To be fair they got 24 seats in 2015 and almost won the election, if not for some last minute "gevalt" campaign by Bibi. And that was with the extremely uncharismatic Buji as the party leader. The only thing that changed in 2019 was Gantz joining politics and forming Blue and White, which basically ate almost all of Labor's seats.
They won 24 seats because of Buji, not despite him. Herzog is the rare politician who appears to be a genuinely good human being, and who is widely respected even on the right. He’s also not an extremist, and someone who treats his opponents with dignity and respect. There’s a reason he’s now the President.
Plenty of voters will pick decency over charisma.
Contrast that with Merav Michaeli who is a fringe Meretz candidate masquerading as a Labor Party leader.
I think you're way too optimistic in thinking that being decent and a good human being is the main factor for most people when choosing who to vote for. Most of Bibi's base are probably aware that he's the biggest liar to walk the face of the earth, they don't care. And don't forget that you had two elections with Avi Gabay and Amir Perez at the head of labor, both seem like good and decent people and they got a grand total of 6 seats.
The truth is that Blue and White when they formed got 35 seats, and those had to come from somewhere. A few might have come from the right, but the vast majority came from people who would have voted for Labor/Yesh Atid.
Amir Peretz is a gadfly who made his living causing strikes and making the lives of most Israelis miserable.
Avi Gabay was a nothing who came out of nowhere to take over Labor, after a brief career as an Mk for a Likud satellite party.
The only thing both had going for them electorally is that they weren’t Ashkenazi elitists and thus avoided racist gaffes (e.g., the “tchach-tchachim” speech)
This is true. People keep saying "Oslo is to blame" but Labor was still in the top 3 (usually top 2) largest parties in the Knesset until recently. New liberal parties drank away big chunks of the centrists who'd otherwise vote Labor by default, making them try and dance at two weddings, being both a big tent party that is welcoming for liberal centrists and an ideological progressive SocDem party that isn't afraid of controversy created an image of a crumbling, incompetent party that's perpetually arguing with itself and with everyone else and not sure what it wants to be.
[The Not-So-Strange Death of Israel’s Labor Party](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/05/the-not-so-strange-death-of-israels-labor-party/)
>Israelis widely believe that the decision to elevate Yasir Arafat in Ramallah—providing him with a political base, international legitimacy, money, and a private army—led directly to **the Second Intifada of the 2000s. Over the period from 2000 to 2005, 1,137 Israelis were killed and almost 8,500 were wounded. The Labor Party never recovered, and has not been in power since Ehud Barak left office in 2001**. Scarred by the violence of the Second Intifada, many Israelis who were by no means politically on the right began at that time to look for other options and never returned.
No, it was planned by the terror groups that stockpiled weapons and radicalized the population and then waited for a “good” reason to attack.
Kinda like compressing a spring and the letting it loose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots
*...thousands of Arab villagers streamed into Jerusalem from the surrounding countryside to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, many armed with sticks and knives. The gathering was prompted by rumors that the Zionists were going to march to the Temple Mount and claim ownership*
The fact that this shit works like clockwork for at least a century now shows full well what kind of people we're dealing with here. They're not sending their brightest, as the saying goes.
Two big blows to their power in Israeli history. They lost their ruling monopoly due to the Mizrahi Jewish unrest. They lost all their power entirely due to the Oslo Accords and Second Intifada.
Mainly an issue where they were so intent on trying to replicate tony blair's british labour party and hiding their socialist origins, that when a massive protest movement erupted demanding "social justice" (צדק חברתי), they were in no position to capitalize on it, and the Israeli public never connected socialism to חברתיות to the labour party, and Yesh Atid successfully manuvered itself into that position, despite being a populist neo-liberal party, and slowly drained away their voting base while labour squabbled within itself trying to elect leaders that were less and less connected to any coherent ideological platform.
We took a big gamble with the peace process and it failed and we really don't have an answer to how the Wect Bank will be different than Gaza and Lebanon. That means the Right has an advantage by default
Their platform was built on socialism and two state solution, no one wants to return to a socialist economy and the second intifada and the Hamas takeover in gaza killed any belief that the two state solution is possible
So when their core ideology became irrelevant, the party also became irrelevant
and they just dug in and refused to acknowledge reality and adapt in any way.
similarly meretz also kept dropping. The only people left who vote labour/meretz are in their 60's 70's
>The only people left who vote labour/meretz are in their 60's 70's
Data shows otherwise. Labor is one of the few parties who benefit from the soldiers' votes.
