Will Atzmaut kill Kadima?
David Hazony is onto something. Why has Kadima survived? The answer should give pause to those who think Ehud Barak is on his last legs as an Israeli politician. For despite being essentially a Likud spin-off, Kadima has survived on the strength of a fairly large base of voters who traditionally saw themselves on the left — not the peace-process left of Yossi Beilin and Yossi Sarid, but rather the enlightened, heavily Ashkenazic, traditionally social-leaning yet nationalist left of David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin. These are the voters who turned to Kadima in droves after the intifada made security more pressing, and more plausible, than peace — people who could never vote Likud for cultural reasons, even if they embraced most of its principles.By the way, 'cultural reasons' is a nice way of saying racist. Likud was traditionally a party that was mostly Sephardim (Jews from Arab countries and the Orient). Although its leadership has largely gone Ashkenazi (Jews from Western countries), the base is still largely Sephardi.
Nobody stands to lose more votes to Barak’s new party than Kadima. For if disaffected Laborites turned to Kadima as the closest expression of their political will, they may find a far more congenial home in the new party. As former IDF chief of staff and current defense minister, Barak suddenly embodies the pro-security, classic-Labor stance that neither the more dovish, pro-business, still-in-Labor types nor Kadima’s leader, Tzipi Livni, can hope to offer. To emphasize this, he’s taken with him a top former IDF general, Matan Vilnai. And he’s declared that his party “will follow David Ben-Gurion’s legacy.”
Much of how this turns out depends on the kind of people Barak can pull together around himself before the next election. If former-Labor people in Kadima start defecting to his new party, Israeli politics may see a major shift on the center-left. Barak’s personality has historically made it hard to keep the loyalty of those around him. But the field is open for him. Stay tuned.
But I suspect Hazony is right. Atzmaut (Barak's new party) will siphon a lot of votes (and maybe more) off Kadima. If you're Netanyahu, you've got to love this.
Labels: Atzmaut party, Ehud Barak, Kadima, Tzipi Livni
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:38 PM
2 Comments:
But Likud's comparative attraction to Sephardim was challenged by the rise and consolidation of Shas in the 80's forward. Wonder how votes are divided now.
Carl - a Channel 10 poll showed that Atzmaut would take three seats. Still, the potential is there for a moderate left-wing party that is Zionist and defends Israel. Labor used to be but is no longer that party and that's why its deservedly headed for extinction. Avrum Burg's argument Israelis will vote for a Hard Left, post-Zionist party is delusional. Israelis will never vote in large numbers for such a party and it already exists: Meretz. If the Hard Left in Israel doesn't want to move to the center, its doomed to be nothing more than a fringe movement in Israeli politics. Barak is no dummy and understood this fact of life very well when he bolted the dying Labor Party to set up a new one.
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