According to a couple of new polls conducted by the Meretz Party, 18-19 percent of Israeli Jews identify themselves as ‘leftists.’ The party’s recently elected leader, Zehava Galon, is hopeful regarding the chances to ‘bring them home.’
Yossi Gurvitz and I met with Meretz’s leader, Zehava Galon this week. The most left-wing Jewish party fell from a peak of 12 Knesset seats in 1992 to an all-time-low of three MKs in the last elections. Galon herself was left out of the Knesset, but the resignation of the former party leader Haim Oron in March 2011 allowed her back. She was elected as the new head of Meretz on February 2012.
Under Galon, Meretz is expected to have a sharper left-wing tone, but some fear that this would alienate the party’s potential voters. The common wisdom is that many Israelis identify with most of Meretz’s positions – especially the opposition to the occupation and the criticism of privatization and neo-liberalism – but only few are ready to be identified with the party or even referred to as “leftists.”
Meretz conducted a couple of polls this month, trying to figure out how Israelis define their political orientation. The first poll, conducted by phone, had the following results:
Left: 8 percent
Moderate Left: 11
Center: 30
Moderate right: 15
Right: 24
Refuse to answer: 12
A similar question on an internet-based poll brought pretty similar results:
Left: 6
Moderate left: 12
Center: 35
Moderate right: 28
Right: 19
Galon says that the results are consistent with similar polls conducted prior to previous elections, which means that the right-wing tone of the last few years and the attacks on left-wing organizations didn’t actually change how Israeli Jews identify themselves politically. She estimates that the next elections will see a return of voters from the center to the left, and that with the right circumstances and a successful campaign, Meretz could get up to nine seats.
UPDATE: +972′s Dahlia Scheindlin, who run similar polls before the previous elections, adds: “those numbers are completely stable and have been that way for a number of years, at least the last five. The left varies from 15-21% (total) from poll to poll; the right is generally 40% or above for more than a decade now.”
Galon also thinks that there is even a chance to create a Knesset bloc of the Arab parties, the Jewish left and the center which will prevent a majority led by Netanyahu, though she agrees it’s a long shot. I think that there is no such chance. I haven’t seen one poll since the last elections in which Netanyahu’s base – the rightwing and orthodox parties – has less than 60 seats. My guess is that Netanyahu’s floor is somewhere around 63-64 seats, and the ceiling is in the low seventies. These numbers are very stable, suggesting that it would take more than a spin or a surprising political development to change them. The polls also give a good indication to the strength of the right, which, in the online poll, comes close to 50 percent of the public.
Still, I think Meretz is right in assuming that they can add a couple of seats or more in the next Knesset, especially if the center remains so fragmented. In the last elections, many voters turned from the left to Tzipi Livni, hoping she could stop Netanyahu. Labor and Meretz got 16 seats combined, and that’s when Ehud Barak, which had some appeal at the center, led Labor. It seems that both parties can cross the 20-seat threshold (combined), and perhaps even go further, if Shelly Yachimovich can get some votes from the center.
In the previous elections Meretz also lost around 5,000 votes to the Arab-Jewish party Hadash, probably due to its early support for operation Cast Lead (or not clear enough of an opposition). This probably ended up having Meretz’s forth seat end up at Labor. I asked Galon – who opposed the war – whether Meretz would support another IDF offensive operation. She said no. I asked whether it was her position or the party’s. She said that the two are the same, but later added that she won’t be able to control the opinion of every Knesset Member, nor would she try (“we don’t have a thought police here”). She didn’t fail to mention the support of some elements in Hadash for the Assad regime – a source of much embarrassment to many of the party’s voters, including myself.
We discussed some of Meretz positions – the two-state solution, Zionism, the occupation and more. I will try to write about those issues in the coming days.
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noam
“Zionist” or not, whatever that even means today, Meretz are the only real LIBERAL left party truly committed to democracy and human rights. The outdated “anti-imperialist” rhetoric of Hadash is tiring, especially when only directed at US imperialism, overlooking Iranian and others’ imperialist aspirations.
The only frustrating point with voting Meretz is the fact that you’re almost certainly voting for an opposition party with far less power per definition than a party holding a portfolio.
edwin
“The most left-wing Jewish party”
There’s a new definition of left-wing for you. Let me guess – they also supported the war in Lebanon.
Traditionally left wing parties have opposed racism and militarism.
Rorr
Big difference between a guy like Yossi Gurvitz who is a advocate of the destruction of Israel and the death and dispersion Of the Jewish population and a guy like Shimon Peres. Who is left wing but a patriot
Ofer
Gee Noam, as if Hadash issues a press release about Iran every week.
