The Incredible Shrinking Israeli Labor Party
In 2009, after the botched Second Lebanon War on Peretz’s watch at the Defense Ministry, the party contested the elections under Ehud Barak’s leadership and achieved only 13 seats.
This year, Barak split Labor, taking other MKs with him, leaving the party with just 8 seats.
So in six years, following the collapse of its Oslo project, Israeli Labor fell from 25 seats to 8. It is now the fourth largest party in the Knesset. A sectoral party, Yisrael Beiteinu which represents immigrants from the former Soviet Union, polled higher.
Paradoxically, part of Labor’s long-standing platform — the willingness for territorial compromise with the Palestinians — has now become accepted by the Israeli center. But this willingness goes together with a hard-headed skepticism regarding just when, how, and to whom any concessions would be made. This disenchanted creed has no place for the architects of Oslo. Today, even the dovish, center-left slot in Israeli politics is held by Kadima, a party consisting largely of former Likud people..
This leaves Labor, the once-mighty party of Ben-Gurion and Rabin, looking small and rather lost.
Can anything change this? Yachimovich thinks so. Yachimovich has received the support of a number of the leaders of the recent social protests in Israel. She has long campaigned on social issues and she is expected to stress social internal and domestic matters in her leadership of the party.
Yachimovich is almost certainly wrong, however, in believing that a new, social-based agenda will reverse Labor’s decline.
Israel is currently facing a profound and rapid shift in its strategic fortunes, as a result of regional change. The main strategic challenge of recent years has been a largely Islamist alliance led by Iran. This camp still exists and is still a danger. But the rise of an aggressive, Islamist Turkey, the likely emergence of a more hostile Egypt under Islamist influence, and the ongoing challenge of Palestinian rejection of historic compromise are not going to be conducive to a style of politics which likes to pretend that external threats are mainly illusions. This is the default position of Shelly Yachimovich, who has little or nothing to say on these matters.
Which is fine. There are indeed social problems in Israel, and it’s quite legitimate to have a party mainly concerned with pointing these out. Such a party, however, is not going to be a candidate for leading governments in Israel any time in the near future.
So Labor, once a colossus on the Israeli political scene, is now a third-tier party. Under Yachimovich’s leadership, it looks set to remain one.
uh? so it had 13 seats in 2009 after the 2nd Lebanon War. Then Barak “split Labor, taking 3 other MKs with him”, so 13 – 4 = 9, not 8 seats. Or maybe he took 4 other MSs with him and not 3?
How can you write about the Labour Party without laughing?
Actually, why write about Labour at all, they’re completely irrelevent.
No one cares about the Labour primary or which idiot won. Only our moron media tried to play it up.
Kadima will go the same way as Labour, Livni is rightfully seen as a bitter unprincipled unpatriotic opportunist who will say anything in a desparate attempt to save her sinking career.
Yacimovich is a smooth talker and a darling of the Israeli Left wing media since she is one of them. Yacimovch has done well so far because none of her media friends has been willing to confront her with difficult and provocative questions about her past, her ideas, and her policies.
But for those of us who remember her radical socialist Peace Now past from Yacimovich’s radio interview show, she is nothing but another anti Israel and pro Palestinian snake in the grass who will, like Rabin, run as a Centrist and govern as a dangerously radical Leftist.
1) Socialism is a dead issue. Israelis see quite clearly the unraveling of “social welfare” states in Europe, and see at home the incredible prosperity brought by free-market reforms.
The “social protests” of this summer were funded by the New Israel Fund – and never spread beyond the same small base of committed lefties.
2) There is delicious irony in the “Israel Beitenu” party overtaking Labor – it was left-wingers in Labor who opened the gates to almost 2 million Soviets, most of them not even Jewish. This was a concerted attempt to shift the political map leftwards and dilute the religious character of Israel.
Instead, the bloc of Soviet immigrants are security hawks, solid right-wing voters who’ve had enough of socialism (surprise!) and are eager for more free-market reforms.
Looks like a fulfillment of Murphy law to me lol
Not exactly,Ben David. A protest camp arose in the village of Tekoa in Judea. Most of the protesters were Jews with a purpose, the traditional Orthodox, religious “Zionists. I don’t think your statement stands on such a black and white analysis.
The Israeli Labor-affiliated left, like its brain-dead European counterparts (who used to be its models for emulation, mind you) long since ceased to represent in any substantial way the laboring classes of Israel. Such classes are made up of Arabs, Middle Eastern Jews and religious Jews who have little in common with this secular, Ashkenazi left. Hence, like their Euro-counterparts, they became the representatives of defeatism, nihilism, and self-hatred as the only available ideological option.
Unfortunately for the Israeli left, Israel has a large population of nationalist and/or religious Jews, including the Russian Jews, part Jews and gentiles married to Russian Jews who now comprise a sizeable chunk of a center-right electorate. This electorate has minimal interest in the old Israeli left, even in their new disguises. Unlike the old Israeli center-right, however, this new group contains many intellectuals and deep thinkers – some of whom are American immigrants and are among Netanyahu’s closest advisors. It’s rather difficult for the Israeli left today to dismiss the right as just a rabble from the Arab world or the religious ghettos of Eastern Europe, as they once did.
