As in every election campaign, this time too an imagined distress began due to the existence of the "liberal right".
On the one hand, people like Ayelet Shaked and Yoaz Handel are trying to sell us again that such a party is lacking;
On the other hand, Ofir Dayan explained, for example, that there is no need for a party because there really aren't enough voters in this category.
The right is actually divided between secular-conservatives in Likud and religious-conservatives in the religious Zionist and ultra-Orthodox parties.
That is, it is not a problem of supply (of the parties), but of (lack of) demand.
The time has come to refute the two opposing claims.
On the political level, it started back when Bennett joined the Jewish House.
The religious man who brought the secular, photographed himself as a hipster on a Rothschild scooter and marketed his party - which was distinctly religious, conservative and socialist (after all, it had more years of satellite service to Mapai than to Harut/Likud) - under the guise of "liberal right".
These "liberals" once joined an anti-religious secular alliance with Lapid and once with the religious conservatism of Smotrich and Peretz.
And while devoting themselves at any time (politically) to other religious extremism, they also did not hesitate to shake up the "national" part of the party.
What started with a call for the establishment of a strong right-wing government ended, as we know, in the establishment of a government with the entire left bloc - from Lapid to Meretz and Ra'am.
The bin rummaging event in the April 2019 elections could have been effective, if instead of looking for voter ballots they had looked for their own national-liberal foundations.
Because their big lie - like that of Sa'ar, Hauser and others - is not only related to their marketing as a liberal right before the elections, but to their repeated claim that there is no such party in the political system.
The fact that the Likud has remained around 30 seats for over a decade proves at the very least that its voters believe that their positions are well represented in this party.
But Likud's policy is always "understated" - it is presented as less national in front of the far right, even when it is satisfied with local real estate deals, while in Likud they make international and regional strategic alliances to establish the position of the entire Jewish nation state. In front of the economic "center-left", Likud has been given an image of pig capitalism, instead of presenting its policies that turned Israel into an economic powerhouse, which in turn allows for a balanced welfare policy.
In other words, even though there is a national-liberal party alive and kicking, the opposite narrative refuses to die.
Because those politicians have more than an interest in the creation of a liberal right that seemingly does not exist, they have an interest in dismantling the existing Likud, as a broad nationalist-liberal popular party.
So much for the supply.
And now - the demand.
The harmony between the traditional majority in Israeli society and the majority of Likud voters has many faces.
Israeli traditionalism, as Prof. Yaakov Yadgar accurately explained, is not only a basis for preserving the past, nor is it some default or lack of choice between religiosity and secularism.
It is an identity category in itself, capable of containing preservation on the side of change and "advancement" at the same time, because in its origins it was never required to break away from religion in order to undergo "modernization".
Even at the national level, traditionalism embodies within it a new line, as Avishai Ben-Haim explains.
It is not just a religious category, it is the basis of a broad national identity, and in this sense - it is the cradle of the state.
In the socio-economic aspect, as Dr. Uri Cohen did well to research, this is a group that underwent significant social leadership thanks to the free market policy, which created, among other things, a new (Mizrahi) middle class, which understood firsthand the connection between the political structure and the economic structure, and therefore translated This is a return to a conscious political choice. The group of Likud voters embodies within it the essence of the national-liberal combination that everyone likes to discuss and think about. It seems that the imaginary searches can be stopped.
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