Are you familiar with the fate of communists in Iran? No love for the Mullah regime in Hadash.
zayzafuna
Only a left that explicitly rejects the zionist entity has credibiltity. Anything less is Baruch Goldstein lite
Kolumn9
Wait, that is hilarious. There is support in Hadash for Assad? I am no mega expert, but that would imply that Hadash or large segments thereof are committed more to the struggle against Israel than a struggle for peace, human rights and the smorgasbord of left-wing economic imperatives and choose their allies accordingly. Are you sure you belong in the same party with people who think that a dictator that has murdered 15,000 people in the past year is a legitimate target of sympathy for a party claiming to be at the forefront for the struggle for human rights and democracy?
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As for Galon. She is delusional if she thinks she can get 9 seats. Her demographic is dead, dying, or in Berlin.
Kolumn9
Also, there was a fascinating article by Nir Baram today in Haaretz. I am certain someone at 972 would wish to write a response. The article basically argues that the left’s argument that Israel must hurry to make peace with the Arabs because otherwise it will be isolated and it’s economy will suffer has fundamentally been proven to be empty of validity. I keep seeing variations of that argument in the various comments here and elsewhere which I obviously find unconvincing, but to see such claims pilloried by a leftist in a leftist newspaper is a refreshing change. I would presume that someone at 972 would probably disagree with Baram…
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http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-israeli-left-s-zombie-argument.premium-1.452366
Philos
Kolumn9, I too read Nir Baram’s article and his argument is that the Left lacks the courage to criticize the occupation on moral grounds, which is entirely true of Labour. That being said his analysis is totally bombastic and not connected to reality, which one might expect from someone with zero credentials in international relations.
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Indeed, one only has to use simple philosophical aphorisms to show the weakness of Nir Baram’s arguments. “Just because something has not happened yet does not mean it is not going to happen.”
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The campaign against apartheid South Africa did not kick off as some kind of diplomatic tsunami. It was more like rising flood waters at night. Silent, imperceptible, however, relentless. This is what is happening against Israel. There will be no diplomatic tsunami like Ehud Barak predicted. And if you think US support is some kind of barometer of health – recall that the British and American support of apartheid South Africa continued almost right until the end. Only when they saw that the it was lost cause were economic sanctions that finished the regime off imposed in the late 1980s. The protest movement against South Africa has begun in the early 1960s.
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Wishful thinking is no substitute for a genuine concern that Israel is on the road to hell.
noam
@Ofer – okay, they don’t like Iran. But some fractions stand firmly with Assad against “imperialist US/Zionist intervention” (meaning the opposition militias). If being for Assad is anti-imperialism, than what would being against Iran stirring in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria be? And in this case, are Hollande, Obama, Merkel and Bibi anti-imperialists?
Find me one Hadash member [who isn't Dov Khenin] who ever gave a Knesset address on gay rights/separation of religion and state/asylum seekers. I understand these issues might not concern their electorate, but they should be universal rights issues. Meretz stands up against racism towards Arabs although the Arab population makes for a small fracture of their votes. Where is Barakeh to stand out against incitement against gays?
I’m not voting Hadash again.
PAUL
To Philos – Equally, turning your argument around against Nir – “Just because something has not happened yet does not mean it is going to happen either.”
All of these arguments (a not uncommon trait among political leftists everywhere) smack of lofty smug moralism.
Perhaps it explains the lefts failure time and time again in Israel. The leaders of the “left” have a responsibility to be politically EFFECTIVE. I have said it here before and Ill say it again – that means persuasion, hard graft, pragmatism (using any or all arguments that may work), its the messy stuff of real politics and power, its convincing your fellow Israelis of your argument, not polishing the self-righteousness of your point of view for the mirror. Part of that failure (maybe a huge part) is the residual whiff of distaste one gets from many Israeli thinkers/writers on the left in Israel for their fellow Israelis.
Its as if populism is vulgar, compromise is dirty, and politics itself corrupts the purity and clarity of thought.
Kolumn9
@Philos, false analogies are a bad start for logical thinking. Based on both trade volume and trade relations Israel’s economic ties have grown stronger over the past 10 years in the absence of negotiations and despite several major Israeli operations in the territories. This isn’t wishful thinking. It is reality.
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Certainly Baram is arguing for a left-wing narrative based on perceived moral imperatives, but his justification for why this is the preferred approach is what is interesting to me.
It demonstrates that recognition of the absence of a clear connection between economic growth and policy towards the Arabs is slowly edging into the consciousness of people on the left. Frankly, I think his core proposal is in itself flawed because it proposes that the left pursue a narrative diverging fundamentally from the national consensus, symbols, etc… This is not a viable path towards increased political representation or power.
