people, as expressed by its elected representatives, should be decisive, with no interference from unelected liberal institutions. In the present context sovereignty of the (Jewish) people means, inter alia, annexation of the West Bank (and perhaps Gaza too) to Israel, without granting its Palestinian residents Israeli citizenship. This is the overarching purpose of the “judicial reform.”
The roots of polarization over the “judicial reform” and related issues are planted deep in the history of Israel and cannot be easily uprooted. The two ethno-classes’ positions on “judicial reform” and on the populist government that promotes it reflect the class, ethnic and religious cleavages in Israeli society. As is well known, when cleavages do not intersect but overlap one another the stability of the society is at a risk.
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Yoav Peled is Professor Emeritus in the School of Political Science, Government and International Relations at Tel Aviv
University. This essay is based on:
Peled, Yoav. 2025. “The Ascendance of Ethno-National Populism in Israel, 1977-2022: An Ethno-Class Analysis,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537113.2025.2563999