This center-right constitutes the new ruling elite of Israel, whether the Arabs or Israeli left like it or not. The old left is not coming back any time soon, if ever. Demography, as Spengler likes to write, is ultimately destiny, and the new right not only has current substantial demographic weight, but also a much higher birth rate than the left, and thus is not going to be superceded within any reasonable time horizon.
King Abdullah of Jordan recently engaged in a typical Hashemite hand-wringing exercise that he must have learned from his father, who was perpetually arguing that Israel had to be forced to make concessions to the PLO otherwise the region would be doomed. You know what, the Arab part of the region is doomed anyway because of its own internal weaknesses, and this has nothing to do with Israel. However, the Israeli right is correct in believing that perseverence and further settlements will ultimately leave Israel as the only major power broker left standing with an intact polity, army and economy, before too long.
Without discounting the Oslo debacle there are other reasons for Labor’s decline that Mr. Spyer ignores. Their effect has been cumulative, structural and in many cases irreversible. For at least some of them Labor has no one to blame but itself.
1) A change in Israel’s demography. This didn’t start with the Russians. The North Africans in the 1950s led to Begin’s victory in 1977 that transformed the Labor Party into the opposition for the first time.
2) Separating the Histadrut-Labor(Labour Federation)Siamese twins. This can largely be placed at the feet of enfant terrible Haim Ramon, now in Kadima. This took several steps including removing automatic Histadrut membership from Clalit Sick Fund membership; cutting of official ties and the decline of Histadrut enterprises as both economic support for the party and a source of (occasionally) coerced votes.
3) Decline and change of the Kibbutz movement as with the Histadrut led to a drop in economic support and monolithic bloc voting for the Labor Party (and the rest of the Zionist Left). It also reduced considerably Labor’s efforts to bring out the vote on Election Day.
4) The greying of the party. The Labor Party, probably to ensure power of the old guard, did little to encourage genuine new members and put barriers to their advancement within the party.
5) Split with the national religious. At one time an alliance with the National Religious Party was a given and party members identifying as religious was unacceptable. Following the assassination of Rabin by a religious although unaffiliated Jew the demonisation of all religious Jews as being involved has probably removed any chance of a reconciliation.
5) A succession of leaders who in one way or another damaged the reputation of the party. The list must begin with Rabin whose reneging on promises made before the election; bribery of two members of the Tzomet party to cross the floor; forcing Oslo through the Knesset and contempt for democracy and anyone who (correctly as it turns out) was sceptical of Arafat led to huge resentment.
All of these changes, some of which could be argued were beneficial to the country as a whole, have contributed to Labor’s decline. Pinning all the parties hopes on the Oslo project made it inevitable.
Israel has become a Jewish sanctuary, and Arab refugees living inside its walls should be forced to join their brothers in Jordan. Ethnic groups on the verge of extinction are entitled to special privileges needed for their survival.
Jonathan, your typification and simplification of Yisrael Beiteinu as a Russian immigrant party was once the case but no longer. There are many English speaking members, French and Sephardic Jews. Its appeal as a hard rightwing party under the intelligent aegis of Avigdor Lieberman has grown out of its original premise, to represent Russian immigrants to Israel. You diminish your argument when revealing either a journalistic trick or ignorance of Israeli politics.
Seventy three year old Richard Joseph Goldstone must be either a terminally-ill man, an extremely-befuddled man, or both. Seriously sick people tend to try to make amends before they meet their Maker; confused people often mistake fantasy for reality.
Goldstone, a former and eminent South African judge, made his mark on the bench by undermining South Africa’s apartheid laws with his rulings advancing the rights of that nation’s majority blacks, thereby leading to the end of discrimination by minority whites. He subsequently served as chief prosecutor for the U.N.’s trials of war criminals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
He is evidently an avid proponent of majority rule as well as a sincere advocate for the oppressed. Sometimes.
His advocacy came under fire from the world’s Jewish community and especially from Israel when Goldstone, a non-religious Jew, personally investigated the 3-week Israeli Gaza war of 2008-2009 and the United Nations issued the Goldstone Report, officially titled, “Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.”
The final version of that scathing report, issued in April 2009, charged Israel’s IDF with a systematic, official policy of inflicting undue punishment on civilians in Gaza and violating international humanitarian and human rights law. It also deleted most references to Hamas atrocities and focused on the disproportionality of Israel’s retaliation.
The investigation and report had been commisioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council, a fact that made it suspect from the outset. The U.N. is notorious for its anti-Semitism and the UNHRC includes China, Cuba, and Pakistan among its 47 members but, still, Goldstone was a Jew and his religion added a significant credibility factor.
Not unexpectedly, he was reviled in Israel and elsewhere by Israel supporters as a wayward jurist suffering from a “moral inversion” who “preserved his judicial reputation while perpetrating a blood libel against Israel” and with worse epithets, all because he had dared expose Israeli war crimes against humanity, in Gaza just as he had exposed comparable crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the evil of apartheid in South Africa.
In effect, Goldstone was characterized as a Jew-hating Jew.
Fast forward to April of this year when the jurist had an epiphany, a religious attack, a re-examination of conscience, a re-evaluation of perceptions. Call it what you will, Goldstone retracted and contradicted much of what he had witnessed on his fact-finding mission to Gaza just two years earlier.
See his retraction, . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5942.)