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has been for almost three decades under Ben Gurion, Eshkol, and
Golda Meir. Now a very strong populist right wing will face such a
Labor-dominated government, and Labor has not yet found an ade–
quate answer on how to address itself to the new electorate and the
new political agenda. Since their defeat in 1977, Labor's leaders have
been too preoccupied with their return to power, and have con–
sequently neglected the onerous task of rebuilding the party and
revamping the whole Labor establishment. The Histadruth, the kib–
butzim, the moshavim - all these flowers of Labor Zionism - have,
over the years, become top heavy with conservative and unimagi–
native bureaucracies; Peres and Rabin have come to leadership
positions through bureaucratic in-fightings, not through public
confrontations with popular tribunes like Begin.
Obviously, the present leadership does not have the qualities,
and the stomach, for such an excruciating fight; it reacts bureaucrat–
ically and diplomatically to each new surprise Begin is able to bring
up - the bombing of the Iraqi reactor, the Golan Law - without
imagination and vigor. By trying to sound
ministeriable,
it neglects to
deal with the changing infrastructures of Israeli society.
It took the French left wing twenty-three years
to
come back to
power in France after de Gaulle's coup in 1958.
It
will probably take
less time for the Israeli left wing to do so: but it will not be a return to
the idyllic unquestioned hegemony of the historical Labor establish–
ment. Something fundamental has changed in Israeli society, and
the Likud with its populist nationalism gives it - for better or for
worse - an authentic expression. A different Israel has emerged from
the Ingathering of the Exiles which took place in the context of a
Thirty Years War. None of the dreamers of Zionism has ever
thought that such would be the context of their dream's realization:
but this is the real Israel, with half itsJewish population being more
Third World than European, living in the real, and not always very
pleasant Middle East. It has not become a Sparta or a Prussia, but
obviously some of its Athenian or Weimarian qualities have been
attenuated .
It is to this changing nature of Israeli society that a new Israeli
left-wing movement will have to address itself. The historical Labor
movement does not seem at the moment able to carry this burden ,
and a New Left has not yet appeared. Depressing as it may sound,
Begin's Second Republic does not appear at the moment to be
seriously challenged.
