Nir Kipniss
Jerusalem Post, Nov. 21, 2023
“The left of recent years has mostly been a figment of the right’s imagination.”
We are witnessing a seismic shift, a significant upheaval, and a withdrawal from politics by many in Israel. Not only did the hearts of Israelis break on October 7th, but the worldviews of many among us have also been shattered. What will the political landscape look like in the days to come? The left may form a government without Benjamin Netanyahu, while the right will have to deal with the aftermath.
There is a noticeable difference between the two camps that have preserved the classic division between left and right in Israeli politics for the past century.
Why has this happened in the past century? Because except for a few outliers who were on the fringes from the start and have since dwindled, there is no longer an Israeli leftwing camp since September 2000. When former prime minister Ehud Barak went to Camp David and came back to Israel with what became known as the “Al-Aqsa Intifada,” many on the left, who also liked to call themselves the “Peace Camp,” realized that the discussion about territory for peace, the Western solution that they had tried to impose on the Middle East, existed primarily between Labor and Meretz, not with the enemy and neighbor.
It is true that it took time for this ideological defeat, filled with good intentions and generations of kibbutzniks who could play a few chords of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” on an acoustic guitar, to sink in. However, Operation Defensive Shield, led by Ariel Sharon (after a relentless wave of terror attacks), already gained near-consensus, accompanied by the steady decline in the number of mandates for the only parties that dared to call themselves “left”: Labor and Meretz.
Born in January, deceased in October
Let’s take a moment to reflect on what these two parties were: Meretz reached its peak with 12 mandates, and the Labor Party, even during the days of Mapai (its earlier version), had over forty mandates. The last Labor leader to form a government was Ehud Barak, and that was almost 25 years ago. … [To read the full article, click here]