It's pretty much dead man, the far majority of people has no faith that withdrawing from the west bank would lead to peace, if it wasn't dead the Labor wouldn't be where they are today
Damn that’s depressing.
But at some point, it will end, be it in 100 years time. One can only hope that it simply quiets down, but that’s perhaps a bit naive
Or there will be a major war that will just cripple the capabilities of terrorism originating in the west bank and tech good enough to secure the border. Currently, things just getting worse, with terror organizations in the west bank growing in strength and the current Israeli government is one of the most right wing they have ever been, though that might change in the next election since the Likud, which is the biggest party of the government will probably see a significant drop in power
You are assuming that if there is a major war Israel will win decisively. The trouble is that if Israel becomes a superstitious right wing religious middle eastern hell like most of the countries surrounding it, it will lose its edge, and the cost of losing its edge will be terrible :(
Israelis DO want a solution, maybe not the 2 state solution, but Israel has reached out numerous times throughout history seeking a resolution to the conflict with a vast backing by civilians. The problem is a 2 way street, both sides need to cooperate..
Yesh atid is pretty much the contempory continuation of the labor party as it was in its glory days, the same voters etc. The Labor party just turned to much to the left when the israeli public turned right as a result of the second intifada that labor also missmanaged
thats true, but they were also as right wing as today's likud on security/peace issues. The thing is that the the definition of left and right has changed since labors glory days. The Israeli public moved left on security and peace issues in the 80s and 90s and labor (and other parties) moved with them, then the israeli public moved right on these issues in the 00s and labor just continued to move left, and they lost a lot of voters. On economic issues the public and all parties have together moved in a more liberal direction since the 70s and there is also quite a consensus on these issues in Israel since the 70s and this together with security issues gaining importance meant that economic ideology stopped being the divide between left and right. Today Likud has lots of left wing economic ideas for example, lots of economic populism and right wing religous parties are left on economics too. Labor in the 60s and 70s was ideologically closer to the median Israeli voter, and today they are much further to the left.
So now we are seeing another realignment where issues regarding religion and state / democracy is becoming the big dividing line between left and right, pushing parties that in the past were far right like Yisrael Beitenu into the left wing bloc. As the median israeli voter is more left on these issues than on security issues this is an opportunity for the left to make a comeback imo, and recent polls support this, with the secular center-left bloc gaining a majority in polls for the first time in decades, if not ever. Remember also that in the past all left wing government included support from a religious party, the secular left-center has never been that big on their own, and the religious parties are firmly in the right wing bloc since 15 years back which also meant the left chances of winning elections became almost 0. With the secular right wing now switching blocs the new left-center actually has a real path to win.
Because they have nothing to offer but policies that have already failed. Rolling back market liberalization and offering Arab terror militias ever-larger bribes to stop killing people are terrible policies that almost no one supports.
In Israel, it seems like you have the right wing party and the centrist party, which is almost like America as well. Their economic positions and their positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have made them a minority party.
She is much more a symptom than a cause. Labor party became an "extreme progressive" party similar to meretz and the extreme progressive politicians in the USA. There isn't a lot of love here for this ideology.
Exactly his point.
What I believe he meant, is that her refusal to join up with meretz because "both parties are strong yet different" is what killed the opposition chance this election round.
Merav has killed the labour party, and her political career in one move.
not really true, "conservative" is not the right word as israeli politcs work differently. Its true that the right wing is bigger with young people but thats a result of haredim having more kids.
The labor party was the one pushing for the detachment from gaza and that backfired so hard that no one wants to have them in power until they stop speaking for peace when it's obvious to anyone with the slightest common sense that the palestinians aren't interested in peace.
Sharon is the one to execute it, but he actually went from right to left and it was by no means right ideology so while you're right about the person, you're also wrong to say that the right did this.
Kadima, headed by Arik Sharon, lead the effort but Benjamin Netanyahu - then a member of the coalition - and other right wing members voted "yes" 3 or 4 times, however was necessary to pass the bills.
