since the creation of the state of israel, there are no elections held for israeli delegates to the world zionist congress. rather, elections to the knesset, israel's parliament, are deemed to fulfill this function, and zionist parties represented in the knesset are apportioned a number of congress delegates proportional to their strength in the knesset. the late left wing leader shulamit aloni on several occasions criticized this practice, stating that "most israeli citizens neither know nor care that when they go to the polls they are among other things also electing delegates to the world zionist congress. (...) had the zionist movement been required to do in israel what it does in other countries - i.e., recruit paying members and get these members to hold specific elections to the world zionist congress - there might have been revealed an embarrassing low number of committed zionists in israel".