ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the debate between the two largest parties about the violence that marred the 1981 election campaign. Likud leaders did not only reject the corrupter-corrupted model used against them: they tried to replace it with a victimizer-victim one. Menachem Begin and his colleagues argued that responsibility for the election violence rested on the shoulders of its major targets. Sociologists have tended to differentiate between political and conventional crime on the basis of the offenders' motives rather than on the nature of their offense. The disruptive effects of the competitiveness were compounded by an unprecedented crystallization of ethnic differences in Israeli politics. Alignment leaders and campaign managers drew attention to the fateful nature of the elections. Alignment leaders differed as to whether the violence on the streets was an intended or unintended consequence of the election demagogy. The Alignment did not claim that the election rabble rousing was part of a wider societal phenomenon.