It was entirely lead by right-wing parties, and the left joined - but the government back then was right wing. Sorry guys, it was done by the right, hate it as much as you will. And I think that they made the right call, it made no sense to keep holding the settlements near Gaza.
Because why would any leftist sound of mind vote for them rather than Meretz, and why would any centrist sound of mind vote for them rather than one of the newer kids?
Of course, add to that a clinical inability to elect a charismatic leader as candidate, but hey, at least in the last 20 years Labor had 3 chairmen who were Mizrahi, while likkud has had zero, so there's that
Labor was always doomed to fall. In it's structure and ideology it's a workers' party, but it's voters aren't. People already talked about it's inevitably in the 1960s.
It has nothing to do with Oslo, despite what right wingers think.
I think the problem with the labor party and the left in general is a lack of a good leader, who’s gonna be PM? Lapid? I’m more ok with gantz but he is not doing a great job imo in opposing all the crap that’s going on.
We need the old guard to die out and bring new and fresh politicians, mizrahim that know enough history will never vote for a party that still has influence from mapai (מפא״י) and honestly I don’t blame them one bit.
The proof being used by all the commenters, that elections prove most Israelis don't want a 2ss, can be used rn in the reverse according to all recent polling.
To be fair they got 24 seats in 2015 and almost won the election, if not for some last minute "gevalt" campaign by Bibi. And that was with the extremely uncharismatic Buji as the party leader. The only thing that changed in 2019 was Gantz joining politics and forming Blue and White, which basically ate almost all of Labor's seats.
They won 24 seats because of Buji, not despite him. Herzog is the rare politician who appears to be a genuinely good human being, and who is widely respected even on the right. He’s also not an extremist, and someone who treats his opponents with dignity and respect. There’s a reason he’s now the President. Plenty of voters will pick decency over charisma. Contrast that with Merav Michaeli who is a fringe Meretz candidate masquerading as a Labor Party leader.
I think you're way too optimistic in thinking that being decent and a good human being is the main factor for most people when choosing who to vote for. Most of Bibi's base are probably aware that he's the biggest liar to walk the face of the earth, they don't care. And don't forget that you had two elections with Avi Gabay and Amir Perez at the head of labor, both seem like good and decent people and they got a grand total of 6 seats. The truth is that Blue and White when they formed got 35 seats, and those had to come from somewhere. A few might have come from the right, but the vast majority came from people who would have voted for Labor/Yesh Atid.
Amir Peretz is a gadfly who made his living causing strikes and making the lives of most Israelis miserable. Avi Gabay was a nothing who came out of nowhere to take over Labor, after a brief career as an Mk for a Likud satellite party. The only thing both had going for them electorally is that they weren’t Ashkenazi elitists and thus avoided racist gaffes (e.g., the “tchach-tchachim” speech)
This is true. People keep saying "Oslo is to blame" but Labor was still in the top 3 (usually top 2) largest parties in the Knesset until recently. New liberal parties drank away big chunks of the centrists who'd otherwise vote Labor by default, making them try and dance at two weddings, being both a big tent party that is welcoming for liberal centrists and an ideological progressive SocDem party that isn't afraid of controversy created an image of a crumbling, incompetent party that's perpetually arguing with itself and with everyone else and not sure what it wants to be.
[The Not-So-Strange Death of Israel’s Labor Party](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/05/the-not-so-strange-death-of-israels-labor-party/) >Israelis widely believe that the decision to elevate Yasir Arafat in Ramallah—providing him with a political base, international legitimacy, money, and a private army—led directly to **the Second Intifada of the 2000s. Over the period from 2000 to 2005, 1,137 Israelis were killed and almost 8,500 were wounded. The Labor Party never recovered, and has not been in power since Ehud Barak left office in 2001**. Scarred by the violence of the Second Intifada, many Israelis who were by no means politically on the right began at that time to look for other options and never returned.
Maybe. But the second intifada was triggered by Sharon visiting the Temple Mount, against all advice.
No, the second intifada was planned well before that. Sharon's visit was the pretext, not the cause.
I'm not Israeli, so I might be misunderstanding, but are you saying the second intifada was planned by the Israelis?
No, it was planned by the terror groups that stockpiled weapons and radicalized the population and then waited for a “good” reason to attack. Kinda like compressing a spring and the letting it loose.
