Israel’s Left Has No Future

From the start, the Jewish nationalist movement’s objective was to open Palestine to unlimited immigration, colonize it and rob it of its independence. Labor did not review the old doctrine of territorial conquest when it was in power in 1967-77 or in the 1990s, notes Zeev Sternhell.

The Israeli left is impotent, without an ideology to offer a way out of the mire of neocolonialism and neoliberalism. This was as clear in this February’s electoral debacle as it was in the historic defeat of 1977, when the right took power for the first time. Many Israelis realize they are witnessing the steady decline, if not the death, of the left.

It is not that the left is worn out after many years in power; nor is it the result of the evolution of Israeli society. It is due to the left’s inability to manage the military victory of June 1967 over Egypt, Syria and Jordan or the historic breakthrough of the Oslo accords in 1993; on both these occasions it demonstrated its conformist and conservative nature, and intellectual and moral weaknesses.

From the start, the Jewish nationalist movement’s objective was to open Palestine to unlimited immigration, colonize it and rob it of its independence. “The Zionist project is one of conquest,” said Berl Katznelson, the Labor Zionist ideologue, in 1929. “Please understand that it is not by chance that I describe it in military terms.” The nationalist movement justified this by invoking the historic right of Jews to reclaim the land of their ancestors. From the end of the 19th century, all Zionist thought held that the Jews in Europe were on the edge of catastrophe: The second world war proved them right. The 1948-9 victory was the culmination of hard work, led by Labour parties in power since the early 1930s.

When war broke out in June 1967, the left wondered how to react. Should it exploit Egypt’s miscalculation and use the newly conquered territories as bargaining chips for peace? Should it see victory as the logical conclusion of the war of independence, a chance to complete what was left unfinished in 1949? Or use the opportunity to announce to the Arab world that Zionism had attained its objectives with the creation of Israel in 1949, and the conquest and settlement of more land was no longer necessary?

That would have required the left to have been informed by universal values, not just the culture and politics of nationalism. With rare exceptions, none of the left’s political leaders were so equipped. The few leftwing intellectuals in politics after 1977 who attempted to rebuild the Labor Party on a new basis were forced to resign, or gave up after the 1982 Lebanon war. The big names in the party had no new ideas, and were content to follow the path of the left’s ideologues of the early 19th century, Aharon David Gordon and Katznelson.

Labor did not review the old doctrine of territorial conquest when it was in power in 1967-77 or in the 1990s. The party never debated whether the country’s future could be based, not on the historic right of the Jews to the land of Israel, but on the rights of all its inhabitants. Discussion centered then, as now, on how to exploit Palestinian weakness.

The principle of never giving up land unless compelled to do so by a superior force still applies. In fact, the settlement of occupied land began under the Labor governments of 1967-77, using methods still seen today: land confiscated under any pretext, laws bent, with inequality between Jews and Arabs the norm. Despite the Oslo accords, things did not significantly improve when Labor returned to power in 1992-96 and 1999-2001. Labor did its utmost to appease the settlers and the right wing, which saw its recognition of the right of Palestinians to a portion of land west of Jordan as a betrayal. The only way to block the revolt was to facilitate settlement.

But though Labor was morally and intellectually incapable of preventing settlement building, it was responsible for the turning point of the Oslo accords. Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, hero of the Six Day war, assassinated in 1995 by a religious nationalist, remains the only political leader to have looked beyond the received ideas of his time. But it took him 20 years, and the 1982 Lebanon war, to understand that the Israeli-Palestinian war would not end unless both sides recognized a dual right to nationhood. Rabin paid for this realization with his life. The Oslo accords were badly thought out and badly executed. But Rabin could perhaps have saved them: He was too intelligent and pragmatic to stick to an argument based on a 3,000-year-old property claim from scripture.

“Turn to the Bible, Obama,” urges the veteran Israeli journalist Yoel Markus, who has been close to the right wing of the Labor Party for 50 years. The current US administration is less tolerant of Israel’s settlement policy, but the minister of defense, Ehud Barak, and his colleagues still have no argument against the settlers, even if they have managed to dismantle some small “illegal outposts.” They retreat each time the settlers threaten civil war. All they can fall back on is international or US pressure.

