Page 4 - Issue 11

Death of the Left

The saddest story of the elections, and the one that may be most important for the future
of Israeli politics and society, was the disintegration of the Israel Labor movement. It was
due to many factors. The Labor party had built its apparatus around the Kibbutz movement
and the Histradrut union, and then recklessly helped to dismantle both. The Likud and the
right were happy to build an alternative anchor structure around the West Bank settlements
and the Yesha council.
The Israel Labor party and Meretz put all their political capital into the peace process.
Social justice, sound economics, ethics in government, the fight against religious coercion, in
fact, every principle of the Israeli labor movement and the Israeli left, were all sacrificed to
keep together coalitions that would support peace. But the peace process failed. The ultra-
orthodox parties that were bribed took the money and built nursery schools and Yeshivot,
and the nursery schools and Yeshivot taught the students that not one millimeter of "Holy
Land" must ever be surrendered. Incredibly, the Labor party and Meretz had forgotten that
the political preferences of an electorate are based on culture and ideology. The policy of
sacrificing every principle for peace reached total absurdity when Ehud Barak, Labor and
Meretz were in power. To satisfy their right-wing coalition parties, the "leftist" government
built thousands of housing units in the West Bank. Settlements could not build peace.
..Those who have already buried the Israel Labor party should remember however, that in
the last elections the Likud got 12 mandates, and all the pundits were talking about the
disintegration of the Israeli right. In a few months, or even sooner, the Israeli electorate
will remember why they voted Benjamin Netanyahu out of office last time. They will wake up
to the increasingly harsh realities of the world economic crisis. Netanyahu, like Sharon
before him, will find that he can't wish away either the Hamas or Iran or the insistent
pressure of the Obama administration. The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

Campaigning

Both Meretz and Labor conducted nihilistic and pointless campaigns. They avoided issues
which could have won them votes: growing poverty and social injustice, misuse of natural
resources, a failing education system. Labor studiously avoided defining who and what it is
and what it stands for. Meretz long since redefined itself as a party that promotes "leftism"
for the sake of leftism, marching off resolutely and obediently to the isolated part of the
political map that the Israeli right assigned to it.
You would not know from the campaigns they ran that these parties once stood for social
justice or civil rights or that it was the Labor Party that created the Israeli state. Meretz,
which began its campaign with a grandiose plan for a new Israeli left, finished it with nothing
more than the repeated promise that they would not be in a coalition with right wing
demagogue Avigdor Lieberman. That is not a political, social and ideological program. Labor
ran a vapid campaign focused on repeating over and over that Ehud Barak is not nice and built
around a gimmick using a plasterer. That's not a political program either. The Israeli Labor
party is supposed to stand for more than just Ehud Barak and the defense ministry, and in
fact, Labor fielded an excellent team.