Comments on: Poll: Despite smears, left’s brand has not been damaged

By: PAUL

PAUL — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:06:45 +0000

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….

By: XYZ

XYZ — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 09:40:46 +0000

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”.

By: PAUL

PAUL — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 08:34:22 +0000

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….

By: sh

sh — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 05:55:29 +0000

“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.

By: Charles

Charles — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 00:31:40 +0000

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.

By: XYZ

XYZ — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 18:58:48 +0000

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.

By: Kolumn9

Kolumn9 — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 17:32:30 +0000

@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.

By: PAUL

PAUL — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 10:51:47 +0000

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.

By: noam

noam — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 10:28:48 +0000

@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.

By: Philos

Philos — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 07:22:39 +0000

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.