Report from Israel: The End of Labor or the Start of Something New?
Breaking the Impasse
It was a strange year for Israeli politics even before the Corona virus turned us all into extras on the set of a bad sci fi movie. Things are not supposed to work this way.
Israel went to the polls three times over the past year, and each time Bibi fought his way to a draw with Blue White, the most recently created -- and lately deceased -- successor party to the one time Labor led center left. This stalemate was born of polarization, with orthodox parties swearing obeisance to the supreme leader of the Israeli right in advance of each election. Avigdor Lieberman, the Putin-wannabe secular nationalist, meanwhile, joined the other side with equal vigor, in attempt to rebrand himself as an anti-Bibi, right wing liberal. The usual way out of such an impasse, a Likud- BW unity government with a rotating prime ministership, proved equally impossible. As a collection of disparate groupings with no ideological common denominator save opposition to the indictment-plagued Netanyahu, BW was unable to join a unity government almost by definition, driving the country to round after round of electoral gridlock. Three elections and a pandemic, however, changed the calculus. Neither side knew how they’d emerge from a fourth round of elections in the midst of a recession and health emergency. Benny Gantz blinked first, dismantled his party and the “Never Bibi” coalition, joining his nemesis in an “emergency” government. Gantz brought over enough MK’s from his rump faction of Blue White to help Netanyahu build a comfortable majority. In return he received an equal number of ministerial portfolios along with a turn in the prime minister’s office 18 months from now – all at an impressive discount for a fractured party only half the size of the Likud. Bibi, meanwhile, will continue his fight to stay out of jail from the prime minister’s chair, where he can influence the selection of judges and disburse patronage to potential trial witnesses.
How bad is all this?
Well, it’s a matter of perspective. To the extent Bibi is the main, existential question facing Israel, the unity government is no cause for celebration. Using every conceivable stratagem to avoid doing what he unabashedly demanded of his hapless predecessor Ehud Olmert -- to leave the political stage and face justice like any other citizen -- Bibi has severely undermined the rule of law. But it could get even worse. Over the past three years Netanyahu has spared no effort to eviscerate public confidence in the Supreme Court, the Police, the office of the attorney general and the independent press – working in precise lockstep with everyone who owes him a dime, from government ministers to his Adelson financed newspaper to brand any and all opponents with the stain of left wing elitism. The unity government, with the Justice Ministry passing to a Gantz appointee, will now presumably cease its war on Israel’s free institutions. One may also hope Bibi and his ministers will dispense with the racist, Arab baiting rhetoric he needed to question the legitimacy of Blue White. In the final analysis, what interests Netanyahu is neither judicial activism nor Arab politicians; all that matters is what works for Bibi. Had Gantz left him to continue running an interim, right wing government until September, with a potentially more extreme one on the horizon, we might all have ended up joining some ideological street militia in the dangerous twilight of Israel’s democratic order. Hard to say.
Amir Peretz’ Continuing Odyssey
Amir Peretz took the reins of the Labor Party at the nadir of its political fortunes. In April, an irrelevant nonentity, Avi Gabbai, had crashed the party of Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin to six MK’s out of 120 in parliament.
To be fair, Gabbai, like Peretz in his wake, had little chance under the circumstances. Blue White, with its unprecedented challenge to the Netanyahu regime, sucked the oxygen out of Israel’s political environment for the Zionist left. Gantz and his allies fired the imagination of voters thirsty for change, no matter what that change would mean. BW, after all, was an ideologically incoherent alliance of three different lists: Yair Lapid’s neoliberals, Bougie Yaalon’s right wing annexationists, and Gantz’s own startup –- a party that could easily have found its place in the historic Mapai. As a political force, Blue White always had a limited shelf life.
Peretz – I can only assume, extrapolating from my own assessment at the time – took the long view. Harboring no illusions of winning , he sought to rebuild a social democratic alternative for the day after. Labor had been in precipitous decline since the Rabin assassination, but now, with his party on the brink of extinction, Peretz sought to break the genetic code of Israeli politics that kept middle eastern Jews and their descendants (Mizrachim) – over half of Israel’s Jewish population -- loyal to the Likud.
