[QUOTE="nocoolnamejim"]] Interesting. I learned something new today. You alluded to the impact of the religious zionism adherents (10%). How much of an ability to influence public policy does this group have? There are some pretty small groups of people in the U.S. that have an extremely outsized impact on U.S. public policy afterall.pie-junior
The political system in Israel is the polar opposite of the one in the United states. dozens of parties sit in the Knesset and no single party has held a majority for about 50 years. Example- There are elections in Israel in 9 days. The likud-beitenu, a new mongrel of a party combining the 'ruling' (i'll get there in a moment) likud and the extreme right-winged Israel beitenu are looking at, at best, 35 members in the new parliamentout of a total of 120.
This is a good indication of the fragmentation problem in israel. traditionally- the real 'contest' for power was always between the right winged Likud (in terms of foreign policy and usually in terms of economic policy) and the left winged labour party. this paradigm, and the need of every PM (ever) to set massive coalitions of different parties to rule- while keeping their 'enemies' out, has led to the advent of extortion tactics by interest group parties (using the federalist papers' terminology) as a result of the ease in collapsing governments by unhappy coalition partners. (eg the religious orthodox parties have managed to secure for their constituents social benefits beyond anything a secular person could ever attain- living expenses for those who have devoted their life to studying torah as a profession; new housing projects aimed soley at orthodox jews, complete exempt from military service etc. etc. only really stemmed, to a degree, by the Israeli supreme court which has made a habit to himself of making giant leaps of judicial activism as a result of the political makeup)
That's how 'religious zionists' (ie religious persons who are not of anti-zionists origins) have managed to gain the influence that they have. Israel is prob the only country in the world where the majority is disenfranchised.
Interesting. It makes sense when I follow your argument all the way to the end and get the full explanation but it's counter-intuitive in a lot of ways with what I've thought usually happens when you have lots of different political parties. Typically as I understand it, when that happens (as I'm sure you know...using you as sounding board and also speaking to the crowd here) you end up with MORE moderation rather than less because whichever party wins needs to make compromises and allowances in order to build a ruling coalition/majority. In other words, if you go too far in one direction or another, some other coalition snips off your unsatisfied members and you lose power. But it sounds like in this particular case, it's a tweaking of the "mobilizing the base" strategy that I've seen employed at times in the U.S. Turn out that 10% in large numbers and snip off JUST ENOUGH others to hold power. 
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