By Daniel Ben-Simon in Ha'aretz
May 5, 2003
from the moment the chose him, they suspected him and were disgusted by him.
It is not clear what caused Labor Party members to so estrange themselves from their new leader, but from the outset they related to him as to a bone stuck in their throats.
Was it his slow, eccentric style of walking? Was it the beard that made him look like a nature society field guide? Was it his didactic style of speaking? Or perhaps it was the deep seriousness in which he would wrap himself up even when dealing with the most sideline details?
Whether this or that, the Labor Party, or more accurately its Bolshevik and wheeler-dealer mechanisms, rejected the man who parachuted in from Haifa. The new leader's ejection of Fuad Ben-Eliezer was seen in the eyes of the same mechanics as a shootout at high noon, not as a fair and democratic exercise.
So it was too with the new leader's attempts to inject ideology into the whitewash-bearing veins of the party.
Amram Mitzna spoke of a return to roots, yet party members addicted to power fantasized only about their return to ministerial seats. After the selection of the Knesset list, Mitzna invited everyone on the list to intimate discussions of up to one hour. During these conversations, the new party head would unscroll his vision of the future.
One party member said he felt he was undergoing psychiatric treatment in Mitzna's clinic. "In all, two things interested me," he grumbled. "How he intended to win the elections and what would be my position in the campaign headquarters. Instead, he talked my head off about the territories and the settlements and social divisions. I started looking at my watch until the guy got the hint. And the conversation ended."
Shimon Peres is considered the master of corridor pats, patter and gossip. There is not a person Peres wouldn't stop to shake his hand and ask after his welfare. Ben-Eliezer too was well-equipped with this trait, but with Mitzna, it was a trait especially well hidden during those days in the party campaign headquarters in the Hatikva neighborhood.
He frequently traversed the entire length of the hallway there and back without even one apparatchik turning to him. It was a sad scene - especially in the sweaty halls of Israeli politics where social intelligence is thought of as a politician's most valuable asset.
Who cared about his intelligence? Who cared if he had a vision? And so what if he was honest? These three characteristics made up Mitzna's political stock. To his amazement, he discovered they attracted no demand on todays's political market.
On his trips through the outback he was greatly disappointed by the permanence of tribal politics, lacking logic, with no connection between action and outcome. "Even if the Likud screws me, I will never vote for that lot," railed a Sderot resident whose business had collapsed under Likud rule. That drove Mitzna crazy.
"Who will you vote for in the elections?" he asked. "Of course for the Likud," the wounded replied. His argument vanished on the wind along with his desperate failed attempts to bring life back to the party. "This is difficult for me to understand that they agree with my perspectives yet vote for the Likud."
When he came together with party members, they suggested he be less straightforward and less fair and less truthful and less idealist. "He doesn't fit the party," one said. A colleague corrected him and expressed doubt that Mitzna is fit for political life at all. "He's too naive," he said with conviction.