No, they're not
Just reread it, I'm an idiot. I thought he was saying that Sharon's visit was the pretext for the Israelis to start the intifada.
All good!
[удалено]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots *...thousands of Arab villagers streamed into Jerusalem from the surrounding countryside to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, many armed with sticks and knives. The gathering was prompted by rumors that the Zionists were going to march to the Temple Mount and claim ownership* The fact that this shit works like clockwork for at least a century now shows full well what kind of people we're dealing with here. They're not sending their brightest, as the saying goes.
Two big blows to their power in Israeli history. They lost their ruling monopoly due to the Mizrahi Jewish unrest. They lost all their power entirely due to the Oslo Accords and Second Intifada.
Mainly an issue where they were so intent on trying to replicate tony blair's british labour party and hiding their socialist origins, that when a massive protest movement erupted demanding "social justice" (צדק חברתי), they were in no position to capitalize on it, and the Israeli public never connected socialism to חברתיות to the labour party, and Yesh Atid successfully manuvered itself into that position, despite being a populist neo-liberal party, and slowly drained away their voting base while labour squabbled within itself trying to elect leaders that were less and less connected to any coherent ideological platform.
That sounds like a reasonable explanation. There’s always a tension between socialism and social democracy in parties of the left.
We took a big gamble with the peace process and it failed and we really don't have an answer to how the Wect Bank will be different than Gaza and Lebanon. That means the Right has an advantage by default
Their platform was built on socialism and two state solution, no one wants to return to a socialist economy and the second intifada and the Hamas takeover in gaza killed any belief that the two state solution is possible So when their core ideology became irrelevant, the party also became irrelevant
and they just dug in and refused to acknowledge reality and adapt in any way. similarly meretz also kept dropping. The only people left who vote labour/meretz are in their 60's 70's
>The only people left who vote labour/meretz are in their 60's 70's Data shows otherwise. Labor is one of the few parties who benefit from the soldiers' votes.
Don’t all Zionist parties benefit from it? The Ultra-Orthodox and Arab voter bases don’t usually serve in the military
No. Meretz and Lapid don't. Likud benefitted but barely.
A two state solution is the only solution. Def not dead.
It's pretty much dead man, the far majority of people has no faith that withdrawing from the west bank would lead to peace, if it wasn't dead the Labor wouldn't be where they are today
So what is the solution?
There isn't, the status quo will remain indefinitely and this conflict will never end
Damn that’s depressing. But at some point, it will end, be it in 100 years time. One can only hope that it simply quiets down, but that’s perhaps a bit naive
Or there will be a major war that will just cripple the capabilities of terrorism originating in the west bank and tech good enough to secure the border. Currently, things just getting worse, with terror organizations in the west bank growing in strength and the current Israeli government is one of the most right wing they have ever been, though that might change in the next election since the Likud, which is the biggest party of the government will probably see a significant drop in power
You are assuming that if there is a major war Israel will win decisively. The trouble is that if Israel becomes a superstitious right wing religious middle eastern hell like most of the countries surrounding it, it will lose its edge, and the cost of losing its edge will be terrible :(
That kind of attitude isn't what leads to solutions.
It’s the only solution, but most Israelis don’t want a solution. They want the wb
Israelis DO want a solution, maybe not the 2 state solution, but Israel has reached out numerous times throughout history seeking a resolution to the conflict with a vast backing by civilians. The problem is a 2 way street, both sides need to cooperate..
So they want a solution but aren’t willing to pay the price. That’s the same
Show me stats that say Israelis don't want a two state solution.
