Don't use halacha to justify excluding Arab party from coalition gov't

As the Israelites prepared to enter the land of Canaan, Moses warned them to appoint only a Jewish monarch, providing insight into the halachic decision to include an Arab party in the coalition.

By SHLOMO BRODY
Updated: JUNE 17, 2021 15:42
MANSOUR ABBAS, head of the Ra’am party, seen June 2 after signing the coalition agreement. (photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/FLASH90)
MANSOUR ABBAS, head of the Ra’am party, seen June 2 after signing the coalition agreement.
(photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/FLASH90)
In recent months, politicians in Israel were divided over the propriety of including an Arab party in the coalition. MK Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party opposed any government that relied on Arab support. This stance was initially supported by a group of National-Religious rabbis, including Rabbi Tzvi Tau, who argued that it was prohibited by Halacha (Jewish law) and a hillul Hashem (desecration of God’s name) for Jews to require non-Jewish support to establish a government. Tau, however, flipped his position and argued that it was preferable to include a socially conservative Islamic party, Ra’am, over a progressive Jewish party like Meretz, which supports significant liberal social reforms.
Safed’s Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu initially gave support to Tau, but later asserted it was forbidden to include an Islamic party, after increased Arab-Jewish tensions in mixed cities in Israel during the recent flare-up in Gaza. These halachic flip-flops caused much confusion and require some form of clarification.
As the Israelites prepared to enter the land of Canaan, Moses warned them to appoint only a Jewish monarch.
“Be sure to set as king over yourself one of your own people; you must not set a foreigner over you, one who is not your kinsman.” (Deuteronomy 17:15) Some commentators asserted that the concern was that a gentile would lead the Jewish people to worship idols or install pagan practices. Others feared that a foreigner would enter dangerous political alliances with their home country. Whatever the rationale, the verse caused some tension with members of the Herodian dynasty (first century BCE), whose Jewish lineage was questionable or disputed. In any case, the sages significantly expanded this prohibition to include all positions of authority.
This ruling raised questions with the founding of the State of Israel as a democratic state that allows all of its citizens to serve in the Knesset. Israel’s first Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Yitzhak Herzog, argued that the Talmudic prohibition only applied to imposed positions of authority (serarah), like those in hereditary monarchies. Yet democracies – in which members of parliament are elected by the people, serve for a limited time, have checks on their powers, and cannot bequeath their posts – do not have positions that would be included in this prohibition. Nonetheless, he insisted that the symbolically important state president should only be a Jew, while further urging that the prime minister and army chief of staff should also Jewish, at least until the country was better established.
Other countries, such as the United States, do not allow their leader to be foreign-born, and Herzog thought such a restriction would serve a similar function. Israeli law, however, has no such restrictions. In any case, for socio-political reasons, there was for many years no plausibility of non-Jews possessing executive governing powers.
THE QUESTION of a so-called “minority government,” in which an Arab party supports the governing coalition, emerged in the 1970s after the Yom Kippur War. For short periods, embattled prime ministers Golda Meir and then Yitzhak Rabin required outside support to finalize armistice agreements and withdraw from conquered territory. Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook was opposed to any territorial retreats. He further asserted that it was a grave hillul Hashem for the Jewish state to have non-Jews playing formative roles in setting its law and policies. In his mind, any such decision was illegitimate.
This issue re-emerged in the 1990s after the Oslo Accords. Prime minister Rabin, for a time, required the votes of Arab Knesset members to pass the “land-for-peace” agreements. Many prominent students of Rabbi Kook, who believed that territorial compromise was halachically forbidden, further asserted that the government’s decision would be illegitimate because it relied on non-Jewish support. Rabbi Shlomo Goren also cited a Talmudic passage saying that one does not follow the majority position when they are buttressed by wicked conspirators.
On this basis, many students of Rabbi Kook signed onto a proclamation this year that prohibited joining a “minority government” with Arab support. One may view this as a principled stance. The flip-flops of Rabbis Tau and Eliyahu, however, indicate that this is not such a firm halachic position. Instead, it is a matter of political preference, and should one determine that a “minority government” is politically preferable to other alternatives, then it would be allowed.
Indeed, haredi (ultra-Orthodox) political leaders indicated to then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they would agree to such an arrangement, while accusing the Religious Zionist Party of an overly purist approach to politics. Other rabbis have recently come out in favor of the Bennett-Lapid government with the same understanding that such a coalition is far preferable to another round of costly elections.

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Without entering the political fray, my own opinion is that halachic language like “prohibited,” and “permissible” is not appropriate for this debate. The technical issue of non-Jewish participation in the government was already addressed by Rabbi Herzog and accepted by many other prominent figures.
The more important question is whether such a government would benefit Israel’s citizens and strengthen the Jewish state, especially compared to the alternatives. This requires keen analysis of the political players, their motivations and their policies. One may reasonably expect such evaluations as “great,” “bad,” “better than the alternatives,” or “I prefer a fifth election.” All of those are reasonable responses that do not need to be turned into statements of “permitted” or “prohibited,” as if we were dealing with a dispute in ritual law.
Israeli politics can be quite unpleasant, and the introduction of religious discourse only tars the name of the Torah. The sullying of religious discourse in the recent political imbroglio was the true hillul Hashem.
The writer is the co-dean of the Tikvah Online Academy and a post-doctoral student at Bar-Ilan University Law School.


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