A very Druze Knesset

February 9, 2009 - 11:55 PM by Harry · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Politics, Religion

Druze man The Israeli Druze are a mysterious and interesting people. They are known to eat raw meatballs. They find their spouses on the internet (okay, we do that too). Although it can be argued that they know no borders, they are historically extremely loyal to Israel, fighting as part of our military since the War of Independence and even teaching in our universities.

About a year ago, some alarming news reached the public when Israel’s National Resilience Survey results claimed that Israeli patriotism among the Druze was dropping rapidly. Balad party Member of Knesset Said Naffaa had harsh words to say to YNet on the matter at the time:

“Israel had always viewed the Druze as some type of domesticated beast, but now this previously docile animal is fighting back,” said Naffaa.

Moreover, Israel has taken quite a bit of heat recently when the government decided last month to ban two Arab parties from the upcoming election (Yes, Balad is one of them), given their track records for anti-Israel sentiment, rhetoric and actions.

With polls opening in a number of hours and election fever in full swing, one aspect to the situation that has unfortunately not been emphasized is the potential for this upcoming Knesset to be the most disproportionately Druze-represented than any ever before. How’s that for tolerance and diversity? Even extremist Yisrael Beitenu party has a Druze on their candidate list.

Haaretz did the math for us recently, revealing that a total of five Druze candidates were likely to garner seats:

According to the government’s statistical yearbook for 2008, Israel has about 120,000 Druze citizens, constituting 1.6 percent of the population. Five Druze lawmakers would be 4 percent of the Knesset’s 120 members, 2.5 times more than the proportion of the community within the national population.

And the best part is, the candidates hardly seem interested in only representing their small ethnicity:

Deputy Foreign Minister Majali Wahabi (Kadima), a Druze, said yesterday that his community cannot be expected to vote en bloc: “The large parties have to understand the importance of our community. I personally plan to represent my people faithfully, but also anyone who voted for my party, no matter what sector they come from. I believe in our involvement in Israeli society, not in separate parties.”

Tomorrow, Israel has much to decide and crystallize. At least there’s a good chance that our legislative body will be far more diverse and far less “special interest”-focused than we’re led to believe.

Image of a Druze man in the Golan courtesy tierecke from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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