Speak to residents of the upscale neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, or browse any of Israel’s left-leaning newspapers and websites, and you’ll get a sense of what the journalist, broadcaster, and actor Yaron London calls the “sorrow of the left”—a sense of political despair combined with a fear that the Israel they love is slipping away. After discussing the subject with London, Peter Berkowitz comments:
London rejected the notion, [widespread among left-wing Israeli pundits], that freedom and democracy are under assault in Israel. While he is acutely worried about the growing gap between rich and poor, London insisted that freedom of expression here has never been more robust.
[But London pointed out that] demographic trends are working against the left. . . . [In addition], the violence and fanaticism in the Middle East have grown so terrible that the national-security platform of the center-left has become increasingly indistinguishable from that of the right.
[What’s more], the left has been unable to produce “a leader who can compete with Benjamin Netanyahu’s mix of intelligence, charisma, and skill in controlling public opinion.” . . .
In these gloomy circumstances, London observes, the question is not why the left is depressed but rather why the right is not. His answer goes to the heart of the matter.
Unlike America, where social and economic issues divide left and right, Israeli politics revolve around conflicting opinions about “the relation to Arabs, the borders of the country, and Israel’s character as ‘a Jewish and democratic state.’” . . . [C]ontrasting understandings of the Jewish people and Israel, he thinks, explain divergent responses by the left and right to their shared existential anxiety for Israel’s survival. . . .
In his assessment of the right, London may underestimate the extent to which liberal and democratic norms have spread, including among the extremely religious, just as in his account of the left he may neglect the rise of intolerance.
Read more on RealClearPolitics: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/03/24/israels_sorrow_of_the_left.html