Pragmatic and value-based argumentation in the 2015 Israeli elections

A discursive and argumentative analysis of the Israeli 2015 elections reveals how electoral strategies displayed unexpected similarities between rival parties such as the Likud and the Zionist Union, on the one hand, and the Jewish Home and Meretz, on the other hand, in their respective approaches to foreign policy and to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the mainstream Right and Left mainly emphasized security motives, used consequence-based arguments, and appealed to fear, the practical reasoning of the two smaller parties (Jewish Home and Meretz) competing with the Likud and the Zionist Union applied a value-based rather than a merely instrumental argumentation. This reconfiguration of the political map enlightens the peculiar dynamics of the 2015 elections. A discursive and argumentative analysis of the Israeli 2015 elections reveals how electoral strategies displayed unexpected similarities between rival parties such as the Likud and the Zionist Union, on the one hand, and the Jewish Home and Meretz, on the other hand, in their respective approaches to foreign policy and to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This chapter shows an interesting similarity in electoral discursive strategies between the two opponent mainstream Left and Right parties, on the one hand, and their respective block rivals the Jewish Home and Meretz. During the 2015 elections, the two leading parties, Likud and the Zionist Union, both claimed their strong commitment to the protection of Israel defined as a Jewish and democratic state. In contrast, the two parties on the Right and Left who most conspicuously rivalled with the Likud and Zionist Union on matters of foreign policy both adopted value-based reasoning strategies.