Can the Zionist Left save itself?
Harold's List
AMNON RUBINSTEIN, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 20, 2005
Between the elections of June 1992 and January 2003 the parliamentary representation of the Zionist Left – Labor and Meretz – dropped from 56 to 29 (including Amir Peretz's party). This is a 50 percent decline in less than 11 years.
No mere decline, this is a collapse. It is difficult to find a similar phenomenon in any other proportional representation system.
But this downfall is doubly stunning because in the decade which saw how the Left lost half its vote, public opinion has veered toward its ideas. Public opinion polls indicate that a majority of Israelis have despaired of the Greater Israel vision and opt for the two-state solution.
Even more mind-boggling is the fact that this downfall continued while the Likud degenerated into a squabbling, bitterly-split mess widely accused of corrupt practices. Yet, despite that, and even in mid-term – an opportune time for the opposition – the Zionist Left did not succeed in gaining lost electoral ground.
HOW DO we explain such a strange situation?
There is no doubt that the primary reason is the general disappointment with the Oslo process and with the terrorist reaction of the Palestinians to compromises offered by Israel. The press termed the casualties of this terror "victims of peace," but the public at large rightly shunned this unfortunate phrase.
Indeed, Yasser Arafat was responsible not only for the scorched earth he left within his own people but also for the defeat of those who were ready to reach a compromise with him.
In spite of that, the Left could have minimized this damage by publicly condemning Arafat and Palestinian intransigence while clinging to its political credo as a long-term solution. Instead, we witnessed repeated attempts to "understand" Arafat, to exonerate him, to even justify his Nobel prize. There were some in the Left's leadership who were not content until they had managed to kiss him on both cheeks.
Thus, the Israeli public, who had started to support the Left's ideas, could not understand what it actually wanted and how it intended to reach the two-state solution.
Worse still: In spite of the fact that we are dealing with two Zionist parties, one cannot refrain from observing that, on their fringes, the post-Zionist plague began to take hold. An unbelievable example of this relates to the two kibbutz movements associated with the Zionist Left : Hashomer Hatza'ir and the United Kibbutz. These movements are made up of true patriots – the forerunners of the Zionist enterprise – but in their leadership fashionable anti-Zionist trends can be discerned.
HOW ELSE to explain the fact that in the recent past the leadership of Hashomer Hatza'ir appointed a prominent anti-Zionist historian to head the Peace Research Institute in Givat Haviva (and, by this foul deed, desecrated the memory of Haviva Reik, a Zionist heroine who parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe)?
And how to explain the fact that the United Kibbutz, in an act of political masochism, publishes Theory and Critique, an anti-Zionist periodical that habitually condemns the kibbutzim as a colonialist phenomenon? Or the fact that the house organ of both kibbutz movements interviews a renowned anti-Zionist academic who negates the idea of a Jewish state without asking him a single embarrassing question?
Has there ever been, in the annals of politics, a similar spectacle? A movement which has such a glorious past, a former leader of Zionism, masquerades as something else in order to please a fashionable splinter group, which in Israel is mistakenly called "leftist."
We are used to politicians putting on masks to win votes. Here it's the Israeli Left putting on a mask to drive voters away.
Has there ever been such a downfall caused by such silliness, or one so dangerous to our democracy because it annihilates the major opposition bloc?
It is not too late for the Zionist Left to recuperate. In the coming elections the Left can offer an alternative to the two Likud factions: a pragmatic political plan, including unilateral steps, that will hasten the end of Israeli occupation of the West Bank but not compromise on the so-called right of return – as Yossi Beilin's Geneva Accord does – or on the need to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel.
Such a plan must be subject to two guiding principles: a compromise – even a painful one – with the Palestinians, yes; a compromise with the Zionist vision – never!
The writer, founder of the Shinui movement and a former education minister, is dean of the Radzyner School of Law at The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.
AMNON RUBINSTEIN, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 20, 2005
Between the elections of June 1992 and January 2003 the parliamentary representation of the Zionist Left – Labor and Meretz – dropped from 56 to 29 (including Amir Peretz's party). This is a 50 percent decline in less than 11 years.
No mere decline, this is a collapse. It is difficult to find a similar phenomenon in any other proportional representation system.
But this downfall is doubly stunning because in the decade which saw how the Left lost half its vote, public opinion has veered toward its ideas. Public opinion polls indicate that a majority of Israelis have despaired of the Greater Israel vision and opt for the two-state solution.
Even more mind-boggling is the fact that this downfall continued while the Likud degenerated into a squabbling, bitterly-split mess widely accused of corrupt practices. Yet, despite that, and even in mid-term – an opportune time for the opposition – the Zionist Left did not succeed in gaining lost electoral ground.
HOW DO we explain such a strange situation?
There is no doubt that the primary reason is the general disappointment with the Oslo process and with the terrorist reaction of the Palestinians to compromises offered by Israel. The press termed the casualties of this terror "victims of peace," but the public at large rightly shunned this unfortunate phrase.
Indeed, Yasser Arafat was responsible not only for the scorched earth he left within his own people but also for the defeat of those who were ready to reach a compromise with him.
In spite of that, the Left could have minimized this damage by publicly condemning Arafat and Palestinian intransigence while clinging to its political credo as a long-term solution. Instead, we witnessed repeated attempts to "understand" Arafat, to exonerate him, to even justify his Nobel prize. There were some in the Left's leadership who were not content until they had managed to kiss him on both cheeks.
Thus, the Israeli public, who had started to support the Left's ideas, could not understand what it actually wanted and how it intended to reach the two-state solution.
Worse still: In spite of the fact that we are dealing with two Zionist parties, one cannot refrain from observing that, on their fringes, the post-Zionist plague began to take hold. An unbelievable example of this relates to the two kibbutz movements associated with the Zionist Left : Hashomer Hatza'ir and the United Kibbutz. These movements are made up of true patriots – the forerunners of the Zionist enterprise – but in their leadership fashionable anti-Zionist trends can be discerned.
HOW ELSE to explain the fact that in the recent past the leadership of Hashomer Hatza'ir appointed a prominent anti-Zionist historian to head the Peace Research Institute in Givat Haviva (and, by this foul deed, desecrated the memory of Haviva Reik, a Zionist heroine who parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe)?
And how to explain the fact that the United Kibbutz, in an act of political masochism, publishes Theory and Critique, an anti-Zionist periodical that habitually condemns the kibbutzim as a colonialist phenomenon? Or the fact that the house organ of both kibbutz movements interviews a renowned anti-Zionist academic who negates the idea of a Jewish state without asking him a single embarrassing question?
Has there ever been, in the annals of politics, a similar spectacle? A movement which has such a glorious past, a former leader of Zionism, masquerades as something else in order to please a fashionable splinter group, which in Israel is mistakenly called "leftist."
We are used to politicians putting on masks to win votes. Here it's the Israeli Left putting on a mask to drive voters away.
Has there ever been such a downfall caused by such silliness, or one so dangerous to our democracy because it annihilates the major opposition bloc?
It is not too late for the Zionist Left to recuperate. In the coming elections the Left can offer an alternative to the two Likud factions: a pragmatic political plan, including unilateral steps, that will hasten the end of Israeli occupation of the West Bank but not compromise on the so-called right of return – as Yossi Beilin's Geneva Accord does – or on the need to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel.
Such a plan must be subject to two guiding principles: a compromise – even a painful one – with the Palestinians, yes; a compromise with the Zionist vision – never!
The writer, founder of the Shinui movement and a former education minister, is dean of the Radzyner School of Law at The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.
posted by Marko at 9/21/2005 09:27:00 PM
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