What Happened to the Israeli Left?

From the resurrection of the Jewish people to the ‘just not Bibi' camp

Written by Hannah Gal.

The Israeli Left has perished. The 2022 elections could not have painted a grimmer picture – Meretz, a social democratic party that in its heyday won 12 Knesset seats, failed to pass the voting threshold and vanished into thin air. But it is the collapse of socialist Haavoda that painfully demonstrates the magnitude of the Left’s demise.

The founding fathers’ party of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir has dropped from 49 Knesset seats at its highest, to barely scraping five. “The 2022 elections were the final blow in a long process of decline” Professor Mordechai Kedar told me, “confirming what many were feeling for a long time - the Labour party of Ben Gurion, Golda and Rabin has lost its way, while the Right is on solid ground.”

What happened?

Why did the legendary Haavoda party collapse? How did ‘the party of the people’ completely lose touch with its support base? Is its demise the result of “red-pilled” Leftists shifting to the Right and Centre? Are demographic changes to blame for the catastrophic fall? Or was it the current leader’s unrelenting wokeism that pushed voters’ away?

Who killed the Israeli Left?

“The Israeli Left has buried itself” said political commentator Ephraim Michaeli, “it no longer represents the people, it is the Right that speaks the people’s language and values of Judaism and tradition.” Michaeli’s observation is spot on. The ivory-tower Left parties of today are profoundly different from their grass roots predecessors. Detached and disconnected, they preach progressivism that is divorced from most Israelis’ reality.“Itzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres are turning in their graves knowing that Merav Michaeli is the Haavoda leader” he added, “she is anti-family, anti-religion and anti-nationalism, the same goes for Meretz too – Shulamit Aloni and Yossi Sarid would be turning in their graves to see Galon as their leader - today’s Left leaders speak for a tiny niche elite.”

These sentiments were echoed by late Yossi Sarid’s son, who recently spoke of “a fundamentally different breed of leadership” that is all but gone. “While today’s leaders sit comfortably in North Tel Aviv” he explained, “dad travelled to unfamiliar places in a bid to better understand the people: he went to Arab villages, and even took on a teaching post in southern development town Sderot.” The same applies to socialist Haavoda whose past leaders concerned themselves with burning issues of defence, rebuilding and self-sacrifice, a far cry from the party’s current ultra feminist leader speaking in feminine gender and calling for society to cancel marriage. “The Left has completely abandoned its ideology of solving real issues that matter” said author A. B. Yehoshua in a HOT TV interview, “today the Left in Israel is about whether the temperature setting on the train is biased towards men.”¹

It is important to understand the iconic status of Haavoda to fully grasp the magnitude of its fall. It was Haavoda who physically constructed the state of Israel. “They built the industry and transport foundation that was already in place when Israel was founded in 1948, there was even a Knesset” noted Professor Kedar, “it started in the 1920’s when the Histadroot (general organisation of workers in Israel) was formed, with the call for Jews to get back to working the land - you can safely say that the Left was the resurrection of the Jewish people. It is the party of the resettlement in Israel, the Yishuv and the kibbutzim.”

It was Haavoda’s leader Ben Gurion who declared the birth of the Jewish state in 1948, and it was their Tsabar (Israel born) ideal that Israelis grew up aspiring to. To this day, it is their pioneering songs of working the land, peace, patriotism and rebuilding that every Israeli child still grows up singing. It founded the Hagana which in 1948 became the IDF and more. Still counting nearly one million members, it dominated society, culture and the labour market from 1920’s mandatory Palestine, right until 1977 and Begin’s historic Likud win.

Transformative events

Current Haavoda leaders’ unrelenting Wokeism has no doubt alienated many voters but the party has been on a steady decline for decades.

Through various transformative events, the Left has lost great chunks of its following. There was the arrival of Jews from Arab countries, the 60’s disillusionment with Soviet Russia, the second Intifada and the Oslo accords, the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, the late 80’s arrival of one million Russians, demographic changes and the October 7th atrocities.

Most pivotal for many is the 50–60’s arrival of Mizrahi Jews from Arab countries. Primarily from Morocco, they have taken to Likud’s Right Wing narrative, their support culminating in the shock 1977 revolution (Mahapach). This saw Menachem Begin become the first non-socialist PM in the country’s history, heralding the start of Likud’s almost uninterrupted reign and the end of the Haavoda era.

“In 1977 everything changed” explained Professor Kedar, “peace became the left’s new slogan and the highly vocal Peace Now movement was born. The party has carried this line right through to the 1993 Oslo peace accords.” It is the failure of these agreements that would cast possibly the biggest blow of all. Seven years after Rabin, Peres and Arafat signed the agreements, a series of devastating suicide bombers hit Israeli streets killing hundreds of civilians – the second Intifada broke, forcing the Left to question its own ‘peace at all cost’ path.

“With the death of Oslo the Left itself had a rude awakening” said Ephraim Michaeli “Israelis were thinking ‘the people I sighed a peace agreement with are murdering me’ -  they could see that the Oslo accord has failed.”

