Home / General / The State of the Israeli Left

The State of the Israeli Left

/
/
/
1398 Views

I can only imagine the difficulty of being a committed leftist in Israel today. Actually caring about the fate of the people in Gaza and the West Bank puts you well outside the norm of Israeli society and opposing the war even more. And yet, there are deeply committed people doing the work and they deserve our attention. Dissent gave it to a few of them. This is good material.

Yael Berda: Today, there is going to be a small protest in front of the Kirya [the headquarters of the Israeli army’s general staff], under the banner of “stop the war.” I’ve been wanting to do this for at least a month. At first it was hard to find the courage to do it, then it was hard to find partners. I’m hoping it will be twenty, maybe thirty people. It’ll be a huge win, for a few reasons.

One is that there was a huge clampdown that began immediately after October 7, on [the left-wing activist and civics teacher] Meir Baruchin. He was arrested for four days. He was really mistreated, and charged with treason, for putting up pictures of Gazan children. It felt like leftists could not express sorrow or pain for people—civilians—in Gaza. That’s changed in the last two weeks. You’re allowed to express pain, but you still can’t be against the war.

I was speaking with a very good friend and fellow activist about a protest. I said to him, “So what if we get arrested? So what if the right-wingers hit us? We’ve done this before. We know how to deal with it.” And he said, “What’s so hard for me is being looked at by everyone as some wacko.” The sense of being so lonely, so weird, so misunderstood, and so illegitimate—this, to me, is new.

We currently have an authoritarian government. The material difficulty is real. But something is also happening in people’s minds. They can’t bear the social pressure.

Sally Abed: Standing Together has rallies across the country every three to five days. We’re mobilizing people. We’re trying to find a loophole to be able to protest safely; we’re literally renting wedding venues for our meetings. Jewish leftists have come to me, bawling, and saying, “Thank you for making us feel seen.”

We’re at a very dark place in Israel. It really feels like we’re fighting over the soul of the society. As a socialist Palestinian in Israel, if you asked me two months ago what my strategy for the next three years was to build a new left in Israel, I would have told you it was working around social justice issues, economic issues—and really trying to reach the peripheries. That has completely changed. The new Israeli left that we need to build from the ashes has a completely new mission. October 7 has created a historic junction, where the main question will be peace or no peace. I don’t think “peace” is going to be the word, but the next elections are going be on this issue. And it hasn’t been the issue for so many years.

Eli Cook: I went to the big protests on Kaplan [the street in Tel Aviv that became synonymous with the demonstrations against the judicial overhaul plan] almost every week earlier this year. Those were neoliberal protests—pretty conservative, or status-quo oriented. But I could come every week with my anti-occupation shirt and march. There was not a single time where I got shit for that. We thought, “We’re a legitimate fringe, but we’re part of the group.” But I definitely agree with Yael that this is no longer the case.

Since the end of the last ceasefire in late November, there has been a slight change, where you can now, at least a little bit, recognize the suffering in Gaza. But it’s very hard. I will say, though, that the protests to free the hostages have given Israelis on the left a way to say, “End the war,” or, “Ceasefire,” or, “Let’s find another way to talk about wiping out Hamas that doesn’t require wiping out half of Gaza”—while still saying, “Let’s bring the Israelis home,” which I fully believe, too. For me, at least, there has been a place where I can go to hear people who aren’t even leftists saying, “Everyone for everyone”—make a full hostage trade, and just end this part of the fighting.

A lot of polls show that Israelis have moved to the right. But the same polls showed that Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] is done, and that most people are going to vote for Benny Gantz. I’m not saying that Gantz is some radical leftist, but I do think that there is something there.

At the same time, there has been further regression. When Israel “disengaged” from the Gaza Strip [in 2005], the real leftists were always saying that this could not be a one-sided disengagement—that this had to come with some kind of negotiation with the Palestinian Authority, otherwise it was just going to create a situation where it strengthened Hamas and hurt the moderates. And that’s exactly what has happened. Yet the mainstream Israeli narrative has become, “What do you want from us? We left Gaza and you still did this.”

The whole thing is very much worth your time. It should make some people around here in comments question their positions, but we all know that’s not going to happen.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar
Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views :