Elections point to them a way to avoid saying anything concrete about the racist discrimination that deepening crisis of Zionism the Arabs under Israeli rule face in every aspect of their lives. Thus, they did not have to pay much of a price for participating in an action in which they had
The passing of a kind of innocence
By moving up the date of the elections, the Israeli parliament thought that it was opening up the way for a solution to the crisis that has gripped the Jewish state since the 1981 elections.
The viability of the Zionist society ment that emerged from the previous elections, has in fact depended to a considerable the thinnest of majorities, suffered numerous defections as the months extent on its maintaining a progressive, went on. Moreover, the contradictions among the various components of democratic image, and this is threatened the ruling majority rapidly created a situation of paralysis in the fields of by the rise of the activist right.
Although the Zionist authorities main-
The major governmental party itself, the Likud, faced the threat of a tain a massive military and repressive split, since the Liberal Party sought to regain some independence from the machine, it has a rather innocent ap-
Herut party of Shamir and Sharon. The economic disaster and the bog.
pearance to the American or European ging down of Israeli forces in Lebanon gave grounds for supposing that the visitor, quite unlike the ugly face of the party's electoral base was shrinking.
British military in the North of Ireland or of Likud's coalition partners had been looking constantly for a way of the low-lives of the Irish political police.
abandoning a ship whose helmsman seemed to have lost control.
In Israel the repressive machine is
On the Labor side, the hopes for regaining the majority and getting decent-looking people everywhere back its lost ministerial portfolios seemed within reach of fruition, to such rather casual military dress, an extent that the three Labor leaders - Peres, Navon and Rabin — decided to stop their factional warfare and present themselves to the
It is the sort of "people's defense people as a homogeneous collective leadership.
force" that could only be built on the basis of the conviction of an entire people that they were engaged, together, in a righteous undertaking
Even in the military courts, most of the judges, guards, prosecutors, etc. do counterparts, even in the most bourgeois democratic of countries.
although their historical role is very similar.
For example, in a military court in
Nablus, I watched the Israeli personnel as an Arab woman collapsed, hearing her husband sentenced to two years in prison for an alleged minor act of defiance. The occupation authorities had waited two years before even bringing the charge.
attitude was wide-eyed surprise, but without much emotion, neither the sort of hatred you see on the part of the British and Orange repressive forces in Northern Ireland, nor sympathy.
It did not seem that they were cruel, just that the fate of an Arab did not much concern them. It was only a bit of a shock, unpleasant, like seeing a dog run
This was a society that has been able to accept the imposition of the thoroughgoing and unofficial terror against a conquered people.
the Gaza Strip, for instance, I listened to an Arab women recall how the Israeli army executed all the men and boys over
14 years of age in her village in retaliation for a guerrilla bombing.)
a society that, despite all, retained a kind
The time for that is now crisis of Zionism means.
domestic and economic policy. Michel WARSCHAWSKY
The polls gave the Labor Party a lead of 17 or even 23 seats over the Likud, although toward the end of the campaign the gap between the two parties was therefore, to indicate that the Knesset that came out of these special elections would both put an end to the disastrous interlude marked by the Likud government and give the Labor Party maneuvering room that it had not enjoyed in many
With the defeat and the subsequent bogging down of Israeli forces in Lebanon, the 400 percent inflation rate, and the melting away of the country's hard-currency reserves, the Labor Party had no lack of issues on which it could have waged an aggressive campaign against the failures of the Likud government. did not do so. Never has the campaign rhetoric been so tame. The major opposition party held back from using the issues that most concern the people of Israel to mobilize the voters against the
Both those who directed the Labor Party campaign and those in the ranks who opposed their approach explain the moderate tone by two factors. One was a desire not to aggravate the divisions among the Jewish population, which the 1981 elections had split into two enemy camps that had not shrunk even from violence against each other. was a desire not to "scare" disillusioned Likud voters by a policy too diametrically opposed to that of the incumbent gov-
In fact, the coalition governbased from the outset on And, for several months, several
In fact, the real reason for the lack of deepgoing political debate between Likud and Labor was that the latter have no real alternative policy on the basic problems facing the country. As regards the Lebanon war, the Labor Party supported it as long as it seemed likely to achieve schemes for annexing the occupied territories, Peres and Rabin talk about a "compromise border settlement" with Jordan that even King Hussein rejected a long time ago. As for the grave economic "Labor solution" is an austerity policy that it would be suicidal to advocate openly in an election campaign.
Since the Labor Party feared more than anything else a mass mobilization againt the Likud's foreign or economic policies, it confined itself to playing to the prejudices of the voters and trying to outdo the Likud in nationalist and chauvinist rhetoric, replaying the old scenarios about the "heroic" age of Zionist colonization. Following such a course, the opposition had no chance to make a breakthrough among the Likud voters. In fact, it even lost a part of its traditional elec-
Contrary to all the polls, far from making a breakthrough and comfortable majority, the Labor bloc lost two seats, dropping to a total of 44. The Likud also lost seats, six in its case, but unlike its rival it could consider the fact that it managed to hold on to 41 as a relative victory. So, while one could say that there was erosion of Likud's support, it proved to be very limited, and Labor were not the gainers. In other
International Viewpoint 17 September 1984
words, the Zionist leadership crisis hit both the Likud and Labor, and this fact suggests that we can look forward to a worsening of the political instability that has characterized the Israeli political scene in recent years.
