My Review of Amit Segal's "A Call at 4 AM"

 A Primer on Israeli Politics

Leading Israeli reporter Amit Segal has written a primer on Israeli politics going back to the State’s founding. I would characterize his views as center-right. However, a long time Israeli friend and former reporter would argue that Segal is firmly on the Right. In the beginning Israel created a parliamentary system consisting of 120 delegates to the Knesset who would be elected via a party slate by proportional representation, not by constituency. In 1948 with the new state’s boundaries up for grabs, it wasn’t really possible to create individual districts. You would think that accountability would flow through the political parties, but, in fact, the party leaders became personality cults starting with David Ben Gurion. It seems that once in power prime ministers never know when to quit. Ego mania is alive and well in Israeli politics.

 

With 120 seats in the Knesset, a majority of just 61 seats runs the country. For the first 29 years the Mapai Party (Labor) had a monopoly on power. However, since 1977 when a rightwing bloc formed around the Likud Party under the leadership of Menachem Begin took power, it has for the most part represented the dominant coalition in the Knesset. Israeli governments are coalition governments, because even during the heyday of the Labor Party, no party ever achieved a majority.

 

The trick is to put together a coalition of 61 members and for the past 50 years by the dint of demographics and divisions in the Left, rightwing governments tended to run the country. It has to be kept in mind that the distinctions between right and left are not of the American variety. According to Segal, what separates the right from the left is the distance from Yasser Arafat and his successors. Historically the left has been open to a two-state solution while the right has not.

 

Segal points out the reasons for the ascendancy of the right. The 1973 Suez War destroyed the credibility of the left on the security issue. The failure of the 2000 peace talks with Arafat led to the second intifada thereby causing the left to lose the peace issue. In the 2026 election the critical question will be the right’s failure to defend the country on October 7^th, 2023, be enough to topple its long-term hegemony or alternatively will its subsequent success be enough for it to hold power.

 

On the importance of personality over party, Segal highlights the case of General Ariel Sharon who became a Labor Party member to be promoted in the early 1970’s, he then broke with them to help found the Likud Party and later he founded his own party. During his life he built settlements that he would later destroy.

 

Today political divisions in Israel evolve around Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the question of Jewish versus Israeli identity. Israelis are either for him or against him, so much so that most center and left parties won’t be in a coalition government with him especially when Netanyahu’s guiding philosophy is “no enemies on the Right,” and no one trusts him. That abstention gives power to the Haredi religious parties whose votes in the Knesset are traded for draft exemptions and huge public subsidies that are bleeding the country white.

 

Those citizens who view themselves as primarily Israeli are largely secular and their views about trading West Bank land for peace with the Palestinians are based on a cold-eyed analysis of Israel’s security. On the other hand, those Israeli’s who view themselves as primarily Jewish view Judea and Samaria as sacred ground of the Bible where their forefathers walked and where David and Solomon were kings and where the prophets spoke truth to power. Thus, control of that land is non-negotiable.

 

After reading Segal’s book I have come to the conclusion that the only way to pull Israeli society together after the brutal Gaza War is for Netanyahu and the center left to form a coalition government that would remove the far-right Ben Gvir and Smotrich factions from the government as well as the religious parties.  ( See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/10/my-review-of-yaakov-katz-and-amir.html ) That would lower the temperature in Judea and Samaria and pave the way to radically reduce the power of the Haredi parties. It is not perfect, but as they say, politics is the art of the possible and both the right and the left are going to have to swallow their pride.