osewalrus (osewalrus) wrote,

Yes Virginia, There Really Is An Israeli Left

I have been trying, on and  off for awhile now, to write a piece called "How The Liberal Disapora Killed The Israeli Left" it basically boils down to the refusal of the Liberal diaspora to recognize anything other than Shimon Peres as a legitimate left position in Israel.

As always, the universe is a much more complicated place, among both Palestinians and Israelis. Both Israel and Palestine are more highly fractured around the future of the peace process (for varying values of peace process), the future of Hamas, the future of the region, etc.

Briefly, on the Israeli side, the split is between left of center Tenuah (Livni) and Yesh Atid (Lapid) v. Habayit Yehudi (Bennet) and Yisroel Beiteinu (Leiberman). So far, Likud is leaning rightwward -- as is the Israeli public. (According to this article, recent polling shows that in an election Yesh Atid would lose about 7 seats and Livni's Tenuah would be in danger of dropping out of Knesset altogether).

On the PA side, the difference between Hamas and Fatah has become more pronounced, with Fatah insisting that reconciliation means that Hamas must yield operational control of Gaza and abide by Fatah's foreign policy. I'll add that arresting Fatah activists in Gaza during the war and apparently planning a coup against Fatah didn't help.

But on Israel/Palestine, the American left behaves with the same utter lack of nuance that it accuses conservatives of acting with in the rest of the Middle East. Basically, if it don't look like Oslo and the Israelu leadershipo isn't bravely forging ahead without regard to the actual facts on the ground, then its all hand-wring. (I will not worry about the folks who actively embrace Hamas as the true voice of Palestinian liberation, etc. If you think Israel are a bunch of colonialist genocidal oppressor scum to be driven out by force and exterminated if they won't go back to Germany (whether thay actually came from there or not), well, at least it is consistent.

So the conversation of the Liberal Diaspora has not become "how to support the new Israeli left" or "how to build a new path forward in a dynamically changing Middle East." Rather, it is all sorts of self-pitying boo-hoo pieces about "whatever happened to the Israeli left and wahtever shall we do?" Then the Liberal diaspora has tromped off to go eat a gallong of metaphorical fudge ripple and feel sad that they can never seem to find anyone like Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak.

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