Ratz (Political Party)

Civil rights, women’s rights, and the relationship between religion and government were central to Ratz’s political identity.[1][3] Its founding platform called for separation of religion and state, a basic law protecting human rights, and electoral reform, bringing constitutional and institutional questions into the same program as the protection of individual liberties.[1] The party also advocated freedom of religion and culture, equality without distinction of religion, nationality, race, or gender, and opposition to religious coercion.[6]

Ratz belonged to the Israeli left and center-left: it emerged from Shulamit Aloni’s departure from Labor, and its later electoral cooperation with Mapam and Shinui produced Meretz.[1][2] In the 1984 election, it was part of the center-left bloc and increased its representation from one Knesset seat to three.[7] Its principal constituency was the Ashkenazi urban middle class and the intelligentsia, and its appeal combined stronger civil rights within Israel with compromise in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[4]

The party’s agenda broadened over time, moving from an early concentration on civil rights toward a more explicit combination of civil rights and peace politics.[8] Environmental protection and quality-of-life issues also became part of its interests and helped underpin its participation in Meretz.[9] The resulting federation united parties around foreign policy and peace while also attracting voters through domestic concerns, rather than functioning solely as an electoral vehicle for a diplomatic program.[9]

Shulamit Aloni left the Labor Party in 1973 and established Ratz with a platform emphasizing human rights, electoral reform, and separation of religion and state.[1] She had previously represented the Labor Alignment in the Knesset, and Ratz emerged as a separate political home for the civil-rights program she championed.[10] Its initial priorities placed particular emphasis on women’s rights alongside broader civil liberties and institutional reform.[10]

The movement’s English name appears in several forms, including Citizens’ Rights Movement, Civil Rights Movement, and Citizens’ Rights and Peace Movement.[3][10] Its Hebrew name was התנועה לזכויות האזרח, rendered as the Civil Rights Movement in an account of the submission of its first electoral list.[11] During the effort to register that list before the December 1973 election, Aloni and her associates collected 2,000 supporting signatures in a 24-hour period.[11]

Ratz won three seats in the December 1973 election to the Eighth Knesset.[12] Aloni later recalled the abrupt transformation of her political circumstances with the remark, “I went to sleep a woman and woke up a party.”[13] The new organization was the first Israeli political party formed by a woman, giving its establishment a particular place in the history of women’s participation in Israeli parliamentary politics.[12]

Women’s representation was also reflected in the composition of the party’s electoral list: Aloni included Marcia Freedman, who brought experience from the feminist movement in the United States.[14] In its early years, Ratz concentrated chiefly on civil rights, challenging abuses by secular as well as rabbinic institutions.[8] Diplomatic questions initially occupied less of Aloni’s attention than the civil-rights issues that served as the party’s principal banner.[8]

Ratz briefly entered Yitzhak Rabin’s Labor-led government in 1974, and Aloni served as a minister without portfolio.[15] Her participation ended after the National Religious Party joined the coalition; she resigned in October 1974.[15] The episode placed the party’s opposition to religious coercion and its commitment to separating religion from government alongside the practical question of which coalition partners it was prepared to accept.[1][6]

Ratz’s parliamentary representation fell from three seats in 1973 to one in the election of May 17, 1977, when it received 20,621 votes, or 1.2 percent of the total.[10][16] Its reduced representation coincided with the popularity of the Democratic Movement for Change.[6] A 1977 event in Tel Aviv presented the Ratz electoral list to the press, providing a record of the party’s public campaigning during this period.[17]

The party again won one seat in the June 30, 1981 election, receiving 27,921 votes and 1.4 percent of the total.[18] The official election returns listed Ratz separately in both 1977 and 1981.[16][18] Although its vote total and share increased between those elections, its parliamentary representation remained at one member.[16][18]

The July 23, 1984 election brought a substantial recovery: Ratz received 49,698 votes, 2.4 percent of the total, and three seats.[19] The result restored the three-seat representation Ratz had won in 1973 and formed part of the center-left’s showing.[7][19] Ratz refused to join the 1984 national-unity government because it objected in principle to cooperation with Likud, remaining in opposition rather than entering the coalition.[6]

Its reach expanded further through the arrival of figures associated with other parties and with the peace movement.[10][8] Yossi Sarid joined after leaving the Labor Alignment, while Mordechai Virshubsky came from Shinui.[10] Peace Now figures also entered Ratz, including Ran Cohen, and helped connect it to a wider field of political activism.[20] These additions accompanied the party’s development beyond its original parliamentary base under Aloni.[10][8]

On November 1, 1988, Ratz won five Knesset seats with 97,513 votes, representing 4.3 percent of the total.[21] Ratz won three seats in 1973 and one in 1977.[12][16] It retained one seat in 1981 and returned to three in 1984.[18][19] In 1988 it rose to five seats.[21] Aloni remained the leader of Ratz’s Knesset representation through 1992, when its electoral activity became part of Meretz.[1]

Ratz’s civil-rights platform included equality for all Israelis regardless of religion, nationality, race, or gender, together with freedom of religion and culture.[6] Its opposition to religious coercion accompanied the institutional demand for separation of religion and state.[1][6] The proposed basic law protecting human rights and the call for electoral reform were founding commitments, rather than later additions arising from its alliance with other parties.[1]

Civil rights, human rights, and women’s rights remained interconnected parts of its program.[3] Its early political activity challenged abuses within both secular and rabbinic institutions, giving the party’s concern with individual liberties a scope broader than disputes over religious authority alone.[8] Ratz also supported stronger civil rights within Israel while appealing particularly to the urban Ashkenazi middle class and the intelligentsia.[4]

