5 Reasons Conservatives Wouldn't Actually Want Netanyahu To Be Our President

The GOP is enamored with the Prime Minister, but Israel endorses many policies that Republicans would loathe:

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1. Israel's Universal Health Care: While American conservatives rallied en masse in 2009 and 2010 to try to stop the modest Affordable Care Act, even Israel's most right-wing parties don't object to that country's universal health care system. Health care there today is managed by the 1995 National Health Insurance Law, which mandates that every Israeli citizen has a right to be covered by one of the country's four non-profit HMOs, with about 40 percent of the costs being covered through taxation from income and the state paying for the other 60 percent.

2. Israel's Government Directly Pays for Abortions: In the United States, even most Democrats do not call for state subsidies for abortion and numerous other reproductive health care options. But Israel last year included abortion into the basket of health services covered under state-approved HMOs; The Times of Israelnotes that this makes Israel's abortion law “among the world's most liberal.”

3. Israel Allows Sharia Courts to Whoever Wants to Use Them: The fear of “Sharia law” being imposed upon hapless Americans animate much of the Islamophobic right here, but in Israel, it's simply the norm. The country allows for Sharia courts for its Arab Muslim citizenry to resolve personal issues, as sort of civil arbitration courts. No major figure in Israel's political system including Benjamin Netanyahu opposes them.

4. Israel Has No Constitution:Conservatives have used the Obama years to proclaim that just about everything the president does is unconstitutional. They endorse a theory of the Constitution that prevents the government from acting in the public interest, and view it instead as a tool to limit the social welfare capacities of the federal government. This is why American right-wingers would be horrified to find out that Israel actually doesn't have a constitution, meaning that the majority of checks on the government's power comes from the legislature itself, not courts trying to uphold basic restrictions on government power.

5. Israel Has a Powerful Labor Movement: Unlike the United States, where conservatives have succeeded in minimizing the power of labor unions particularly in the private sector, Israel's labor movement remains strong. Union density there is about a third of the workforce, what it was in the heyday of America's labor movement. Going into the parliamentary elections, Israel's main union has made threats of shutting down part of the economy if a major company does not go back on its move to reduce its workforce.

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