Something fell in the elitist list that Meretz has just chosen for the upcoming Knesset elections.
Although the red flag has long been at half-mast of the legal successor of the United Workers' Party (MPM, along with the other mothers, Meretz and Shinoi), there are no real social democrats in Meretz's new list, such as, for example, Naama Lazimi on the Labor list. In general, Ilan Gilon is remembered as a blessing. And, typical of the Israeli press, almost no one in it paid attention to this fundamental political fact. It is true that Meretz's socialism was also questionable before. But now it is indisputably a former fashionable niche party, mainly from Tel Aviv, torn apart From broad sections of Israeli society and progressive to the point of loss of identity and opinion.
Its direction is clear: an imminent end, union with work or sweaty survival, until an inevitable end.
What is the reason for her predicament?
For a long time, the socialist group, headed by Ilan Gilon and Secretary General Tomer Raznik, called on Meretz to turn to the left socially, to reshape the party's ideology and thus link it with the interests of the poor, with the popular classes, with new immigrants and even with the ultra-Orthodox - and not only with Arabs They realized that Meretz's seclusion in "elite" circles would condemn her to an inevitable decline. But they failed in their attempt to make their mark on Meretz. We saw the result in the last government: Nitzan Horowitz, the Minister of Health on behalf of Meretz, was mainly interested in the LGBT, as the spirit of the identity politics of a camp The social right in Meretz.
And more importantly: Meretz gave her hand, with almost no tweets of opposition, to the very right-wing socio-economic policies of Finance Minister Lieberman, such as anti-social taxation and wage restraint.
This happened not only because "Netanyahu first".
After the social right camp completely took over Meretz, there was no effective force left to focus it on boring social-democratic tasks, devoid of Tel Aviv chic.
The socialist group repeated and told all the Meretz people that their party would lose its world if it fortified itself in matters important to the Israeli high bourgeoisie and only in identity politics, Arab rights and political unity.
They warned that the center-left parties, and to a certain extent the center-right, would adopt some of these positions and abandon it.
They suggested that Meretz adopt a radical social-democratic platform.
Their opponents saw it as a loss of focus, an abandonment of the "struggle for peace" and for liberalism and a too Phoenician or nationalistic position. The result is before us.
It can be argued that the disappearance of Meretz is the result of the serious failure of the political strategy that was put together in 1992 between the parties that founded it, of the concept that an agreement with a "national movement" of the Arabs in Israel should be pursued.
This is not an idle argument.
But the Oslo failure alone cannot explain the brink of doom that threatens Meretz.
After all, it hurts the entire center-left in Israel, and yet does not existentially threaten Lapid and Gantz, for example, even though they also hold the concept underlying the Oslo Accords.
In the short or medium term, Meretz is about to step down from the stage not only because of the failure of Oslo, and maybe not even mainly because of it.
This happens mainly because Meretz was not able to reinvent herself after the failure.
The progressive platform is "stolen" by the center-left parties, while offering the voters broader and more flexible parties.
Meretz cannot vote for hopes of peace.
That is why she stands before the voters as an empty vessel.
If Meretz had adopted the proposal of her social left, she would have had a horizon of development today.
It was blocked, and there is reason to believe that this will also be the fate of its counterpart, the Labor Party led by Michaeli, a little later.
In order for a Zionist labor movement to be able to be resurrected, properly for all of us, these two frameworks need to clear the arena.
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