On November 1, almost a month after the massacre by Hamas terrorists, Fania Oz-Salzberger, the daughter of left-wing literary scion Amos Oz, declared her commitment to the Israeli Left on X (formerly known as Twitter).
“I was and remain on the Israeli Left,” she declared. “I still believe that it is necessary to reach a border-determining agreement with the Palestinian Authority, pending a two-state solution. To evacuate Jewish settlements in the West Bank. To defend Israel powerfully and wisely from within its sovereign territory recognized by international law. To strive for equal rights for Jewish and Arab citizens, invest in social justice, and establish a liberal, moderate, and value-oriented social democracy here.”
In later posts, she also acknowledged the “pain and shock” Israelis were enduring following the October 7 Hamas attack and, on December 31, posted a map of the missiles Hamas launched on Israel to mark New Year’s Eve, thus affirming that Hamas must be defeated.
“Wars are never humane, but following its failures in safeguarding innocent lives, Israel must try harder,” she wrote. “Once destroyed homes can be safely rebuilt on both sides of the border, we will know that Hamas has lost.”
Espousing both support for a two-state solution and a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while calling for the destruction of Hamas, Oz-Salzberger was speaking the language of Israel’s Left: disheartened but not demoralized after the attack.
The fate of Israel's Left
While people may still be talking in terms of “Right” and “Left,” those classifications have long since lost all meaning in the Israeli political arena, said Prof. Gideon Rahat of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Political Science Department and Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. The word “leftist” has become more of a curse, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slings it about at anyone who is not in his camp, he said.
There aren’t many Israelis who still describe themselves as “leftist,” but that downward trend has been around since the Second Intifada. Some are now looking toward the October 7 hero, former MK Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Yair Golan, to take up the mantle as a possible leader of the Left in the old Mapam political party style – left-leaning yet Zionist and ready to fight when needed, he said.
It is difficult for him to speak in terms of “Right” and “Left,” Rahat said, and to call Netanyahu “Right” is “ridiculous.”
“Bibi is a man of sustainability... he is not about taking initiatives,” said Rahat. “Someone has to talk about the day after, and he doesn’t want to do it – why? Everyone knows if you have a war and don’t have a plan for the day after, you didn’t really win the war.”
He added, “Politically, the Israeli Left will not return to power in the next decades. Those who will be in power will be the religious Right or the pragmatic Right; there will be a central pragmatic power, which they will call Left but won’t be Left,” said Rahat. The pragmatic Right “won’t be afraid like Bibi; they will be ready to fight but... also ready to compromise.”
THE ONGOING demonstrations against Netanyahu, calling for a ceasefire and demanding the return of the hostages, are not demonstrations of the Left, he said, with leftist groups representing a tiny minority of the demonstrators.
“These are people who support democracy,” said Rahat. “If we say supporting democracy is Left, oy vavoy to us. A lot of the voices on the Right support democracy.”
Indeed, said Dr. Ilana Shpaizman, lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University, the judicial overhaul protests, which were in the name of very specified ideas, could potentially benefit the Left because many of the ideals align with those of the Left. “If they can capitalize on this, there can be an increase in their voting potential.”
“The radical Left has always been on the margins, and most people on both sides are against the ceasefire,” Shpaizman added. “But before October 7, people started to talk about the occupation more than they did before, and there were many violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, which had happened before; but now people began to pay attention, which is something new and now even more so.”
The decline of the traditional Left has as much to do with the shift Right of the Israeli public and a siphoning off of left-leaning voters to Center parties as it has to do with the Left’s failure to present any alternative solutions to the conflict, said Shpaizman. The Israeli Left has been trying to prove itself to be as Zionist as the Right – as in 2015, when Labor created a Center-Left political alliance with Hatnuah in an attempt to unseat Netanyahu and called it the Zionist Camp. But the Left has become “marginal and very fragmented,” she said.
The demonstrations against the proposed judicial overhaul last year showed that people are searching for other ideas and there is a place for that in Israeli politics. In addition, she said, October 7 proved that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can’t be “managed,” and one of the challenges now facing the Left is to present its own plan for the future, not only on social issues but on the political front as well.
However, said Rahal, the overriding presence of populism in Israeli politics and in the world in general has blurred the lines between Right and Left, almost making it difficult to distinguish between the two.
“Populism has really mixed everything up, and it is very, very hard to use these brand names ‘Left,’ ‘Right,’ and ‘Center’ because... populism is neither Left nor Right. It is really everything blended together. People are using ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ because it is easy for them; and it is conveniently used to say someone is bad or good, but it does not carry any meaning these days,” said Rahat.
TRADITIONAL PEACE activists are disappointed for the Palestinians and feel alienated from the international progressive Left, said Rahat, but they have no deep interest in occupying Gaza and building settlements.
“People find it hard because on the one hand, they don’t believe the Palestinians are a real partner they can count on to have any agreement. But on the other hand, people do not want to rule Gaza or at least parts of the West Bank.
“The question for many people is whether Israel can sustain an occupation of other people who have no rights. So what they have lost are their positive attitudes. But I don’t think they have changed their minds on what is their goal: Their goal is to live in peace, within the Green Line. I don’t think that has changed,” said Rahat. “Destroying Hamas is not destroying the Palestinians. It is not the same for them.”