The death of Oslo was a game changing, collective “red-pilling” moment, which saw countless Israelis deserting the Left. Not only did it shatter the entire Left-championed peace narrative, its devastating collapse left the camp in an ideological vacuum that it is still struggling to fill.

Demography

The past decades have seen Israel go through demographic changes that significantly weakened the Left’s political hold. “Religious and Masorti (tradition keepers) Israelis have large families” explained Kedar, “while the secular Left have very few children, many of them also emigrate to foreign lands for different reasons.” The sheer size of the Right leaning religious and Masorti voting camp has grown considerably, while the Left leaning secular bloc continues to dwindle.

Most prominent here is the Haredi (ultra-orthodox) group that according to the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs currently stands at 1.25 million or 12.5% of the Israeli population. At 4%, this group’s growth rate is exactly double that of the non-Haredi population. The average Haredi woman has 6.5 children, compared to 2.7 children for the average non-Haredi woman.

Another group tilting the scales in the Right’s favour is Israel’s young. Unlike their Left leaning counterparts in other countries, they vote Right. “The young in Israel feel first hand the Muslim terrorist attacks” explained Forum Cafe Shapira founder Gali Bat Horin, “they serve in the army and regardless of where they live, would no doubt know friends and relatives hit by rockets, they would have even lost friends over the past few months.” This unique lived experience pushes young voters away from the progressive peace camp, and draws them to the likes of Itamar Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power party that is currently in coalition with Netanyahu.

Another demographic change that weakened Labour’s hold came in the late 80’s with the arrival of one million Russians to Israel – Russians who naturally resented the Left’s socialist narrative. For these newcomers, the sight of red flags on top of socialist Histadroot buildings (the general organisation of workers in Israel) was a dark reminder of the Soviet Russia they left behind. “To these immigrants” recalled ‘Coming to the Professors’ founder Alex Tseitlin, himself a Russian immigrant, “the red flag was akin to someone placing a Nazi flag on a building.” These voters turned their backs on socialist Haavoda, voting largely for the Right Wing secularist, conservative, nationalist party Yisrael Beytenu, headed by Russian immigrant Avigdor Liberman.

October 7th

The latest event to considerably weaken the Left is the October 7th massacre. Described by Netanyahu as “the worst assault on Jewish people since the holocaust”, the Black Saturday atrocities were a time of reckoning for Israeli society, prompting even lifelong, hardcore Leftists, to ‘see the light’ and abandon the dream of ‘peace at all cost’.

“The intense brutality inflicted by Palestinians towards Israelis wherever they are on October 7th” wrote Dr Michael Millstein in Ynet, “the lack of condemnation from the world, the blanket disregard of the brutal massacres, and even some claims that they never happened, made many Israelis wonder whether this is indeed the result of the occupation and economic disparities, or whether it is rooted in burning enmity within the Palestinian collective consciousness.” This recognition of what Milstein terms “the dark side of multiculturalism” has reverberated within the West at large; many are now rethinking the implications of a lack of common values.

In Israel, many of the peace advocates who remained after the Oslo fiasco have come out to declare their “red pilling” moment to the world. Survivors of the Nova music festival spoke of their brutal awakening and past naiveté, while famously Leftist entertainers have talked openly of their ideological transformation. Celebrities such as popular singer Ivri Lidar who confessed “I no longer sing ‘perhaps the enemy is in fact a friend’, this sentence died on October 7th.”

The atrocities have marked a profound shift in the Israeli psyche. “October 7th was not just the barbaric horror and the surprise” reflects Bat Horin, “it was the sudden realisation that the ‘Arab’ actually exists, that the Left’s peace dream is well and truly dead. “The disillusionment” added Dr Milstein, “is not only from the possibility of establishing peace if the occupation ends, but also from the fact that there is an un bridgable gap between the two communities, when it comes to moral values, truth and human life, the ability to show empathy towards the other, and the power to exercise self-control.”

October 7th was a colossal blow to a Left that is still associated with the peace at all cost effort. As with Oslo, disillusioned voters see an existentially dangerous naiveté on the Left, and are shifting to the Right.

Ideological roots

“The left became overconfident and jaded” said professor Yoram Perry, former Davar editor, “Haavoda has been in power from the formation of Histadrut to 1977, and when you are in power for so long you lose grasp of what really matters to people.”

In one example, Perry says that before the 2022 elections, “Left leaders, Haavoda and Meretz assumed that the Kibbutzim will vote for them, they failed to hear the Kibbutzniks cries over thefts of their produce – as you saw, the very heart of the Left communist movement, troubled by theft and burglaries had switch to security conscious Ben Gvir. It also lost touch with its roots and core advocates - Haavoda always carried two flags, the Israeli blue and white flag, and the red flag, one for the nation, one to represent class. From the early 70’s onwards you see the gradual removal of the red flags, they vanished completely by the mid nineties.”

Global decline

The demise of the Israeli Left is partly due to global shifts. “Something has happened to the Left worldwide” said Cambridge scholar Moshe Berent, “the left all over the world is dying, it has lost its past ideological base of class struggle, in the past it was recognised as the battle for the proletariat but not anymore, society has changed - today’s society is richer and as wealth filters through and the dividing class gap is diffused, so the left shifted to worrying about minorities.”

