[lbo-talk] Mitzna quits as head of Labour -- Analysis: Why Labor rejected Mitzna

[Bryan Atinsky]

Analysis: Why Labor rejected Mitzna

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.