With Israel’s general elections taking place in November, Zehava Galon has announced her candidacy for the leadership of the far-left Meretz party, a position she had held for five years before withdrawing from politics in 2018. The party that she is returning to, explains Ben-Dror Yemini, now faces a difficult choice: will it revert to being the party of the Zionist left, committed to Israel as a Jewish state while advocating territorial concessions, or will it be the party of those proclaiming Israel an “apartheid regime”? Yemini writes:
The Meretz of today differs from the one that . . . was part of the government that signed the Oslo Accords. . . . Yossi Sarid headed Meretz at that time, and did so until 2006. When he left, the party underwent a major ideological change, along with the entire political left in Israel: from fighting for peace to putting up signs that accuse Israel of being an apartheid state.
Whoever backs putting Israelis on trial in the International Court of Justice, whoever goes to college campuses abroad and presents Israel as an illegitimate state isn’t fighting for peace. Whoever is doing that is fighting against Israel and its right to exist.
Galon . . . is unlikely to stop the party’s plunge into the far-left abyss. [Her competitor, Yair] Golan, however, leans more center-left. . . . At the same time, Golan has in the past made statements that make even Galon seem tame.
Meretz is the Israeli left, and the Israeli left is Meretz. . . . There are also those on the left who vote for the Labor party, which appears hellbent on becoming just as out-of-touch as Meretz. . . . Israel needs a Zionist left-wing. Meretz insists on being something else.
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