Schadenfreude
Left wing intellectuals have long struggled to explain why Mizrachim – more heavily working and lower middle class than their Ashkenazi counterparts – vote against their “own interests” by repeatedly supporting the Likud and its occupation policy. But the very endeavor belies the elitism and ethnic condescension that defines Israel’s ethnic divide. The left’s inability to conceive that right wing voters are capable of rational decisions reminds many folks – and rightly so -- of the arrogance and paternalism with which the European, Mapai establishment treated North African immigrants during Israel’s first three decades. The recoil has been powerful and enduring. You felt it in the schadenfreude with which Likud activists gleefully told journalists how they lied to exit polls on election night last year to humiliate the press with unrealistic projections of a Gantz victory. And the culture of Israel’s left never ceases to trigger more recoil. Israeli pundits have treated Amir Peretz, himself an immigrant from Morocco, as a clown – or a trickster – ever since the Lebanon war (one Labor voter explained to me a few years back that Peretz simply “didn’t know his place”). You felt it, too, in the visceral reactions to Peretz’ short lived partnership with Orly Levy, another “Moroccan” politician last summer. In the words one left wing columnist, “there is now a Mizrachi party on the left. Peretz has condemned the left to the status of Salah Shabbati [Ed. an iconic, wiley, poor Moroccan immigrant in a classic Israeli theatre production]. Peretz lives in his own tribe,” she wrote. It’s evident in the hysterical accusations one self-declared Mertz supporter wrote me on Facebook (“Peretz is a racist who thinks Ashkenazim are evil”). These folks just can’t put two and two together. If the left can still brand Mizrachim as incapable of understanding their own interests by voting against peace, is it any surprise that attacking the left as Arab-lovers is so popular on the right?
Playing the Ethnic Card
Amir Peretz, to be sure, never played the ethnic card in his long and distinguished political career. A protégé of the late Lova Eliav -- an early Labor supporter of Palestinian statehood -- and a veteran Rabin loyalist, Peretz made his first mark as mayor of the Mizrachi town of Sderot -- a Likud stronghold, despite his unabashedly socialist politics. Moving on to become an MK, Histadrut boss, cabinet minister and ultimately deputy Prime Minister, he is the rare, dovish politician who can hold his own in right wing constituencies without being branded a “leftist,” (itself a demonstration of how little a role ideology plays in the politics of identity). There was something contrived, yet native about his open shirt collar and Stalinesque moustache (which always reminded me of the Mapai forefather Beryl Katzenelson but which Israel’s hi-tech, Tel Aviv elite saw as a mark of buffoonery). One way or another, many Mizrachi voters saw him as authentic. But last summer’s merger between Labor and Orly Levy held out the promise of something big. Levy’s father David symbolized the political coming of age of Israel’s Mizrachim, rising to power with the Likud as Menahem Begin’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister. David Levy, too, was initially ridiculed in the press (he spoke French but not English when he addressed the UN). His star ultimately faded, and he ended his career as a foe of Netanyahu. Orly, a fiercely independent – some would say unabashedly opportunistic – politician in her own right, left Avigdor Lieberman’s right wing party to form her own, unsuccessful list in 2017. Her calling card was a social democratic economic policy, not foreign policy or human rights. Amir Peretz saw an alliance with Levy as Labor’s game changer. It would give right wing voters – especially Mizrachim – the legitimacy to vote Labor, thereby genetically reengineering Israel’s political paradigm for the long term. Was he playing the ethnic card now? Well, in a sense he was. But no Israeli political party was ever accused of tribalism for fielding two (three or four) Ashkanzim in their top slots. Left wing critics of the merger said Levy was, if not a Trojan horse, then at least guilty of ideological impurity. Peretz countered by asking why [the very non-Mizrachi] Tzipi Livni was treated as a liberal heroine after bolting the Likud for an electoral run with Labor. He was right in principle, tragically wrong in practice.
