Ethos of Conflict & the 2015 Israeli Elections

The March 2015 Israeli elections provided much drama and surprise. Pre-election polling indicated a slight lead for the dovish leader Isaac Herzog over the incumbent hawkish Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with the gap growing in favor of a Herzog victory as the elections neared. Herzog’s advantage was also manifested by the priority Israelis gave to economic issues. Polls conducted before the elections, like the January 2015 Peace Index Poll, indicated that more voters reported that economic issues were most important to them (43%) than those that marked security issues as their main concern (34%). In addition, more Israelis believed that a government headed by Herzog will deal with economic issues better than one headed by Netanyahu (52% vs. 30%). However, in the end, Netanyahu won an unprecedented fourth term, thus becoming one of the longest-serving Prime Ministers in Israel’s history. In this article, we analyze the election results based on a key concept from our own research - the Ethos of Conflict.  

According to Ethos of Conflict theory, developed by Bar-Tal, a society that is engaged in a long intractable conflict forms a particular ethos that is affected by the conflict but also feeds back to sustain the dispute. In the Israeli context, the Ethos of Conflict includes common beliefs and narratives such as the belief about exclusive Jewish rights over land, the belief that Israel is under constant existential threat, and the importance of security over any other goal. In addition, the Israeli Ethos of Conflict includes a positive self-image that stands in contrast to negative views of its rivals (‘we want peace but they only want to destroy us’) and contains beliefs about Israel as the only victim in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and as a target of hostility from the whole world. Turning back to the recent elections, it could be argued that Netanyahu’s victory was mainly due to his ability to utilize the Israeli Ethos of Conflict, as described above, better than his competitors in a period when such an ethos dominates and is shared by most of the sectors in the Israeli society.

At first glance, the above conclusion seems to contradict the common notion that in these elections, the Israeli society was divided between separate groups that claimed to represent different world views, including different approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This notion of “divided Israel” was reflected by the large number of sectorial parties who took part in the elections and found expression in their leaders’ rhetoric. For example, Netanyahu ruled out a future coalition with Herzog’s party - the Zionist Union - when he said, "I think that what we have here is a clear choice between two paths." Netanyahu’s path was strongly associated with the Ethos of Conflict as exemplified by his response to a report about Israel’s housing crisis: “When we talk about housing costs and cost of living, I never forget life itself: The biggest challenge of our lives is preventing Iran from going nuclear." In addition, Netanyahu claimed that, "Whoever today moves to establish a Palestinian state and withdraw from territory is giving territory to Islamic extremists against the State of Israel." He also warned voters of the ‘definite danger’ that Herzog would establish a government," with the support of the Arabs."

Yet a closer look at the election campaigns shows that contrary to Netanyahu’s claims, his political rivals did not actually challenge the Israeli Ethos of Conflict. For example, the more dovish Labor party, chose to run in these elections under the new patriotic name, "the Zionist Union." Its campaign mostly focused on economic issues such as the rising cost of living and the housing crisis, hoping to attract Netanyahu’s middle and lower class voters, who are especially affected by these problems.

Netanyahu’s competitors chose to focus on economic issues rather than challenge Netanyahu’s positions on the conflict also because they assumed (perhaps rightly so) that most segments in the Jewish-Israeli society adhere to the Ethos of Conflict and hence hold views of the Israeli- Arab conflict that do not differ much from Netanyahu’s formal positions. This includes many voters from Herzog’s own ‘Zionist Union’. Looking at public polls can be instructive in demonstrating the way the Ethos of Conflict prevails across most political divides in Israel. For example, a 2012 INSS poll revealed that 67% of the Jewish public thought that the Arabs’ aim is to conquer all of Israel. In fact, the most common answer, representing 45% of the sample, was that the Arabs want to conquer all Israel and destroy Jewish population. Moreover, 68% of Jewish respondents (Peace Index Poll, May 2014) defined the level of security-military risk to Israel as very high and 63% thought that “The whole world is against us” (Peace Index Poll, August 2014). Interestingly, though 60% of respondents identifying as right-wing tended to agree with the latter statement, 52% of those who locate themselves in the political center or in the moderate left also held this belief.

Ethos of Conflict provides a way to look at political reality, but it is much more than that. It may be seen as a meta-ideology: a framework that overrides the various ideologies that exist in societies engulfed in intergroup conflict. In Israel, it is also an intrinsic part of the national identity and hence forms a well-defined collective with a clear social identity. Society members are constantly exposed to the Ethos content. It is everywhere – it appears in school textbooks and leaves its marks on popular cultural products and media discourse. Its presence induces basic emotions such as fear and hate. This is what makes Ethos of Conflict so powerful, and why people cling to it so strongly, sometimes contrary to their own interests.

That is also why Netanyahu’s use of the Ethos of Conflict to mobilize electorates was so successful and went beyond partisan considerations that may have been on voters' minds. As noted above, his competitors’ strategy was to focus on other issues, leaving the contentious Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the margins of their campaigns. On Election Day, Netanyahu exploited this vacuum by addressing Jewish-Israelis' well-nurtured “fear from the Arabs.” “The [Israeli] Arabs are coming by the masses to the ballots,” he warned, explicitly calling Jewish-Israelis to counter-balance the votes of 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinian-Arabs that would presumably “take over the country if we let them.” As shown in the polls cited above, fear is at the core of the Israeli Ethos of Conflict and as a psychological construct is activated automatically and requires very little in terms of cognitive effort. Evoking the Ethos of Conflict was apparently very effective. The Jewish-Israeli society chose a pseudo-protector who will defend the Ethos of Conflict over a leader that could (potentially) bring about change.     

Failing to debate over elements of the Ethos of Conflict was not always the case in Israeli politics. During the 80s and 90s, the two main parties focused their campaigns on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on their different approaches to its solution. During these decades, Labor claimed that Israel has a partner for peace in the Arab world, and that a peace agreement can ensure Israel’s security more efficaciously than a war ever could. Public polls at this period indicated a general weakening of the Ethos of Conflict as a unifying element in Israeli society. However, since 2000 the adherence of Jewish-Israelis to the Ethos of Conflict has strengthened again. Of course, these trends were influenced by events in the conflict, such as the increasing violence in the region since 2000. But some major events in the conflict, such as the Oslo accords, were also influenced by changes in the Ethos of Conflict that preceded these events. Thus, change of leadership is not enough for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Changes in the dominance of the Ethos of Conflict in all societies involved in this conflict — whether as a cause or as a result of a change in leadership — is also necessary for achieving such a resolution.

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Photo: Isreali Prime Minister supporters reacting to exit poll results by Oded Balilty, Associated Press
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