ABSTRACT
The rallying of Israel's Haredi community behind Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1996 elections took many observers by surprise and played the key role in ensuring his victory. Yet this was not the first instance in which this community, which constitutes a small segment of the Israeli population, determined the identity of the country's prime minister. Six years earlier it was Rabbi Shach, arguably the foremost Haredi spiritual authority in Israel, who dealt the coup de grace to Shimon Peres's attempts to bring down the National Unity Government and form a Labour government under his leadership.
