Israel’s Left Cracks Up
So what does this Labor Party do now? It can stay independent and become a middle-sized party or try to form a grand coalition of the left.
The problem with the latter strategy is that, nowadays, the left has no good alternatives — in large part because the Palestinians and Syrians don’t “cooperate” in wanting to make peace. That leaves as the left’s platform talking about a two-state solution and offering even more unilateral concessions.
But that’s not all. The most likely partner, Meretz, has only three seats and has been moving even further to the left, getting in sight of the Communist party. A left party would be lucky to poll ten percent of the vote. Labor voters would flee to the center-left Kadima, where many have already defected.
Who then is the big winner? Paradoxically, it is Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. While he has less support in parliament, he still has a comfortable majority. Barak is now totally dependent on him. Of course, Barak is a winner in that he survives, which was his intention.
The main opposition party, Kadima, could profit by picking up Labor voters. But Kadima’s leader, Tzipi Livni, is really another Barak — an unpopular leader who has performed quite poorly as head of the opposition. That party will have its own leadership battle in future.
What outsiders don’t understand is that Israeli politics today is not a function of internal ideology or personality but a response to an environment where there is no realistic alternative for transforming the regional situation.
Israelis learned important lessons during the peace process of the 1990s. They discovered that the Palestinians and Syria are not interested in peace. They realized that the Islamists want to wipe Israel off the map. And they concluded that Western allies are not necessarily reliable. The left’s formula — as even Barak came to understand — didn’t work. Wishful thinking is no substitute for realism.
There is absolutely nothing on the horizon, despite a lot of fantasy Western media coverage and policy thinking, to change that.
Moreover, the Netanyahu-led government has done a credible job of handling the issues, including maintaining good relations with the Obama administration. Meanwhile, Israel’s economy is doing remarkably well.
That’s not to say there aren’t problems. But neither are the problems so great, nor the alternatives so obvious or attractive, nor the other candidates for leadership so attractive to provoke a change. Bet on Netanyahu to win another term in office, probably this year.
Still too early to write the Israeli Left off yet. Because, although:
“Israelis learned important lessons during the peace process of the 1990s.”
The media in Israel (as in the U.S.) is still almost exclusively in the hands of the Left, who haven’t learned any of those lessons.
The Israeli Left is cracked up because they’re not all they’re “cracked up” to be. Actually, Caroline Glick would tell you they are smoking crack as 80% of Israelis oppose their gov’t policies vis a vis the Arabs.
This historic Israel National Radio interview traces the lineage of the Arabs from the Baal worshipers they descended from and exposes how Islam retained Baal worship under the guise of a monotheistic religion.
http://www.marcrubin.com/judean-eve.ivnu
and watch the insanity of the Progressives exposed in this hilarious animated web video with the “head up the butt” people, who are in Israel as well as the USA and Europe.
http://www.marcrubin.com/hairmerica.ivnu
I think you are pushing this video far too much.People are getting sick of it.Stick it on U Tube and leave these columns alone.
I believe the explanation for Barak’s new party or ‘party’ or ‘Party of Five’ (are there five of them) is simpler:
He must leave Labor to have a basis on which to offer himself as Defense Minister for the next ten years or so. Rumor has it in the past that Barak tried to join Kadima, but they turned him down.
But on the point of dealing with regional realities, I disagree with Mr. Rubin (at least in theory) that there is nothing Israel can do about these realities. We simply don’t have the will, or the political structure and configuration suppresses the will of the people, which is essentially healthy. Given expression, it would either 1) change at least some regional realities, or 2) position Israel more favorably for dealing with said realities.
How can Bibi continue to support Barak for DM after his outrageous treatment of the IDF General Staff? That the man is a self-serving, egotist snake is an understatement. I have been trying to keep up with what goes on there and have no real understanding of the players but piecing together and making perhaps erroneous conclusions about their motivations. But one thing is clear and that Barak could not get elected to anything in a general election (does Israel have those?) yet clings to power somehow. How?
Pithy and bone-cutting comment, Claudia. Yes, Israel has elections, but something gets lost in translation on the way from those elections to the coalitions that are formed. Barak’s personality seems to help him, not hurt him…such is politics.
Israel suffers from the same disease if leftest myopia as does the U.S.
Only an educated upper middle class, raised in “relative” peace, in a comfortable, “relatively” wealthy democracy, can hold such absurd political views about the intentions of the enemy.
When you’re whole adult life and career has been centered on fluffy, unverifiable, non scientific pursuits like “journalism” “political science” or “public policy initiatives”…places where TALKING is the same as PRODUCING….where you PhD dissertation involved nothing concrete like MATHEMATICS, but rather a lengthy expose on your “OPINIONS” of some historical/social subject, you havent a clue how things actually work, because you’ve never NEEDED to.
Your politics is make-believe, your positions, impossible and self contradictory as they are, are valid not because they will WORK, but because you CARE. Intentions, rather than effectiveness, is their currency.
Unless these “politicians” themselves ever knealed before a video camera, with a knife at their throat, any suffering of their countrymen is inconsequential to them. They could solve it, if only people would listen, because they CARE.
Like the American left who think its all George Bush’s fault the Muslims are savages, the Israeli Left has lead a relatively prosperous, professional life, with few personal sacrifices to account for.
They are both horribly immature and completely unrealistic in their world view, or at least they pretend at them, for political gain…always ready to be the benevolent “victim lover” among the foolish and un-informed dupes their party depends upon….Always ready to lay down to the enemy as “proof” of their sincerity for mutual peace and respect, while (no mistake here) usually putting OTHER people in true physical and mortal peril for their actions.
