The division is not about the starvation of Gaza. All Zionist parties in the Israeli parliament support the military campaign in Gaza. Apart from some lip-service from left-wing leaders, to my knowledge no Jewish leader has spoken against the starvation. Israeli media (except for Haaretz) have largely denied that there is a famine, and have called it a "propaganda campaign" by the Hamas.
About 22% of Israel is orthodox and about 13% can be called "ultra-orthodox".
They play a major role in politics. Most prominently and recently, the 8-decade long exemption from the draft for Haredi Jewish people was ended causing a major crisis in Israel's government. All Haredi representatives of the Knesset withdrew leaving Netanyahu's party's majority with a razor thin margin of 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset
You mean the really small minority of orthodox Jews who live outside Israel and oppose Zionism because they believe the coming of the Messiah should not be driven by humans (or something like that)? Or the ones who oppose the current Gaza conflict because of the recent push to conscript them into the armed forces, when they previously enjoyed the exemption?
Trust me, no orthodox Jews are opposing the Gaza conflict on humanitarian grounds. On the contrary, there is a STRONG orthodox faction in Netanyahu's government (of which Smotrich is a member).
My understanding is the defense made by Zionist parties is more that Hamas has culpability in the starvation. I haven't seen this claim verified or debunked sufficiently to have a strong opinion about it but it at least seems within reason to me that Hamas is acting in bad faith and is weaponizing starvation of Gaza residents.
Perhaps the fact that the Israeli state are the only ones making this claim, and many multiple experts, humanitarians, countries, leaders, are saying the exact opposite should be sufficient enough to debunk the claim.
Honest question from someone whose knowledge of Israel's government isn't deep: does "Zionist parties" mean anything other than the parties which are not Arab parties? (are members of the Arab parties free to advocate against Zionism and Israel's status as a Jewish state?)
All parties except for the Arabs and ultra religious are Zionist. The ultra religious have their own relationship with Zionism, but are members of the government.
While Arab MKs do enjoy freedom of speech, they are ostracized and delegitimized by the majority of Jewish MKs.
> they are ostracized and delegitimized by the majority of Jewish MKs
Not exactly.
A conservative Arab party was part of the ruling government coalition in 2021. They joined with a wide spectrum of political parties seeking to defeat the Likud Prime Minister Netanyahu.
If you watch Peter Beinart's channel, he has had Ehud Olmert and Avraham Berg on. IDK if they touched upon starvation specifically, but it seemed like they were not in denial about Israel's actions, especially the latter (I think Beinart lightly pressed Olmert on whether Israel's actions constitute genocide, and Olmert disagreed, and I don't know that I begrudge him that, given his position).
Neither of these former politicians are current leaders, of course.
