Michael Warshawski (Mikado) is a founding member of the Alternative Information Center (AIC)
------------------- A new leader for the Labor party – a new hope?
by Michael Warshawski
The defeat of Shimon Peres in the recent elections for the leadership of the Labor Party came as no surprise to anyone familiar with the history of Peres. The 82-year-old politician has never won any election, either nationally or at the party level—rumors even suggest that he lost elections for student government during his time in elementary school, some seventy years ago.
Even when polls have given him a substantial lead over his political opponents, at the last moment voters remembered who Shimon Peres is—his manipulations, his chronic lies, his lack of principles—and voted against him in the end.
No thanks to Shimon Peres, this time the instinct for life among the Labor Party members was stronger than nomenklatura manoeuvres and tricks, and Amir Peretz was elected, though by a small majority, as the new leader of the Labor Party and as candidate for prime minister in the next elections.
This is good news, if only for one reason: the possibility of a new political opposition to the Sharon-Netanyahu-Peres consensus, based, on the one hand, on a permanent preventive brutal war against the Palestinian people, and, on the other hand, cruel neoliberal economic and social policies.
In Amir Peretz’ victory speech to party members, he committed himself to a radical turn, to end the war on the Israeli working people who have been suffering the worst attack ever on their standard of living, and to immediately renew negotiations with the Palestinian leadership, ending five years of unilateralism. As well, Peretz announced that he will immediately demand the withdraw of Labor ministers from the Sharon government and bring about new national elections.
These are not surprising words coming from Amir Peretz: he has always objected to Labor participation, rejected the anti-negotiation line of Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, refused to participate in the “no partners” campaign and the war against the Palestinians. Moreover, as the head of the Israeli Trade Unions Confederation, the Histadrut, he has been a permanent opponent of neoliberalism and the deadly attacks on the standard of living and the social rights of the Israeli population. No doubt, as his first speech indicated very clearly, his election campaign will emphasize a ‘social’ platform, a voice which has been totally absent from the political discourse in Israel during the last ten years or more, of neoliberalism, privatization and the dismantling of social services.
The hysterical reaction of the economic editor of Ha’aretz—Israel’s daily newspaper most closely aligned with the ideology of Israel’s big capital—to the Peretz’ victory, presenting him as the return of a “communist economy” (sic) ideologue, and the end of a market economy, reflects the hostility of capital to the new leader and his widespread image as a workers’ agitator. Somewhat of an exaggerated image, as we shall see. In that sense, Amir Peretz election at the head of the Labor Party may put an end to the socio-political consensus in the Zionist political arena, and re-focus the debate within Israeli society. A very positive development, indeed.
Having said that, one must be aware that Amir Peretz is a Labor Party personality, with all the limitations such attachments imply. He has never challenged the old Zionist national consensus, and by no-way can he be considered a dissident. In his second important speech (20 November)—addressed this time to the whole Israeli public and considered as his election platform—he made clear that he has no objection to a liberal market economy, yet advocates for a more balanced one. Moreover, he stated that though he is in favor of renewing the peace process, “his platform is not Geneva,” and he does not challenge Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem. He is a strong opponent to the settlements strategy, but also to the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.
One could say that Amir Peretz belongs to a species, which, since the assassination of Rabin in 1995, was pushed to the sideline of Israeli politics—left-Zionism—with all the structural and political limits such a concept embodies. Nevertheless, in a political arena full of corrupt warmongers, a return to a certain left-Zionist discourse and alternative should be welcomed.