ABSTRACT
In 2003, when Bynamin Netanyahu was minister of economy in Ariel Sharon’s government, he implemented an extremely neoliberal economic plan that involved a significant reduction of social security payments (children allowances, pensions, and allowances for singleparent families). Vicky Knafo, an unemployed single mother from the southern development town of Mitzpeh Ramon, walked from her hometown to the government house in Jerusalem to protest against the plan. Once in Jerusalem she was joined by other single mothers (all of them Mizrahi lower-class women), and demonstrated against the government for several weeks. Shai and Dror, two comedians who had a satiric program in Israeli TV, did a parody of Knafo’s protest. Awoman looking like Knafo was walking on the road. They asked her why she was protesting, and she explained thoroughly how angry she was because of Netanyahu’s economic policy. Then they asked her for whom she would vote in the next elections. The woman raised an Israeli flag and said, “For Likud and Bibi [Netanyahu], of course, long live Israel!” Shai and Dror were mocking the fact that many lower-class Jews oppose Netanyahu’s economic and social policies, but still vote for Likud, and for Netanyahu. The show laughed at the alleged irrationality of voting for Likud and Netanyahu “against one’s own interests.” The vote of the Jewish lower classes for right-wing political parties
(Likud, Shas, or Yisrael Beiteinu) puzzled liberal social scientists and supporters of the (until 1977) dominant Labor Movement. Hence, not only satiric programs appealed to the irrationality of the masses in order to explain this vote. Political commentators and even academic scholars resorted to this kind of explanation, all variants of the “false consciousness” motive. There is nothing too original about this approach. Marxists, Liberals, and functionalists have offered similar interpretations to explain populist phenomena in the Third World (Germani 1978; Di Tella 1977; Ionescu and Gellner 1969; Penia 1971).
