Israeli Political Parties Struggle To Attract US Immigrants Used To Larger-Scale Corruption (PreOccupied Territory) ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, September 11, 2025

Israeli Political Parties Struggle To Attract US Immigrants Used To Larger-Scale Corruption (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jerusalem, September 11 - American expatriates living in the Jewish State have shown no great enthusiasm for Likud, Labor, any of the newer factions that feature in the country's politics, studies indicate, with analysts attributing the phenomenon to the much smaller economy and therefore much-less-impressive scope of graft that makes those local organizations, however iconic in the culture, appear pathetic and backwater.

With a handful of loquacious exceptions over the decades, Israeli politics has attracted comparatively few immigrants from the US. A new examination of the failure of Israeli political parties to engage American immigrants in numbers commensurate with their share of the population and the demographic's relative wealth and education argues that the effort to recruit immigrants from the US - who number anywhere from 150,000 to 200,000, not including children born to them in Israel - has mostly failed because Israeli politicians cannot engage in nearly the same magnitude of corruption as the politicians those voters encountered while living stateside, and the difference between the two cohorts of criminals renders the Israeli political class a pale, D-List imitation at best.

"Israel's entire government budget is about six hundred billion shekels per annum," explained political scientist Nepo Olmert-Kronyberg. "That puts it on par with just the state of Oregon, and in the same ballpark as New York City. Bupkis, as far as any American is concerned. The level of graft, embezzlement, and 'protektzia' in the Israeli political system can't hope to match what US politics can produce at just a step above the county or town level. It makes whatever corruption [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu is accused of look paltry and a waste of time as far as any American is concerned."

A select few Americans have sought involvement in Israeli politics; none have progressed beyond legislative or advisory roles in the government. The most famous example, Rabbi Meir Kahane, saw his Kach Party banned from running for Knesset because of its explicit anti-Arab racism. Netanyahu himself spent many formative years in the US, but even his graft ambitions face the inescapable constraints of a national cash flow that cannot hold a candle to the scale that even an ex-Miami resident considers respectable.

"Israel's economy has grown steadily over the decades," allowed analyst Moelle Mirma. "Perhaps it will reach the point where American expats will consider the amount involved in government corruption worthy of their attention and involvement. Just as likely, though, the US will become hostile to continued Jewish presence, and within a generation or two, there will be no one left in Israel who even remembers the scale of corruption in American politics, and Israeli political corruption will be seen as the right amount."