By the late 1970s, the party had adopted recognition of Palestinian Arabs’ right to self-determination and support for immediate Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Gaza.[10] Its platform favored negotiations with Palestinian representatives and recognition of their right to self-determination.[6] These positions placed diplomatic compromise alongside its established domestic agenda of liberties, equality, and institutional reform.[4][6]

The connection with peace activism became more explicit in the early 1980s, when Peace Now members including Dedi Zucker and Yuli Tamir joined Ratz and helped broaden its political reach.[8] The party announced a change of name to the Civil Rights and Peace Movement, making the connection between those two fields visible in its public identity.[8] Zucker recalled that he and Tamir had been looking for a party through which they could move from protest activity into electoral politics.[8]

Local organizing supplied another dimension of the party’s work.[22][23] In 1984, youths belonging to Ratz’s Herzliya branch approached passersby for signatures on a petition described in its archival title as opposing “the racist pressure in Israeli society.”[22] The surviving description identifies the branch, the activity, and the petition’s stated theme, but supplies no further explanation of the circumstances or particular claims behind it.[22]

A separate episode in 1984 connected Aloni with local protests in Petah Tikva after the municipality closed the town’s only cinema, the Haichal Theatre.[23] Zehava Galon organized weekly demonstrations, and Aloni came to support the protesters.[23] After the cinema reopened, Aloni invited Galon to work for Ratz, linking participation in a local civic campaign with work inside the party.[23]

Ratz also prepared a program for the forthcoming Histadrut Workers Union elections in 1985.[24] The surviving archival description identifies an “intensive program” but does not specify its proposals, so the record establishes electoral preparation rather than the substance of the party’s trade-union agenda.[24] Another archival item, in a 1988 photographs series, records a Ratz demonstration outside the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv against government policy toward the territories.[25]

Environmental protection and quality-of-life questions were additional areas of interest.[9] These concerns formed part of the basis for Ratz’s participation in Meretz, whose domestic appeal brought together environmental and quality-of-life priorities with market-oriented politics.[9] The federation attracted some centrist voters who were reluctant to vote for Labor because of its association with the Histadrut, demonstrating that the joint list’s appeal extended beyond its shared diplomatic positions.[9]

Cooperation among Ratz, Mapam, and Shinui developed through local election campaigns in 1989, when the three parties formed coalitions in several municipalities.[2] This municipal collaboration preceded their participation in a common national electoral framework.[2] In 1992 they joined in the Meretz list, with Aloni selected to head it.[26]

The alliance brought Ratz together with two other parties of the Israeli left, while retaining a shared emphasis on civil and human rights and separation of religion and state.[1][26] Their common ground also included territorial compromise with the Palestinians and support for establishing a Palestinian state.[26] Foreign policy and peace were the federation’s principal common denominator, but voters were drawn to its domestic policies as well.[9]

Meretz won 12 Knesset seats in the 1992 election.[2] It then joined the governing coalition led by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, carrying Ratz’s political activity into a broader parliamentary and governmental framework.[26] Rabin’s coalition included Meretz and Shas and received support from two Arab-majority parties.[27] Aloni’s leadership of the joint list gave the former Ratz leader a central role in the alliance’s electoral presentation.[26]

The 1992 electoral union and Meretz’s later consolidation as a single party were distinct stages.[5] The parties first ran on a common list in 1992 and formally merged in 1997, so participation in the joint list did not immediately erase their separate organizations.[5]

In 1997, Mapam merged with Ratz and part of Shinui to create Meretz as a unified political party.[5] Ratz consequently ceased to exist independently, its organization and political inheritance becoming part of the consolidated party.[10][5] Its transition into Meretz therefore involved both a common electoral list that achieved representation in 1992 and a subsequent organizational merger, rather than a single undifferentiated act.[26][5]

Ratz’s establishment by Aloni made it the first political party in Israel formed by a woman.[12] Women’s political participation was also reflected in its substantive emphasis on women’s rights and in the inclusion of Marcia Freedman on its Knesset list.[3][14] The party thus combined a distinctive organizational milestone with a program that placed gender equality within a broader commitment to civil and human rights.[3][12]

Its parliamentary history connected a small civil-rights party with a larger alliance of the Israeli left.[10][26] Ratz recovered to three seats in 1984 and five in 1988.[19][21] It then joined Mapam and Shinui in Meretz’s 1992 electoral framework.[26] The federation’s 12-seat result in 1992 and participation in Rabin’s coalition gave the combined parties a governing role beyond their separate electoral campaigns.[26]

The movement also offered a route from public protest into electoral politics.[8] Zucker and Tamir’s move from Peace Now activity into Ratz, and Galon’s recruitment following the Petah Tikva cinema demonstrations, illustrate connections between civic campaigns and party organization.[8][23] Its activities included parliamentary elections and coalition decisions as well as local petitions and demonstrations.[6][22] Ratz also prepared for elections within the Histadrut.[24]

Ratz’s contribution to Meretz included its civil-rights orientation and its concern with environmental and quality-of-life issues.[1][9] Within the federation, these priorities accompanied a shared diplomatic program rather than being displaced by it.[9] Its legacy was consequently carried into a party combining civil liberties, separation of religion and state, and compromise with the Palestinians, while also seeking support through domestic-policy concerns.[9][26]

Ratz’s coalition choices reflected recurring disputes over religion-state relations and political alliances. It left Rabin’s government after the National Religious Party entered the coalition and refused to join the 1984 national-unity government because it opposed cooperation with Likud.[6][15]

Its later support for Palestinian self-determination, negotiations with Palestinian representatives, and Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and Gaza also marked a shift from the party’s earlier concentration on civil rights.[10][6]