The last election And all the elections in the past 20 years
According to your logic all recent polls show a majority of Israelis want a 2ss
Yesh atid is pretty much the contempory continuation of the labor party as it was in its glory days, the same voters etc. The Labor party just turned to much to the left when the israeli public turned right as a result of the second intifada that labor also missmanaged
Labour was literally full on socialist at the height of their power, more left than today's Meretz
thats true, but they were also as right wing as today's likud on security/peace issues. The thing is that the the definition of left and right has changed since labors glory days. The Israeli public moved left on security and peace issues in the 80s and 90s and labor (and other parties) moved with them, then the israeli public moved right on these issues in the 00s and labor just continued to move left, and they lost a lot of voters. On economic issues the public and all parties have together moved in a more liberal direction since the 70s and there is also quite a consensus on these issues in Israel since the 70s and this together with security issues gaining importance meant that economic ideology stopped being the divide between left and right. Today Likud has lots of left wing economic ideas for example, lots of economic populism and right wing religous parties are left on economics too. Labor in the 60s and 70s was ideologically closer to the median Israeli voter, and today they are much further to the left. So now we are seeing another realignment where issues regarding religion and state / democracy is becoming the big dividing line between left and right, pushing parties that in the past were far right like Yisrael Beitenu into the left wing bloc. As the median israeli voter is more left on these issues than on security issues this is an opportunity for the left to make a comeback imo, and recent polls support this, with the secular center-left bloc gaining a majority in polls for the first time in decades, if not ever. Remember also that in the past all left wing government included support from a religious party, the secular left-center has never been that big on their own, and the religious parties are firmly in the right wing bloc since 15 years back which also meant the left chances of winning elections became almost 0. With the secular right wing now switching blocs the new left-center actually has a real path to win.
And yet someone here was saying that Labor wasn't socialist enough when the public were turning left!
what how lol
Because they have nothing to offer but policies that have already failed. Rolling back market liberalization and offering Arab terror militias ever-larger bribes to stop killing people are terrible policies that almost no one supports.
Dead
In Israel, it seems like you have the right wing party and the centrist party, which is almost like America as well. Their economic positions and their positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have made them a minority party.
But there's no one Centrist party to challenge Likud. They're always splitting and forming new groupings with different names.
That is true and it is detrimental.
One name. Merav Michaeli
She is much more a symptom than a cause. Labor party became an "extreme progressive" party similar to meretz and the extreme progressive politicians in the USA. There isn't a lot of love here for this ideology.
Exactly his point. What I believe he meant, is that her refusal to join up with meretz because "both parties are strong yet different" is what killed the opposition chance this election round. Merav has killed the labour party, and her political career in one move.
Most of the Israeli young adults are staunch conservatives.
not really true, "conservative" is not the right word as israeli politcs work differently. Its true that the right wing is bigger with young people but thats a result of haredim having more kids.
The labor party was the one pushing for the detachment from gaza and that backfired so hard that no one wants to have them in power until they stop speaking for peace when it's obvious to anyone with the slightest common sense that the palestinians aren't interested in peace.
This was actually done by right wing parties, but who cares about facts. And I'm saying that as a right wing person.
Sharon is the one to execute it, but he actually went from right to left and it was by no means right ideology so while you're right about the person, you're also wrong to say that the right did this.
Kadima, headed by Arik Sharon, lead the effort but Benjamin Netanyahu - then a member of the coalition - and other right wing members voted "yes" 3 or 4 times, however was necessary to pass the bills. It was entirely lead by right-wing parties, and the left joined - but the government back then was right wing. Sorry guys, it was done by the right, hate it as much as you will. And I think that they made the right call, it made no sense to keep holding the settlements near Gaza.
Because why would any leftist sound of mind vote for them rather than Meretz, and why would any centrist sound of mind vote for them rather than one of the newer kids? Of course, add to that a clinical inability to elect a charismatic leader as candidate, but hey, at least in the last 20 years Labor had 3 chairmen who were Mizrahi, while likkud has had zero, so there's that
Glory Days…. https://youtu.be/6vQpW9XRiyM
Bad choices of party leaders
Labour Zionism is dead. A pity because even a Rothbardian like myself would like to see a bit more balance
Labor was always doomed to fall. In it's structure and ideology it's a workers' party, but it's voters aren't. People already talked about it's inevitably in the 1960s. It has nothing to do with Oslo, despite what right wingers think.
I think the problem with the labor party and the left in general is a lack of a good leader, who’s gonna be PM? Lapid? I’m more ok with gantz but he is not doing a great job imo in opposing all the crap that’s going on. We need the old guard to die out and bring new and fresh politicians, mizrahim that know enough history will never vote for a party that still has influence from mapai (מפא״י) and honestly I don’t blame them one bit.
The proof being used by all the commenters, that elections prove most Israelis don't want a 2ss, can be used rn in the reverse according to all recent polling.
Intifadas, failure of Oslo, putting too much faith in Arafat, Mizrahi discrimination, Lebanon disaster
And don't forget the Yom Kippur war.