Was it on the agenda? The hidden agenda of the 1988 campaign

The cost of Israel’s election campaign reached a new high in 1988, even though repeated findings have proved that the time and money invested in electioneering do not significantly change voting positions. The symbols used to contest the two most controversial issues on the open agenda implicitly reinforced two subjects on the hidden agenda; both of the latter are unquestioned foundations of Israeli society. First, the open dispute over the location of the territorial boundaries of Israel affirmed the national consensus over the nation’s right to land. Second, the open dispute over which party was most capable of leading the state affirmed the national consensus on the Jewishness of the state. The ultra-Orthodox stream of Judaism began in Europe as a reaction to the modernization and secularization of Jews, on one hand, and the uprooting of Eastern European Jewry and its migration to the west, on the other.