Knesset

Yesterday we had a free day (yay!) so one of the guys organized a trip to the Israeli parliament, which is called the Knesset. It was actually really kind of wonderful, because the tour wasn't until 12 and I got to sleep in for like, the first time since I've been here.

So before I tell you about the tour, I want to give a little background on the system of government here in Israel. It's pretty trippy. Fortunately, our Judaism teacher decided that, in light of the recent elections, we should have our lecture on Israeli government last week instead of at the end of the course. It was really helpful to know something about it before going on the Knesset tour.

So, last Tuesday, Israel held an election. I actually realized, in class on Wednesday, that I have now been present for national elections in 3 different countries: America (obviously), England, and Israel. Which is really kind of amazing, if you know anything about parliamentary government (which I'm about to explain to you). And it makes me feel pretty cool about myself, not gonna lie.

So, in a parliamentary system, you don't actually vote for Prime Minister. You vote for parties. Each party runs a campaign, and usually the bigger ones will be represented by their party leader who would become prime minister if they controlled the Knesset. When all the votes are counted up after election day, each party gets a certain number of seats according to the percentage of votes that they won in the election. There are 120 seats in the Knesset, so 1% of the vote equals about 1.2 seats (ya), and I guess, looking at it the other way, one seat requires .8% of the vote. But they also have a rule that says you have to get at least 2% of the vote to get any seats at all, so that they won't have a million tiny parties with one seat each. However, 2% is still a pretty low threshhold, and I'll come back to that later. So the party who gets to appoint the Prime Minister is the one with a simple majority- that is, 51% of the seats in the Knesset. (The US presidential elections don't work that way, btw, you only have to have more votes than anyone else- it's called a plurality... ya, I totally learned that in American Heritage.) Unfortunately for the Knesset, there are significantly more parties than they can really handle (this is where that low threshhold comes into play). So in a normal parliamentary system, you might have 3 or 4 parties, and maybe 2 of them would form a coalition to gain the simple majority and appoint the PM. Israel has like, 13 parties that just got voted into the Knesset. So in order to gain a simple majority, you have to have a coalition involving 5 or 6 or more parties. My teacher said that although a Knesset is supposed to run a 4 year term, it has only actually lasted that long once in the history of Israel, because one party will do something that ticks another party off, and then that party leaves the coalition and they no longer have a majority so they either have to scramble to convince another party to join or just call new elections. So you can see how the odds of parliamentary elections happening in both of the foreign countries I've lived in while I was there. Especially since England's elections are at least as sporadic, but far less often.

Well, I hope that hasn't confused you all too much. Like my teacher said, "If you don't understand it, you're in good company with most of Israelis." But ya, so the Knesset was pretty cool. Their big assembly hall (called the Plenum Hall) looks a lot like the Senate, but probably smaller. And, here's a fun little tidbit, they arrange their desks in the shape of a menorah. Except they have too many MKs (=Members of Knesset) for a traditional seven-branched menorah, so it has ten branches. Also, the party that formed the coalition and gained control of the Knesset sits on one side with all their coalition buddies, and the "opposition" sits on the other side. They also have a bullet-proof visitors' section. So that civilians can't come in and shoot up the Knesset while their in session.

The coolest part of the tour was the Chagall Hall. Chagall is the same guy that did the stained glass windows in Ein Kerem. When they built this new building in 1966, the Israeli government commissioned Chagall to create three tapestries and 12 mosaics. K, these tapestries are kind of incredible. We all couldn't figure out why the guide was calling them tapestries at first, because they were obviously just giant canvas paintings. Ya, not really. They looked like paint on canvas, but she lifted up the back of them and showed us all the threads that were woven into it. It was amazing. She said that Chagall made a sketch that was the size of the tapestries and then it took a factory in France 4 years to hand-weave it. Like, seriously. Wow. And he sketched out the mosaics the same way and an Italian couple laid the stones and it took a year. Pretty amazing.

That was pretty much the whole tour. There was a really cool statue of a menorah that was made of olive wood and each of the *candlesticks* was a branch of one of the seven species- the seven species are the seven main crops of Israel. It's like, wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives... I don't remember the other one. Flax, maybe. I could be just completely making that up, tho. Oh hey, I totally know what the letter L looks like in Hebrew. It makes me feel pretty cool whenever I see it.

After the tour we went into West Jerusalem and got some falafels. ... I don't even know how to describe what a falafel is. It's like, fried... stuff. But it's yummy and they put it in a pita with some salad and french fries and hummus. And we got some gelato. And some brownie pastries. The brownie pastries are really good. It's actually like a croissant kinda thing with brownie batter inside. But it's like, half-baked brownie batter, so it's gooey instead of like, liquid. And after West, we wandered back through the Old City and back to the Center.

Today I wrote my Egypt paper. It is definitely one of the worst papers I have ever written, but it's for our pass/fail field trip class, so I think I can still feel good about myself. We also had our Judaism midterm this morning, which was totally not on the stuff from the study guide, but I still did good on it, so it worked out. Aaaand I'm about to go do some more Humanitarian Project. :D