While characterizing the Left in other countries as naïve may be painting a truthful picture, it is not the same for the Israeli Left, he said.
“You have to remember that many people on the Israeli Left serve in the military. That is not the same as sitting at home and dreaming of a world that does not exist,” he said. “These people saw the Palestinian uprising, they saw wars, and some have fought in wars, lost friends. They came back like [the] people who came back from Vietnam and saw that war is bad. You can’t compare them to a trans person in Harvard who supports Hamas…They are not naïve.”
In the end, said Shpaizman, the question of the future of Israel’s Left will remain hypothetical until elections are held. The Labor Party has yet to hold primaries for a new leader, and there is no indication of what the political map will look like at the time of any future election. Further, the leaders of the judicial protest overhaul movement have yet to announce their own political goals.
“One of the things the [proposed] judicial overhaul did is to politicize our lives. People are no longer afraid of politics. They no longer see politics as not having anything to do with their lives,” she said. “People now realize they can’t ignore politics.”
REQUESTS FOR comments about a future role for the Israeli Left following October 7 were sent out to left-wing activists and organization leaders. Here are the responses in their own words, with some editing for brevity and clarity.
Rebecca Bardach – writer and practitioner committed to building Jewish-Arab shared society in Israel, with experience in the fields of migration, conflict, and development. Her cousin is among the hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas.
The Jewish people established a state in order to live in safety, dignity, and fairness. This is not a matter of Left vs Right. The challenge is how can we achieve that, given the competition over this same piece of land with the Palestinians?
As we struggle in the overwhelming darkness, death, and destruction of October 7 and the terrible war that has followed on multiple fronts, it is tempting to see the enemy everywhere and to repudiate the big questions and difficult discussions about “the day after.” Understandably, we are deeply wounded and profoundly afraid.
But we are also blinding ourselves to the partners we do have, first and foremost – though not only – in our fellow Arab/Palestinian citizens of Israel. These fellow citizens contribute much and yearn for the same safety, dignity, and fairness that we seek. We are at risk of allowing fear, ideology, and/or hatred to blind us to this. We must be stringent about preventing harm and pursuing our mutual well-being.
And, hard as it is for many to see now as we struggle with so much death and destruction, the same is ultimately true of the broader Israeli-Palestinian relationship. Nowhere is it determined that we are destined to remain in perpetual conflict. We have considerable work to do, but history is full of examples of bitter enemies who eventually overcome their enmities.
Gershon Baskin, Middle East director of the International Communities Organization
The Israeli Left will be reinvigorated following this horrible war because, after years of considering the two-state solution no longer viable, (the concept) has returned with greater international and American support than ever. On October 7, the delusion that we can occupy another people for 56 years and expect to have peace, or that we can lock more than two million people in a territory like Gaza with 80% poverty and almost 70% youth unemployment and expect to have quiet, exploded on all of us.
Seven million Israeli Jews and seven million Palestinian Arabs living on the land between the river and the sea are not going anywhere. This conflict cannot be erased, and it cannot be managed. It must be resolved. The regional relations with Israel can now refocus their attention on resolving the conflict on the basis of two states for two people. It is back on our agenda, and it will give new life to the Israeli Left. After this war, Gaza will no longer be Hamastan, and Israel will no longer be Bibistan. Israel will have a new beginning.
Mickey Gitzin, executive director of the New Israel Fund in Israel, replied as follows:
The following three concepts have collapsed:
1. It is possible to manage the conflict (Bibi’s concept). The Left, however, believes that only an agreement guarantees security.
2. The idea of a small government. The privatization mechanisms disintegrated the country. The kindness of the citizens worked. The state should return to service and be a welfare state.
3. The idea that it is possible to jump between the liberal axis and the anti-liberal axis has collapsed.
All the friends from Russia and Hungary turned their backs on us. America supported us. You have to commit to the liberal axis with a commitment to international law and human and civil rights. Therefore, the Left should work on promoting agreements, strengthening the welfare state, and establishing a liberal diplomatic axis.
In addition, [there should be a] commitment to the principle of equality [and] a country based on socioeconomic equality for Arabs and Jews. This will ensure the social fabric, and it goes up directly from October 7. The Left must invest in establishing an organized formation of the Zionist Left on the ruins of Labor and Meretz.
And lastly, [efforts should be made] to develop a constructive, pro-active dialogue with the Arab public, in contrast with the persecution by the right-wing [against] the Arab public.
Mossi Raz, former Meretz MK:
[We will continue to] advocate for an end to occupation, and [for] peace based on two states. The main challenge we are facing is the hatred on both sides because of the crimes on October 7 and the deaths in Gaza. The war is the [result of the] failure of the right-wing governments, who thought that Israel could rely only on military power. [Over the last decades] Israel has been led by the right-wing, and they are responsible for what happened.
The Left said that if we don’t have peace, a war is only a matter of time. We said that the settlements put Israel at risk; [the government] sent 32 brigades to different settlements, while leaving only two brigades defending Israel along the Gaza border.
[It is true] that most people do not now support social democratic values and the two-state solution, but we have to convince them that [Israel] has never tried the [ideas] of the Left; we have tried the right-wing solutions and failed. This terrible crime that happened on October 7 is the result of an absence of peace. ■