No We Can't
In a recent trip to Israel I was exposed to what many Israelis refer to as “The Obama Effect.” Following the elections in the US, the Barack Obama campaign slogans, as well as the use of the Internet during the campaign, is making it way into the Israel political system as it’s preparing for parliamentary elections in February 2009. Nowhere is this “Obama effect” felt more than in the Shas Party campaign. This must be a twisted joke when Shas, an Ultra-orthodox religious party, representing largely the Mizrahi religious Jews (Jews of Middle Eastern and Northern African descent), is adopting Obama’s slogan “Yes We Can.” Walking in the street of Israel, one cannot escape the Shas slogan – on buses, on posters and even bumper stickers.
When Obama told Americans that they could, he was referring to the ability to come together as one. He first referred to the slogan after Hillary Clinton’s victory in the New Hampshire primaries. He then spoke of the “destiny of a nation” proclaiming that “Yes we can heal this nation.” He was not just referring to Democrats but to all Americans. Obama was proclaiming “Yes We Can” work together to achieve our common goals. Nothing could be farther from the truth in the Shas case. If Obama’s subtext was Yes We Can come together to achieve a common goal, Shas’ subtext is more in line with Yes We Can achieve 18 mandates (in the Israeli Parliament, known as ‘The Knesset’.) This is exactly the statement made by MK Eli Yishai (the chairman of Shas) when he unveiled the slogan in early December.
The “We” in the Shas campaign epitomizes the divisions in Israel society between Arabs and Jews, religious and secular Jews, Ashkenazi (European) Jews and Mizrahi (Middle East/Northern African) Jews. The unifying message of the Obama campaign is nowhere to be found in Israel. Nowhere is the divisiveness that plagues the Israeli society more evident than in the “Yes we Can” campaign of Shas. Shas is not proposing a vision that all Israelis (including non-Jews) can subscribe to. The manipulation of the slogan is particularly alarming given Shas’ stated policies, which are antithetical to the message Obama propagated in the presidential election campaign. Shas has consistently used its power in the Knesset to blackmail the government into increasing resource allocation to the religious interests at the expense of greater national ones in exchange for political support for the governing coalition. If Obama sought to inspire young and old Americans to go to the polls for the first time regardless of their party affiliation, Shas seeks to inspire only its sectarian base to go to the polls. Shas provides a limited and exclusive vision of Israeli political culture, one that offers clannish, identity-based politics rather than an inclusive national one. It appeals to a small constituency of supporters, based on their ethnic and religious identity, and its policies are geared towards serving that constituency exclusively. Shas’ interpretation of the ‘Yes We Can’ slogan is solely based on a radical, ethnic and sectarian identity, which seeks to exclude many Israelis, indeed many Jews in the Diaspora, from its ethos. Who are the “we” in that narrative? According to the strict interpretation of “who is a Jew” adopted by Shas, many of the Jews in the Diaspora would not be included in that collective “we.” In fact, Shas often fosters an “us VS. them” dichotomy, in which the “them” includes other Jews in Israeli society.
The idea that Shas could represent a new way of conducting business in Jerusalem in the same way that Obama has come to represent a new vision for Washington politics, is not only offensive to the Obama campaign, its offensive to Israelis who still believe in the ability to create a polity in which all fabrics of society have a legitimate voice. If only we could. Unfortunately it seems that in Israel, No we can’t is more of an appropriate, if depressing, conclusion.