CLOSE-UP

Who's Who
In Israel's
Next Generation
of Leaders?

ZE'EV CHAFETS

Special to The Jewish News

erusalem — Not long ago, 2,500 fans crowded into an arena near
1bl Aviv to watch a basketball game between a team of radio
reporters and a pick-up squad of Knesset members. The game,
which was won by the reporters, was not a great athletic event,
but the spectators weren't disappointed. They got what they
paid for: a look at some of the rising stars in the real Israeli national
pastime — politics.
Such a game could not have taken place even a decade or two ago,
when most Knesset members were elderly Eastern European Jews whose
sports were chess and ideological arm wrestling. But the last few years
have brought a new generation of young legislators to the parliament.
Born after the founding of the state, they are now beginning to make
their presence felt. Who they are and what they stand for will shape Israeli
policy well into the next century.
It was the Likud that first opened the door. In the 1984 election, 11
of its members of Knesset — a quarter of its parliamentary contingent
— were under the age of 40. Labor, by contrast, selected only one, Haim
Ramon. This disparity was embarrassing for Labor, and in the 1988 cam-
paign it attempted to rectify the balance by choosing ten candidates under
the age of 45.

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Ze'ev Chafets is a former director of the Israel Government Press Office and the
author of three books dealing with Israel and American Jewry. This article was
made possible by a grant from the Fund For Journalism on Jewish Life, a project
of the CRB Foundation of Montreal, Canada. Any views expressed are solely those
of the author.

24

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1989

THE KNESSET
has long been a haven for party veterans who have slowly moved up the
ranks. That will begin to change if election reforms take hold.

MOSHE KATZAV
Minister of Transportation, and
one of the self-made Sephardis
from the blue-collar class.

DAN MERIDOR
some say he is too gentlemanly
for the rough-and-tumble world
of politics.

