Rabbi Josh Weinberg, a vice president at the Union for Reform Judaism and executive director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America, turns to a 1940 quote from Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky when he describes his hopes for the next Israeli government.
“In every cabinet where the prime minister is a Jew, the vice-premiership shall be offered to an Arab,” Jabotinsky said. “And vice-versa.”
Weinberg, told JNS that he thinks that principle is particularly relevant after Tuesday’s election, in which Arab parties secured a record 19 seats.
“I think that there should—I would like there to be a coalition with the Arab parties right now, because I don’t want the Hareidim or the ultra-nationalist parties, or the Likud for that matter, to be in the coalition anymore,” he said.
Likud, the party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, took the top spot in the Israeli elections, and the prime minister’s right-wing bloc won 53 seats. That was more than the opposition bloc, which secured 48, but short of the 61 needed for a governing majority in the 120-member Knesset.
The question whether to form a government with the Arab parties has divided Israeli leaders. Yair Golan, chair of the Democrats party in Israel, said that “we must no longer accept Netanyahu’s racist division between Jewish votes and Arab votes.”
Likud stated in Hebrew, in a statement that Netanyahu shared on social media, that Arab parties “that support terrorism and the elimination of the Jewish state” stole the elections “through serious criminal offenses of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries and the use of prohibited software to mobilize voters.”
“It is forbidden to form a government with them,” Netanyahu said in Hebrew, in another post.
Weinberg spoke to JNS hours after returning to the United States from Israel, where he traveled to vote in the country’s first national election since Oct. 7, 2023.
The rabbi, who became an Israeli citizen in 2003 and served in the Israel Defense Forces, was among what he said were “tens of thousands” of Israelis who traveled from abroad to cast ballots in an election he described as a “referendum” on Netanyahu.
The Joint List and Ra’am won a combined 19 seats in the Knesset, nearly doubling their representation from the previous election, according to results from Israel’s Central Elections Committee on Friday.
The results leave Israel with difficult coalition negotiations. Cooperation with Arab parties could provide a path to a majority for the Jewish-led opposition, though several of its leaders have ruled out such an arrangement.
Weinberg acknowledged that forming a coalition with Arab parties would not be easy and would require “a lot of nose-holding and a lot of negotiation.”
His ideal outcome, he told JNS, would be a government composed of liberal Zionist and Arab parties, which he said reflects the broader political outlook of the Reform Judaism movement.
“I think we’re in the fairly liberal Zionist camp for sure,” he said. “Our positions on religion and state are vastly shared by many, many people, even if not everyone votes that way.”
The Union for Reform Judaism represents 825 North American Reform synagogues, according to its website. According to Pew Research Center data from 2020, some 37% of American Jews identify as Reform, the largest movement in the nation.
Judicial reform and the relationship between religion and state are among the main issues in Israel at stake for Reform Jews, Weinberg said.
The Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial reform, which sparked widespread protests in 2023, sought to limit the judiciary’s authority and give elected officials greater influence over judicial appointments, according to its critics. Supporters of the reform said that it returned a say in the state’s highest court to the accountability of voters, rather than allowing the court to determine its successors.
Weinberg told JNS that the debate raised broader concerns for the Reform movement, including religious pluralism and the recognition of Reform and Conservative Judaism in Israel.
Many voters prioritized replacing Netanyahu over finding a party that reflected all their positions, he said.
“A lot of people voted practically, and to say we want whoever can pose a significant enough bloc or be able to replace Netanyahu,” he said.
Weinberg declined to say for which party he voted. He told JNS that he traveled to Israel to vote and attend a Jewish Agency board of governors meeting.
He described an “electrifying feeling in the air” on Election Day, which is a national Israeli holiday.
In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Israelis packed the streets on their way to vote, campaigned and spent time at beaches and cafes, he said.
Many Israelis were “excited” to vote and hoped to bring about a change in government, though some ended up being disappointed, Weinberg said.
“Many in the liberal camp were disappointed with the results,” he told JNS. “That is to say, after all this, Netanyahu is still the biggest party.”
American Jews following the election from abroad may underestimate the challenges of forming a coalition with Arab parties, particularly given the trauma Israelis continue to experience after Oct. 7, according to Weinberg.
Cooperation between Jewish and Arab parties might appear to be a “no-brainer” to some liberal American Jews, but Israelis may have reservations about working with parties whose views of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror organization since 1997, differ from their own, he said.
Weinberg compared the debate over cooperation with Arab lawmakers to a hypothetical American election, in which a voter’s ethnicity determined if the person’s political support was considered legitimate.
“Could you imagine that we are talking about a swing state—let’s say Ohio or Pennsylvania—and we said, ‘Oh well, you know, the Democrats won 40% of the white vote, but then there’s still 10% of the Latino vote out there, which we’re not sure about,’” he told JNS.
“You’re like, ‘What are you talking about?’” he said. “Either they’re a vote for us or they’re not a vote for us. You know, why is their ethnicity an issue?”
Accustomed to a different political system, Americans may also struggle to understand how an Israeli election can end without a clear winner, Weinberg told JNS.
“I think it’s also hard for sort of the technical aspects,” he said. “It’s hard for American Jews, or just Americans in general, where we have a different system, to see, like, OK, now there could very well be an outcome in which the whole system is deadlocked, and we’re going to have to go to new elections.”
American Jews also have a different perspective on how Israel is perceived internationally, according to the Reform rabbi.
“Many people realize, especially abroad, that this government is not helping Israel’s image,” he told JNS. “For those of us who care deeply about Israel’s image around the world, the face of a theocracy and what people see in the news from here, bands of Jewish terrorists going around terrorizing Palestinians is frankly not a good look for Israel.”
The Israeli government has denied that what is referred to widely, including from members of Congress, as “settler violence” or “terrorism” is a problem that local law enforcement has ignored or is ill-equipped to address.
“Those of us who care deeply are hoping for some change,” Weinberg told JNS.