It is, unfortunately, a sad sign of success for a culture to be so “advanced” and “soft” as to have among its leadership, those who are truly too ignorant and incompetent to have survived in a harsher place.
They are the fat (not the muscle) of our easy living…and few places on earth can sustain them.
Simply put, you NAILED it for both countries (apologies for the despicable reference to NAILING–it was so “uncivil”of me).
“apologies for the despicable reference to NAILING–it was so “uncivil”of me”
Yes, indeed it was, and SOOO “Vitriolic” of you to use these verbal images of violence…I reasonably fear you may inspire some pot smoking leftist to shoot me, with such irresponsible rhetoric.
After all, nails are EVEN SHARPER than bullets, and should be BANNED!!!
No one except Government Carpenters Union Members has any NEED for such things!
How DARE you!
(snark off)
With all due respect, I don’t think you really know what you’re talking about. Israel is a small enough country that nobody, left or right, can really be insulated from reality. And when, exactly, was there “relative peace” in Israel?
Yes, the Israeli left is delusional (as a former Israeli lefty, I have first hand experience with this…), but their delusions are IN SPITE of reality, not because of it.
The Israeli appeasers of the Arabs ignore what is the cause of the wars of the Arabs against Israel – religion. The Mohammedan Arab leaders cannot bear a Jewish state. The Communists (USSR, Nasser in Egypt) hate Jews, in the Russian tradition and, by Communist propaganda have turned Arabs into the “suffering Jews,” namely, those that the Communists invented as “Palestinians.”
The name “Palestine” was given to Judea by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 A.D., after he defeated the last Jewish rebellion under Bar Kochba. He wanted to eradicate all memory of Judea and Jews, and outlawed Judaism. The consequence of the name change was that “Palestine” became synonymous with “land of the Jews” or “the Holy Land,” and “Palestinian” became synonymous with “Jew.” That is why the Zionists wanted the “Palestine Mandate” and that Britain, after World War I, was given the “Palestine Mandate” as “homeland for the Jews.”
It was the Soviet Union and Gamal Nasser who, in Cairo, invented the “Palestine Liberation Organization” (PLO) with all the phony history and propaganda which accompanied it, like calling Arabs “Palestinians.” Israel should not use the name “Palestinian” to refer to Arab enemies, nor should it consent to the establishment of a state for “Palestinians.” Give the true history of the name and call the putative “Palestinians” Arabs.
I follow Debbie Schlussel’s cleverly coined term, call them “the FAKESTINIANS”
now allow me a tiny moment of schadenfrued watching the LEFT in Israel realize all their appeasements, all their talks of peace and two states is chimera and all the talk of same from Arabs was always, and will be BS LIES and one more step to NO ISRAEL at all.
REALITY BITES
What is the ethnic origin of the Sephardi Jews? Semitic. What is the ethnic origin of the “Arabs, i.e., those from the ‘Arabian’ Peninsula?” Semitic. So, what is the difference? Religion. However, given PC and other impediments to reason and understanding, the “elite” of Western media will never agree with that equation.
there are no semitic people, only semitic languages. using the “semitism” card is just another fake argument to deny antisemitic origin of wars against the jewish state. it’s first grade “semantics”- arabs are semites so they can not be antisemites, or palestine belongs to “palestinians” and not the jews. the fact that “palestinians” were invented in the 60′s is just an inconvenient truth.
Netanyahu is 25 years into a forty year plan. The Left is dragging the same bad ideas behind it, no different than the Arab. Bibi must put on a smile every time he closes the door behind him.
James can you elaborate on plan?
I usually don’t try to analyze Israeli politics, it is really too much of a snake pit, especially on the Left.
That said, Israel has matured a lot, and the socialist vision that was so important in the past is no longer so enthralling now that most Israelis have found out that there is no free lunch. Israelis now know that they have to pay for every entitlement.
But most importantly it was the Israeli Left’s overwhelming support for the Olso Accords which destroyed their credibility among Israeli voters.
No one who lives here and survived Palestinian terror wars of the late 90′s and the early 2000′s will ever give the Israeli Left a chance to govern again.
With all due respect to your thoughtful comments, Ken, in the last election the Israelis gave the most votes to Tzippi Livni and her Kadima Party. They seem left to me. How are her policy statements different from Labor’s?
From my vantage point, Labor has become irrelevant because Kadima has taken its place.
The Kadimah party’s seats were bloated in the last election by a last-minute “anyone but Bibi” campaign: many Meretz and Labor voters held their noses and voted for Kadimah to prevent a Likud government.
That won’t happen again – now Labor and Kadimah will be fighting over the same dwindling group of center-left voters.
There is the problem that voting right-wing parties is no guarantee of an anti-appeasement policy. A lot of people I know decided to vote left-wing reckoning that a left-wing government would be incapacitated of capitulations to the Arab enemy because they’d have no support in the Knesset, while a right-wing government wishing to make capitulations would have the support of the left-wingers.
Trusting politicians, a very dicey proposition…
Until a few months ago, I worked with a company that was mostly staffed with Israelis. It was an interesting experience. I saw first hand that there are many young Israelis who have bought The Big Lie hook, line, and sinker. It was actually shocking to hear a young Jewish man tell me that, “We should just give them their land, and then they’ll leave us alone.”‘
Such amazing ignorance is stupefying!
Yet, it’s common.
Agreed…
“We should just give them their land, and then they’ll leave us alone.”
We should just….
Give them our property
Give them our citizenship
Give them our homes
Give them out Passports
Get on those trains
Dig those ditches
Take those “showers”….
And THEN they’ll leave is alone…right?