ABSTRACT
The elections of 1984 failed to produce a government because neither of the “two great parties” came close to securing a majority of the 120 Knesset seats. The Labor Alignment, led by Shimon Peres, won forty-four and the Likud (Coalition), led by Yitzhak Shamir, won forty-one. Since what Mill called “a sufficiently large number to be … entitled to a representative” was adjudged by Israel’s founding fathers to be 1 percent of the total votes cast, many small parties, including what in Israel are called “one-man factions,” won Knesset seats. The only political fact created by the elections that elicited more editorial comment than the fevered negotiations between large and small parties was the election of Rabbi Meir Kahane to the Knesset. During the election campaign the Central Elections Committee, supported by its chairman, Supreme Court Justice Gavriel Bach, voted to disqualify Kahane’s list altogether on the grounds that it incited racial hostility toward one segment of the population.
