Israeli Left’s Ideals Take a Beating Amid Violence

For years, they were the political conscience of the peace process. They gave backing to successive governments in the efforts to end conflict with Israel’s Arab neighbors. They gave voice to the cause of democracy in their nation.

Today, Israeli leftists are in crisis, their foundations shattered by two weeks of bloodletting that have brought into full focus the hatred of many Palestinians for Jews.

Leftists here feel robbed of their world view, of the notion that sacrificing in the name of peace was the greater good. On the defensive, angry and anguished, many are starting to sound like the right-wingers who forever challenged their basic assumptions.

That may well be one of the most serious repercussions from the Palestinian uprising that has claimed about 90 lives, almost all Palestinian; wrecked peace talks; and stunned complacent citizens here by spreading into Arab communities in Israel proper.

Israeli public opinion will probably be forced further to the right, at least in the short term, toward a more hardened view of peace and possibly away from the liberal progress being made in the fields of civil and human rights. The constituency that would have supported a peace deal acceptable to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat is today far weaker than the one that would oppose it.

Many on the right are engaged in an “I-told-you-so” finger-wagging directed at those who advocated trusting the Palestinian leadership and negotiating in good faith with Arafat--only to see gunmen loyal to him firing at Israelis.

The profound sense of humiliation and betrayal, from the Israeli perspective, is evident in the face of Shlomo Ben-Ami, a respected scholar, longtime dove and now acting foreign minister.

“There is a deep crisis of conscience for the left in this country, for those of us who were brought up believing that peace was possible, that we should pay the price and that Arafat was our partner,” Ben-Ami said angrily. “The most severe damage caused by recent events has been to the solidarity, commitment and belief of the Israeli left in the peace process.”

Naomi Chazan has been a leader of the Meretz Party for years. On Wednesday, she headed a tiny delegation of leftists paying a visit to the top Palestinian representative in Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini. They were given a decidedly chilly reception. As far as the Palestinians were concerned, these Israelis were no better than Prime Minister Ehud Barak, no better than Israel’s political center and right.

“It’s not easy being a leftist these days,” Chazan said later.

But crisis is not new for the Israeli left. Through the ups and downs of peacemaking, movement organizers frequently have had a difficult time filling public squares for demonstrations. It has taken tragedies such as the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin or the invasion and long occupation of Lebanon to bring out the crowds.

Periods of extremist Palestinian violence are especially problematic for the left. After terrorist bombings killed dozens of Jews in 1996, the movement was devastated, and right-wing politician Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister in an upset over Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres.

“It’s one thing to be thought of as a liberal and even a traitor; it’s an entirely different matter to be considered a fool whom reality has given a slap in the face,” Lili Galili, a leftist and veteran journalist, wrote this week.

The predominant feeling that the left is grappling with, she said, is that a long-justified Palestinian hatred has now swelled into an existential threat that might be expressed as: “It’s not that they don’t want us here as an occupier, they don’t want us here at all.”

The violence has brought out prejudice even among some of the most politically correct. Some young Israeli leftists now say they can’t resist the urge to scream, if just once: “Death to Arabs!”

When Peace Now, Israel’s principal antiwar organization, published an ad last week voicing sympathy with the victims of the violence and echoing the Palestinian call for an international investigation, members reacted with rage.

Avraham Diskin, a political scientist at Hebrew University, predicts that the political pendulum will swing to the right, if only temporarily. He is seeing it already.

“Until two weeks ago, I was considered by my colleagues at the university as an extreme right-winger,” Diskin said, alluding to his long-standing distrust of Arabs. “Today, maybe I’m considered an extreme leftist because I am still for the establishment of a Palestinian state with Arafat.”

From the moment the clashes erupted Sept. 28, and especially when the violence spread from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Arab communities inside Israel, the most influential pundits in left and center-left circles expressed bewilderment and outrage. Many advocated a crackdown with force beyond what Barak had already ordered.

“There is not much meaning to an aspiration toward a comprehensive [peace] agreement when beneath the thin membrane of an agreement lies such heated, infectious hatred,” a disillusioned Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s preeminent columnists, wrote last week. “There is probably no choice but to dream a little less.”

Confused and dispirited, many on the left are speaking of a peace only in the most pragmatic terms, not with a sense of morality or loftier goals. They appear divided, swept up in malaise and soul-searching.

Arie Azene is a successful painter and Jerusalem resident who votes for Meretz. He’s having a hard time reconciling his beliefs with what’s happening around him. The media coverage is unfair and pro-Palestinian, he believes; Ariel Sharon, the right-wing politician whose tour of a disputed holy site in East Jerusalem triggered the violence, was perfectly justified in making the visit, he says.

“I’m trying really to be objective and see the other side,” Azene, 66, said. “It’s impossible.”

What really bothered him was the “deep hatred” that emerged among Arabs, deeper than he had ever imagined. “That was the disillusioning thing,” he said.

Three weeks ago, attorney Dan Yakir was a happy man. He had won a landmark lawsuit before the Supreme Court this year that will allow an Israeli Arab to move into a Jewish town, and he was deep in negotiations to make it happen. Today, he wonders if a wider backlash against Arabs will stop progress that he believes was being made.

“I am much less optimistic,” he said.

A case he has pending before the high court involves another Israeli Arab, a journalist who advocated throwing rocks during the 1987-93 intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli military occupation. Yakir is afraid that judges may be influenced by the current climate.

“Trust that has been built over the years has been shattered,” he said, “and it will be much harder to reconstruct.”

Tsali Reshef, a founding member of Peace Now, and a handful of hard-core peace activists remain convinced that their constituencies will return. The shift to the right will be transitory, and in a few years there may even be a new peace agreement.

An opinion survey released Wednesday showed a significant drop in Jewish Israelis’ support for the peace process and specifically the landmark Oslo accords that set it in motion in 1993. Tamar Hermann, director of the Peace Index, a monthly opinion poll conducted by Tel Aviv University, found deep pessimism. Riots, blocked roads and stone-throwing all revive memories in older Israeli Jews of pre-independence struggles and make them afraid, she said. Younger Jews feel trapped and threatened.

Hermann ultimately sounds a positive note. She sees an evolution in the thinking of the left. After despair and reevaluation, many leftists and peace activists will find ways to revert to and perhaps strengthen their former attitudes, she said.

“It’s not a long-standing crisis of identity for the left,” she said. “They are starting to come back to their senses.”

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* CALL FOR A COALITION

Diplomatic efforts continued as Barak asked rivals to help him form a new government. A12