This interesting article in New York Magazine titled What Happened to the Israeli Left? tells the story of an American Jew named Abraham Riesman who visits Israel in search of the Israeli Left. What the author finds is rather depressing. In full disclosure I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian and I’m not particularly knowledgeable on this subject. I will summarize the article because it is quite long and provides some interesting points of view.
Some questions I had before reading the article were: How has Netanyahu been in power for 10 years with his extreme right-wing agenda? How is this next election even close with the scandals following him? What is the opposition to Netanyahu offering and is it any better? Is there hope the Israeli Left can prevail in the future? The article answers some of these questions and more.
On April 9, the remarkably blatant inequality of the political status quo will be once again on display. Israeli citizens will swarm the polls for a pivotal national election that will determine the makeup of their Parliament and, as a result, who will be their prime minister. Meanwhile, 5 million–odd Palestinians who are directly or indirectly governed by Israeli military law will get no opportunity to select the people who make the ultimate decisions about their lives, deaths, status, and future.
It is a sad state of affairs when people have no say in who will lead the nation in which they live. Furthermore it is surprising is how little difference there is between the contending candidates. The opponent Benny Gantz is not even a leftist, he is a right leaning centrist.
But neither he [Netanyahu] nor the political novice leading the charge against him, retired general Benny Gantz, is willing to even entertain following through on Israel’s occasional promise to permit the West Bank and Gaza to form an independent Palestinian state.
The two men are a nanometer away from one another in the polls, and while Netanyahu runs ads suggesting a Gantz victory would end Netanyahu’s ten-odd years of forcefully repressing Palestinian violence, Gantz boasts of how he bombed sections of Gaza “back to the Stone Age.” Leading Netanyahu allies openly speak of formally annexing parts of the West Bank, a proposal that once was beyond the pale in mainstream discourse.
In the author’s conversations with a local Palestinian and a Leftist Israeli Jew, they argue there is no left versus right in this election, it’s only right. The author discovers that many feel there is no salvation coming from the Israeli Left which is effectively dead. The only hope for change is from efforts like the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) Movement which seeks to put international pressure on Israel for greater Palestinian Rights.
The author then touches on Zionism and how even Left leaning Israelis would consider themselves Zionist. In the view of American Jews:
Their dispute is often not with individual Israeli policies so much as with Zionism, the hard-to-summarize ideology that advocates for Jewish self-determination and is the very basis of the Israeli state. Though such radicals may see the value in certain strains of non-statist, Arab-inclusive Zionism that existed before the establishment of Israel in 1948, they damn the mainstream Zionism of today as an ideology of Jewish supremacy and apartheid that must be overthrown. In the U.S., Zionism is a word that becomes increasingly radioactive the farther left you go on the spectrum. But in Israel, the average left-leaning individual — provided that they’re Jewish — still identifies as Zionist. How could they not? To be otherwise, they feel, is to wish suicide for their own country. It is a bridge they cannot cross.
The author could not find an organized Left in Israel. Instead what he found he described as individuals with “inertia” or “moral compulsion” in their opposition to Netanyahu. In fact he found some in the Israeli Left that think it best if Netanyahu wins this election. Take for instance these powerful words from Yara Hawari; a Palestinian academic and activist.
“Benny Gantz is more dangerous than Netanyahu,” Hawari shouts to me over the din inside a hipster restaurant in Ramallah. “Look, the thing with Netanyahu is that everything is very obvious and up-front. I think the problem with Benny Gantz is that a lot of internationals in the international community are now beginning to ostracize Netanyahu because of his ugly alliances in Europe and around the world” — she’s referring to the PM’s recent, ostentatious moves to ally himself with illiberal strongmen like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro — “but if they have Benny Gantz as prime minister, who maybe wasn’t so keen on these alliances or thought that it was more strategic to have the E.U. and the Western European countries on-side, I think that’s more dangerous. I would rather Israel was very honest and allied itself with the fascist states around the world — because it is a fascist state — than have it put on this façade of liberalism. I think that’s the most dangerous thing for Palestinians.”
She continues:
“No Israeli government is going to deliver a Palestinian state,” she says. “I don’t think a center Israeli government or a left-wing government — although I struggle with calling anything in Israel ‘left wing’ — I don’t think they would ever deliver that.” Instead, what little hope she has comes from watching the growth of BDS in lefty circles outside Israel and the resulting rise in the belief that Israeli policy cannot be changed from within.
Many on the Israeli Left have given up hope for change from inside Israel. They are hopeful of pressure from the outside in movements like BDS. Those in power are sensitive to this kind of international pressure and opinion. Some on the Israeli Left fear that the very existence of a Left gives cover to Netanyahu. Meaning that small victories for Palestinian justice gives cover to the extremist policies of Netanyahu. International observers say, “oh yes, things are slightly better” and stop paying attention.
The author goes on to look at some views on the Two State Solution versus a One State All-Inclusive. The problem with a One State Solution is demographics. Jews are outnumbered if all territory controlled by Israel are factored in. They would be a voting minority. That’s a very hard sell, to say the least, for Israeli Jews to consider. It’s really almost a non-starter. Failed attempts at a Two State Solution have been going on for several decades. An obvious problem is territorial integrity and borders. There’s a West Bank and a Gaza strip which are not connected. And there’s the question of what to do with Settlers.
The author goes on to interview many other people with various backgrounds. It becomes clear the Israeli Left has dissolved into disparate groups with no hope of regaining power. The solution to lasting peace between Israel and Palestine must come from outside pressure.
He ends with a poem by Langston Hughes. You might substitute Israel for America.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
And:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!