Ideological divides have ceased to drive Israeli politics.

The difference between the economic outlooks of left and right, broadly defined, can be quantified in percentage changes to some taxes, state subsidies and benefit schemes. The two camps even share their economists: In 2011, the Likud-led government appointed economist Manuel Trajtenberg to head its commission on lowering the cost of living; now the competing Zionist Union is fielding him as a candidate for finance minister.

That similarity extends to the diplomatic sphere. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he accepts Palestinian statehood in principle but warns it cannot now be accomplished safely, while Labor’s Isaac Herzog insists such a state is in Israel’s strategic interest, but promises not to make any move that compromises the country’s security. As long as any Israeli withdrawal seems likely to result in a recurrence of the south Lebanese or Gazan experience, the practical divergence between these two stated positions is tough to discern.

So with little in the way of substantive policy differences to distinguish the two camps, the 2015 elections have focused on personalities. “It’s us or them,” declares one of the major themes in Likud’s campaign ads, with “us” printed in patriotic blue and “them” in threatening red. “It’s us or him,” reads the Zionist Union’s most popular campaign poster in response, with “us” in the exact same shade of blue and “him” in dark, menacing gray. Even the campaigns’ creative directors can’t seem to venture too far apart from each other.

Why, then, is an election between such like-minded opponents so saturated with vitriol and undisguised animus? Likud, the party that surrendered both Sinai and Gaza, has produced banners calling the center-left Zionist Union “defeatist” and “anti-Zionist.” Meanwhile, the Zionist Union’s campaign ads paint a bleak picture of Israel under Likud as a nation wracked by poverty and war, as though Israel under the Labor Party, or more recent governments in which Herzog’s partner, Tzipi Livni, was a senior member, saw less poverty or fewer wars.

The race is bitter and animated, but it isn’t over policy. Lacking substantive disagreements, the sides have fallen back on older, more primal narratives. What began as a straightforward referendum on the incumbent – that, at least, was how Netanyahu framed it in December when he announced new elections — has metamorphosed in the minds of the candidates and their campaigns into the latest round of Israel’s original, primordial culture war.

Read the article in full at Times of Israel.