Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) Secretary General, Professor Michael Chlenov, on the schism in the Israeli Labor party.
 
Our favorite grandma was recently told about a new party that appeared in Israel, and which, despite its youth, is already in the Knesset and even has four ministers! And our grandma asked her usual question: “Is this good for the Jews or bad for the Jews?”

The situation described above came to be as a result of a schism in the oldest and formerly largest Israel party “Avoda.” This socialist party had different names over the course of its long history, including Poale Zion (“Workers of Zion”) and Mapai (“Worker's Party of Israel”), as well as a number of others, has to its credit the important achievement of creation of the Jewish state in 1948. Up until the middle of the 1970s, Avoda formed and headed Israeli governments. Nearly all important military campaigns, including the War of Independence (1948-1949), the Sinai Campaign (1956), the Six Day War (1967), and the least successful for Israel Yom Kippur War (1974), were under its leadership. Avoda includes such notable people as David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Moshe Dayan – the creators of the Jewish state who have brought it glory.

Avoda was a true descendant of those who kept faithful to the ideals of socialism, and a hundred of years ago they were the majority among European, and especially among Russian, Jews. The dream of creating a Jewish state was only a preamble to the idea of building an ideal society of equality and justice, which would become a beacon for all of the peoples of the world. They thought then: who could better and more consistently implement the high socialistic ideals into life than the Jewish people, who brought them into the world in the guise of the Torah and the dictums of the Prophets, and who have suffered thousands of years for them?

The womb of the socialistic movement was where the kibbutzim ripened. Adherents of socialism preached the return of Jews to the earth, to manual labor, to equality and an absence of exploitation. Many of the Mapai leaders came from kibbutzim, and returned to them in their time free from political and party work to do kitchen or cleanup duty.

But with the passing of the years, the socialistic ideals began to fade away, not without the influence of the fearsome example of the “mature socialism” that had been built in the USSR. The kibbutzim began to languor. In 1997, Avoda suddenly suffered its first, but, as it turned out, fatal defeat. The government was headed by Menachem Begin, leader of the right-wing conservative party Likud. Then Israeli society started to change. The socialistic ideals no longer held the Israeli's imaginations captive, and society in general turned more and more to the right.

The last two dozens of years saw a few Avoda Prime Ministers – Yitzhak Rabin, who was replaced for a short time by Shimon Peres, and, finally, the current Minister of Defense Yehud Barak. Barak offered Yasser Arafat unprecedented concessions in exchange for peace. The Palestinian leader did not accept them, and this became the reason of a crushing defeat both for Barak and his party.

At the latest elections in 2009, Avoda garnered only 13 positions in Knesset, having lost 7 positions in comparison with the previous elections, and losing out in number of deputies not only to Likud and the center-right Kadima, but even to the “Russian” party headed by Avigdor Lieberman, Yisrael Beitenu. Trying to save the situation, Barak led his party to the right-wing governmental coalition headed by Likud, and took up the post of Minister of Defense. But it was not easy to combine the uncombinable.

And several days ago Avoda finally broke completely apart. The leader of the party, Ehud Barak, being unable to hold Avoda in an ideologically hostile government, decided to leave it by forming a new parliament fraction named Atzmaut (“Independence”), and preserved his post of Minister of Defense. 4 ministers remained with him, and the rest left the coalition and the government. Thus, the coalition was preserved, despite the fact that the formerly large Avoda party has left it.

The remnants of Avoda are trying to save face, but the party has no true leader. Its oldest and most recognized decision maker, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, better known as Fuad, refused to lead the party. The head of the left wing, former mayor of Haifa and former leader of the party Avram Mitznah is also uncertain. Former union boss Amir Peretz, who unsucessfully lead the party and Ministry of Defense during the Second Lebanon War of 2006, does not seem to be seriously considered by anyone as a leader able to extract Avoda from its deep crisis.

So what do we tell our grandma in answer to her eternal question? One one hand, we are observing the final phases of the Israeli society saying its farewells to the dreams of a just and equal social structure, which would be an example to the entire world, dreams which did not come true. Modern Israel is a normal capitalistic country with all of the benefits and detriments of this model. It would seem, though, that there are more benefits than in a hypothetical socialistic order. A parting with impossible dreams is probably good for everyone, including Israelis.

On the other, Israel, as Russia, as most post-Soviet states, is living through a crisis of ideology and inner turmoil. The ideology of the new Atzmaut union seems to be based on just the wish to remain in power. The ideology of the breakaway Avoda seems to be based on merely an aversion to Likud, Yisrael Beitenu, Kadima, and other right-wing parties. The right-wing parties, except the radicals, don't really have a coherent ideology either. And an absence of a clear ideology in society often leads to a disruption of political and social stability, that same stability which actually brings prosperity and contentment to the civilians of a society. So this ideological turmoil is not too good for the Jews, especially when we have an ever-growing outer threat on our hands. So it is, our dear grandma!