XYZ
Last year, Avrum Burg advocated creating yet another Leftist party that will be non-Zionist, post-Zionist or anti-Zionist or something to that effect. He feels that Meretz is too old and still addicted to the old MAPAM-Histadrut-Kibbutz Artzi political machine that has undue influence in choosing its candidates, and is still too wedded to old Left-wing Zionist values, and he feels that HADASH is too Marxist-socialst (and too Arab, but don’t say that too loudly!). He wants a state that will be confined to the Green Line and will be majority Jewish but not defined as being Jewish and commmitted to a yuppie-style consumerist society, unlike the humorless socialists of the other two parties.
This, of course, illustrates the weakness of the Left…its ideological chaos. After the collapse of the Labor party’s soclialist ideology in the 1980′s, it decided to recruit respected Generals to be its leaders (Rabin, Fuad Ben-Eliezer, Ehud Barak and others) and to use the so-called “peace process” as its banner. With the demise of the peace process and the disappearance of the last “hero-generals”, (today Generals are no longer viewed as “patriots’ and dedicated servants of the nation, but rather as multi-millionaires on the make) there is a vacuum at the top of the Left and no one to crack the whip to get all the followers into order. Thus, the Left will remain fractionated, because a “social justice” agenda is not accepted by all the post-, anti-, and non-Zionists, as Burg and others like Bernard Avishai indicate, and there is no agreement at all on the shape of the relationship with the Palestinians and security policy.
Charles
Support for Arab leaders like Assad who stood up to the US and Israel for years is understandable. But the same process of the Arab Spring that has, or is in the process of liberating many Arabs is also affecting Palestinian citizens of Israel.
What matters, politically, are the statements of political decision making bodies for Hadash and Maki. Don’t expect them to register support for Assad; that isn’t where the leadership or the mass of voters is.
Sniping between Meretz supporters and Hadash is worse than pointless. If Meretz devotes energy to the 5k voters who went for Hadash, it will be at the expense of energy aimed at the 50k voters who left them for Labor and Kadima.
sh
“Sniping between Meretz supporters and Hadash is worse than pointless. If Meretz devotes energy to the 5k voters who went for Hadash, it will be at the expense of energy aimed at the 50k voters who left them for Labor and Kadima.”
I think this is true. The energy should be directed to the moderates and why those really disturbed by the situation in the West Bank and Jerusalem don’t consider Meretz. One sector I know was alienated by local Meretz politicking during the last election is the moderate religious, who lost any kind of Knesset representation when they voted for Meimad and the Green Party instead.
PAUL
Burg is right. Hadash and Meretz have their place. But as political “brands” they are never going to extend beyond a niche 10-15% maximum of the electorate. Their role is to articulate a point of view but ultimately to support a party to their right gain power. That party (a centre left social democratic party that lives in real world)needs to attract 25% of Israelis. I hear/read very little in +972 about the practicalities or challenges of this REALPOLITIK. Perhaps power doesn’t interest the “left”. Polishing, perfecting and posturing the “high moral” is the ultimate goal. (Its useful nigh necessary in PHD programmes)
A more interesting debate is to ask why does the Likud still have a “lock” on the impoverished Mizrahi Ofakim 25 year old voter?
And please spare me the fairytale Golden-Socialist-Nirvana narrative that all was beautiful pre 1977 watershed and all is dark (literally) since…
Take responsibility (stop blaming others) as to why the “Left” fails to attract/understand/speak to that 25 year old Mizrahi Ofakim voter today? Look a little closer to home….
XYZ
I’ll tell you why the 25 year-old voter from the Edot HaMizrach votes Likud….because he likes what the party stands for. They have different values than the Left. Amram Mitzna asked the same question….he said he encountered an unemployed woman of that background why she supports the Likud when he and Labor are (supposedly) promising to give her money. She replied that she liked the Likud’s policies on security and national values. He was stupified. It seems to be impossible for Progressives to understand the fact that not everyone thinks like they do.
I heard the following attributed to comedian Lenny Bruce: “Leftists can understand anyone except anyone who disagrees with them”.
PAUL
XYZ – Its a start…a few more (there are plenty)
* Economic vulnerability generates insecurity – The poor are less likely to take “risks” for what they see as the abstract political goals (of an elite other)….
* So called Israeli Left (Labour)never practised “inclusive politics”….history of Labour Party has never really been confronted..
* Cultural Snobbery exudes every pore of many on the (Askenazi) left
* Mizrahi in being “de-Arabized” have been taught to be hostile to Palestinian population
You reap what you sow…these probably sound like 1970s cliches to an international young North Tel Avivian “lefty” elite – more historic myth than contemporary fact..
Go to South Tel aviv or Ofakim and ask….
As for Mitzna being stupified! Speaks volumes….