Let us look in more detail at the behavior of the various social strata in the recent elections. Without any doubt, the most important phenomenon is that the poor masses on which the Likud victories in 1977 and 1981 were based have remained loyal to the party of Shamir and David Levy. As an inhabitant of the poor section of Tel Aviv said, "Likud has restored our honor. It is true that the government has made big mistakes, but I will vote for it because I have no alternative. Labor? Never! They are our enemies. They despise us and want to to being second-class (Matzpen, No 147, August
Despite the eloquent silence of Menahem Begin, despite Israel's getting bogged down in Lebanon, and above all despite the economic crisis, the poor strata of oriental Jews continue to see the The Committee Against the War in Lebanon demonstrates (DR) Likud, or rather the Herut faction in this heterogeneous bloc, as their party, the party of the "Second Israel"
In this respect, these elections confirmed what the revolutionary Marxists have been saying for four years, against the general current of opinion in the other left formations, that is, that the Likud victory in 1977 was no accident, no tragic interlude, as some said, but the reflection of a deepgoing change in the poor masses. Labor had no chance to regain influence in the poor neighborhoods and the immigrant towns.
If there was a shift of votes away from Likud, or to a larger extent toward bourgeois groups independent of the two main formations, such as the slates presented by former Defense Minister Weizman and former Finance Minister Howovits, which together got four deputies. The source of this has to be looked for among the welloff layers that supported the Likud. That is, what seems to have happened is that a part of the supporters of the Liberal faction of the Likud were frightened by the political adventurism (i.e., the Lebanon war) as well as by the economic adventurism of the Herut leaders, and were nervous about the Oriental "mob" that they allied with in order to oust the Labor government. But the Labor Party lost as much on the left as it gained on
The votes lost by the two big formations went mainly to the extremes - on the one hand to the moderate and liberal parties standing to the left of the Labor bloc, and on the other to the activist formations on the extreme right of the
On the eve of the elections, to the left of the Labor Party there were only the four Communist deputies (elected almost entirely by the votes of the Palestinian population) and three liberal deputies advocating a moderate policy on the Palestinian question. After these last International Viewpoint 17 September 1984 elections, the left flank of Labor almost doubled. In addition to the four deputies of the Democratic Front led by the CP, there are now two deputies for the Progressive List for Peace, a Palestinian nationalist formation joined by the remnants of the Zionist and "a-Zionist" (1) far left, and six deputies for two liberal and moderate parties — Shinui, led by Professor Amnon Rubinstein; and the Movement for Civic Rights, led by Shulamit Aloni. To this must be added the more than 15,000 votes cast for the slate of former left Labor leader Luva Eliav, which fell short of the quota needed to elect a deputy to the Knesset.
Leaving aside the Arab vote, which is motivated very differently than that of the Jewish population, we can say that a significant section of the old Labor voters have lost confidence in the ability of the Peres-Rabin leadership to pursue a policy alternative to that of the Likud, and that a current has emerged that hopes to push the Labor policy to the left by building an independent force with firmer positions, at least as regards the defense of democratic rights and the fight against "excesses" in the occupation policy. This, no doubt, is one of the effects of the growth in recent years of a mass movement against the war and the
The more dynamic section of Peace Now and the more moderate elements in the reserve soldiers' movement Yesh Gvul voted for Shulamit Aloni's party, which had Reserve Colonel Baron, a prominent leader of Peace Now, second on its slate; of a current to the left of the Labor bloc was matched by the emergence of one of opposite sort to the right of the impelled a part of the Labor voters to shift to the left of the party, a section of the rightist voters wanted an independent position, while insisting that they considered themselves an integral part of the "National Camp" led by the Likud. "Voting for the Likud means voting both for good patriots and for the opportunists of the Liberal Party," was what the Thiya-Isomet party led by Professor Neman and former chief of staff Eitan argued "Voting for us means voting 100% for Erets Israel [the land five deputies for the ThiyaTsomet, two for the far right religious party Matsad, and one for the fascist grouplet of Meir Kahane, the activist wing of the Zionist right made a breakthrough. These results are all the more significant because among the youth (e.g., the army vote), the rightists got on the average double the score that they among the electorate as
The sort of issues around which the most determined section of the rightist voters are closing ranks are support for intensive colonization of the occupied territories, toughness against the Palestinian population, and an offensive policy against the Arab countries. the public support of these extreme rightist parties for various Jewish-settler terrorist networks leaves no doubt about how seriously their declarations have to
In this respect, while the election of the fascist Kahane, who campaigned around openly racist slogans calling for the expulsion of the Palestinians from
"a-Zionist" is the term adopted by those want to either oppose or support