Save Us, Amir Peretz
As Amir was trying to reinvent Labor, political space was narrowing on the left. In the June elections, Labor and Meretz, running separately, each polled dangerously close to the electoral threshold, prompting calls for a joint run in September under Amir’s leadership to avoid wiping out one, or both. Peretz demurred. By his calculations, such a union would be worth less than the sum of its parts. The Likud supporters he hoped to attract would never vote for Meretz -- a symbol, in their view, of Israel’s socio-cultural elite. Meretz voters, meanwhile, could not stomach Orly Levy. It was a marriage made in hell, but the pressure was high. Meretz supporters demonstrated in front of Peretz’ home and took out full page newspaper ads calling for unity. Liberal columnists had been accusing Peretz for months of political adventurism and self-delusions of grandeur. He would, no doubt, be blamed for the extinction of the Israeli left if Meretz failed to reach the threshold. The result was humiliating in any case. In September’s election the united list polled only 6 MK’s, about half of what Meretz and Labor scored separately in June. But that was not the end of it. Orly Levy, apparently, decided she had no political future in a tiny, left wing niche party and bolted right again, declaring she would not join a Gantz-led government. It was the end of the road. That road, in any case.
Mapai Redux?
Peretz had repeatedly vowed never to join a Netanyahu government. Sometimes, however -- as Emerson says -- consistency is merely a hobgoblin of little minds. Since the elections Peretz did, in fact, turn down go-it-alone offers from Netanyahu that would have guaranteed the Likud a slim majority and Labor an unprecedented bounty. But once Gantz gave Netanyahu his government, the only question for Peretz is where he could make the best use of his remaining political capital. Purists demanded he remain in an opposition led by the neoliberal Yair Lapid and his far right allies, Lieberman and Yaalon, along with the Joint Arab List (a stellar political force that merits separate discussion in its own right). Despised and irrelevant, he would have finished his career, and the historic role of Israeli Labor, on the margins of the 23rd Knesset. Instead, Peretz and his ally Itzik Shmuli led a two member Labor faction into the government, receiving two ministerial portfolios, chairmanship of the government’s economic cabinet and responsibility for Bedouin development in the Negev. But his move carries with it far greater political meaning. Peretz will has now formed an ad hoc political axis with his Blue White allies including former Histadrut boss and Peretz protégé Avi Nisankorn at the Justice Minstry, another one-time Peretz appointee, former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, as foreign minister, and a list of other progressive MKs that could easily form the nucleus of a new, center-left political force. To be sure, the two lists have not merged, but Labor and BW have signed a separate, cooperation agreement within the unity government itself. It calls for raising the minimum wage, defense of collective bargaining rights, fighting racism and pursuing the peace process.
What now?
Is Amir Peretz reinventing Labor, once again? The risks are far from negligible. This government will lead Israel into an unprecedented, Corona induced recession. The main beneficiaries could be today’s opposition, with everyone associated with the governing coalition being held responsible for mass unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies. It might have been preferable to leave Bibi holding the bag alone. Gantz also promised to support the annexation of the Jordan Valley on the eastern limits of the West Bank, a move some argue could trigger to a chain reaction leading to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority itself. Let’s hope not. On the other hand, this unity government could also work the other way, with Benny Gantz proving his mettle and by leading the country out of recession, and talented young social democrats like Labor’s Itzik Shmuli (the new minister of labor and social affairs) gaining vital governing experience, positioning them for national leadership in the future.
As they survey the smoking wreckage of an opposition that defined itself by opposition to one man, some pundits have called for an entirely new paradigm, with progressive Jews joining forces with the 15 members of the Joint Arab List to form the nucleus of a revived, Israeli left. In my view, this is premature. Israel’s Jewish and Palestinian citizens still constitute distinct national communities with opposing views on the legitimacy of Jewish statehood. They can, and still must, collaborate to promote civil equality, democracy and social justice. Zionist parties must find a way to integrate more Arabs into senior positions, and Arab parties must do the same for Jews. But there must still be a powerful, mainstream, center left political force that supports the legitimate aspirations of the Jewish People for self-determination, while championing civil equality, economic justice and human rights for all.