Israel’s Labor Party valued President George W. Bush and his neocon ideologues as much as the evangelists of Alabama or the settlers of the West Bank. That is why Labor’s 2009 rout is more a moral and intellectual defeat than political. Labor voters realized that the party had lost its way. If all it could offer was a copied appeal to history and the use of force, better to go for the original, Binyamin Netanyahu. Ehud Barak, who had hoped to reap the rewards of last winter’s “victory” in Gaza, lost out in the choice.

Labor’s ideological vacuum extends to economic and social policy. It has never been a socialist party like its European counterparts. From its foundation as Mapai in 1930 (3), its emphasis on nationalism has distanced it not only from the parties of Leon Blum, Rudolf Hilferding and the Austro-Marxists, but even from the British Labour Party, which in 1931 turned towards socialism.

Mapai rejected even the most watered down Marxism, believing capitalism and private property necessary for nation-building. Barak shares a role model with his predecessor Shimon Peres in Tony Blair, a politician the US neocons consider one of their own. Labor’s leaders easily lean towards neo-liberalism, believing that individual freedom is guaranteed by the free market and that capital should be liberated from the constraints of the state.

Not everyone in Labor accepts this theory, but most approve of its practice. With a few exceptions, they do not count social justice among the fundamental components of freedom. The primacy of national values is embedded in Israeli political culture and the left has benefited from this: For three generations, Israelis have been taught that national and cultural identity take precedence over material well being.

Israel is not the first society to experience this phenomenon of contemporary history: diverse social groups voting against their economic and class interests in favor of national, cultural or religious loyalties. This was the norm set down by the conquerors of the land of Israel who, irrespective of their social status, had in common history, religion and the overriding objective to create a Jewish nation state.

Once class interests have been abandoned in favor of national unity, it is easy to convince those at the bottom of the social ladder that their lives can only improve through the free market, privatization, deregulation, and lower taxes. Most Israelis have been persuaded that their labor is a commodity and that flexibility is the key to success.

Labor has been incapable of providing a critique of global market capitalism. Its old and demoralized supporters continue to vote for it more out of habit than conviction. But support is shrinking: in February it went down to 10%, just 13 seats in the Knesset. The young have deserted the party and there is little Labor activism in the universities. Palestinian, Chinese and Thai manual workers have long since replaced the Israelis who were members of the trade union federation, Histadrut, and Mapai.

Peres left Labor to join Kadima (which was set up by Ariel Sharon) after he was defeated as party leader in 2005 by the trade union leader Amir Peretz. Many Labor supporters concluded that if a former prime minister could leave the party and join the opposition after 50 years, then it must have run out of ideas and no longer be worth fighting for. In March 2006, 15% of votes went to Labor, giving it 19 seats and allowing Peretz to become minister of defense in the government of Ehud Olmert (a Likud renegade, who replaced Sharon after his brain hemorrhage). Peretz comes from Sderot close to Gaza, and a marginal social background Labor had never been able to penetrate. He speaks for the working and middle classes, was a member of Peace Now (the pacifist organization), and embodied hope in social-democratic renewal. Immigrants from North Africa and their children, long fascinated by the great figures of the nationalist right from Menahem Begin to Sharon, could relate to him.

After prime minister Olmert refused to give him the post of finance minister, key to developing a more left wing economic policy, Peretz accepted the defense portfolio. A few weeks later the war in Lebanon swept him from office. He was replaced by Barak, who had become a wealthy businessman and was more at home attending receptions in the suburbs of Tel Aviv than being in the poor quarters of the south of the city, or in the provinces.

There are some positive indications from Labor 2009 defeat. Whether it be the defeat of Barak -- a soldier made wealthy after a “victory” in Gaza many Israelis are ashamed of -- or the success of Kadima, a political grouping led by a woman, Tzipi Livni (who defeated her bitter rival, the former general Shaul Mofaz), there are signs of maturity in the electorate. It is no longer always alpha males who emerge triumphant from political battle.

A problem remains that affects social-democratic parties across Europe: the lack of a leadership with vision. The absence of ideas and statesmen on the left does not suggest a bright future. The problem may not only affect Israelis, but their case is more urgent.