Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

See, the support for the Likud Party was from several sources. They got close to 100 percent of the religious vote—because there’s a very big fundamentalist religious community in Israel, and since it’s a very totalitarian community, they just do what the rabbis say, and the rabbis said “Vote for Likud.” Then they also got a lot of the sort of chauvinist nationalist Jewish vote. And actually they got the vote of most of the working class and the poor as well—because the Labor Party in Israel, despite its name, is the party of the rich elites and professionals and the Europeanized segments of the population, and big business really likes it: I mean, they don’t mind Likud, but they really like Labor. In case you were confused about this, the fact that the United States has supported the Labor Party ought to be a giveaway about its real interests: the United States does not support parties of working people and the poor. But the point is, most of these voting blocks that joined to put Netanyahu in power have a kind of religious chauvinist element to them—you know, they want to restore and establish Jewish identity, their emphasis is on what are called in the United States “the cultural issues,” that’s what Likud won on. And often that does have sort of a populist appeal: so Likud got the support of poor and working people, and they got it in the same kind of way as Pat Buchanan gets their support here—and with about as much authenticity in terms of concern for their interests.