Professor Yoram Perry agrees: “this is a global phenomenon - the left in the U.S. worries about transgender toilets, not real issues such as millions of Americans living without health insurance for example, the same happened in Israel - what did Haavoda leader Merav Michaeli concern herself with? the female-friendly temperature on the trains.“

It is important to explain, however, that the left that built Israel was different from the European left. “The Zionist left that came to Palestine as it was called at the time, set about forming a utopian society” explained Moshe Berent, “the society of ‘the New Jew’ who is part of an exemplary, idealistic new society, these idealistic pioneers had no direct connection with the proletarian as such because the Jews were still in the diaspora. What’s more, it carried an elitist narrative from the very start – one that is still in place today, they saw, and still do see the masses as unfit to rule because they do not fit the utopian model. When the diaspora Jews finally came they did not fit the idealistic model, but even worse - as happened In 1977 with the Mizrahi voters gaining power – the idealistic model fell apart - this vision is the reason the Left has collapsed - the political elite can only survive if it recognises its role as serving the people but this elite is utopian, it believes that its purpose is the fulfilment of its own vision, not providing for the people - the reality is that the Left stayed in its elitist bubble but people have moved on.”

According to Professor Kedar, the pioneering Left sought a national, not religious resurrection of the Jewish people. “To them, religion was backwards thinking - they saw it as their mission to not just get the Jew out of the diaspora, but also get the diaspora out of the Jew.” Their new ideal was the progressive ‘new Jew’, the Israeli born Tsabar – but the blond, blue eyed Tsabar ideal alienated many of the darker Mizrahi immigrants. Perhaps more importantly, the skin baring girls wearing shorts and vests conflicted with their faith. “These Jews arrived with peyoth, wearing skullcaps and that did not fit the atheist, socialist, secular, liberal, new-Jew model” added Kedar, “many were sent to secular environments on purpose.”

These practices have been coming to light in recent years, turning many disillusioned Mizrahi voters away from the anti-religious Left and into the arms of the Shas party which primarily represents the interests of religious Mizrahi Jews.

Speaking of Israel’s early years, Kedar highlights another episode that cost the Left dearly, as the infant state’s tight relationship with Russia dissolved. “Socialist 1948 Israel was of great attraction to Russia who saw it as its ideological twin” he explained, “the kibbutz in particular was the perfect manifestation of communism, the ultimate communist experiment. After 1948 with the formation of Israel, however, they realised that Jewish Israel cannot be part of Russia. They also realised that Israel will not be the tool to help them topple down capitalism as they hoped.”

When Syria and Iraq became socialist in 1963, Russia saw Arab states as more friendly to socialism and shifted its support to them. In Israel, stories have emerged of antisemitism in Russia and Jews not being allowed to leave. Israelis started doubting their Russian loyalty. As Kedar notes, a saying of the time was ‘Russia is our mother, Stalin is our father, we wish we were orphans’.

Where we are

Rabin’s assassination and the shattering of the Oslo agreements, left the battered Left in a state of ideological vacuum. Unable to replace the peace dream, it adopted the occupied territories as a cause, followed by minorities’ rights. But as former Peace Now leader Yariv Oppenheimer points out, “these days, all parties, including the Right care for minorities, so the Left offers nothing that distinguishes it from the rest.”

The Israeli Left’s new slogan is ‘just not Bibi’. Sweeping and highly vocal, it has completely taken over the camp’s discourse. Likened by some to TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome), the unrelenting – many say obsessive and cultish – campaign to oust Bibi has turned countless Left-leaning voters away. One of these is author of My Journey from Left to Right, Smadar Shmuelli. “I was one of the vocal protesters you saw on the news” she said recently, stressing her sobering realisation that her fellow protesters “were interested in attacking the man” and not the issues.

“The Left is stuck” wrote Tal Caspin in the workers’ publication Davar, “and this is largely due to the political project, political sentiment of ‘just not Bibi…the Left can carry on talking about attracting new voters, the society and the economy, but if ‘just not Bibi’ is the top priority, perhaps these are not that important.”

While the Israeli political Left is dead, or at least on the brink of extinction, it is important to note that the Left camp's tight grip on mainstream media, academia, education and culture remains. The majority has shifted right after Oslo and October 7th, though a tiny, very vocal and active minority is alive and kicking. Four months on from October 7th, the protesters are out in force. “The neo-pagan rituals are back” ex-Meretz voter Gali Bat Horin told me, “the protests that went from Rothschild in 2011, to Petach Tikvah, to Balfour during the Corona virus, to Kaplan (protesting the proposed judicial reforms), and now to ‘the kidnapped by Hamas square’ - it is the same crowd.”

Can the political Left rise from the dead? Will Meretz pass the threshold in the next elections? Or as Professor Berent argues, is the Left simply too elitist to connect with the people?

Hannah is a London based journalist and award winning documentarian. Her credits include Quillette, the Critic, the Spectator, UnHerd, the Guardian (Art & Design) Creative Review, The BBC, Channel4 and the Jerusalem Post.

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1. Some quotations in this article were translated from Hebrew to English by the author.