Looking for Amir Peretz
Israel's Defense Minister is receiving justifably mixed reviews.
As many of our readers will note, since last year's Labor Party leadership primary, Tikkun enthusiastically endorsed its winner, former Histadrut chair Amir Peretz. This writer in particular took the magazine's lead in explaining the significance of Peretz' victory, and why he believed that given Israel's ongoing ethnic and economic problems, Peretz' assumption of the leadership of Israel's second-largest party was a hopeful sign for a country mired in a brutal colonial war and a policy of unneccessarily downsizing its public sector.
Having suffered through six years of war and negative economic growth, it was clear that what Israel needed was an ideological break with the government policies that had lead it into such an untenable situation - not another privatization program. A nation cannot prosper in any sense of the term - politically or economically - when it is as internally polarized as Israel is alienated from its neighbors. No domestic mouse clicks on foreign e-commerce sites will ever overcome such unsustainable divisions.
Calling himself a "social general" who clearly recognized these heartbreaking quandries and had proposals to begin dealing with them, Peretz' candidacy for Prime Minister appeared to offer Israeli politics something truly different. Not just from a liberal point of view cultivated within the bourgeois comforts of the Diaspora, but from the perspective of any Zionist committed to the idea that Israel ought to be the national home of world Jewry.
Sadly, circumstances have denied Peretz the ability to fulfill his ministerial potential. Not only has the Labor Party failed to deliver on most of its campaign promises. In the capacity of Defence Minister, Amir Peretz has floundered, squandering the progressive capital he'd earned during his years in Israel's labor movement. One cannot even begin to recount the level of these failings, particularly if you are familiar with Peretz' political history. The impact that this might have on the Israeli left's future parliamentary prospects could be truly devastating - perhaps even more so than Ehud Barak's failure to conclude a final status agreement in 2000.
Compared to the rest of his colleagues (and predecessors), Peretz' inability to demonstrate ideological autonomy is particularly depressing. Will he survive his tenure as the civilian supervisor of Israel's armed forces? Its difficult to desire at present, and its equally hard to see any future for Peretz either. Despite having followed the IDF's advice in reducing Gaza once more to rubble, Peretz continues to suffer low opinion poll ratings, and members of his party appear to be taking advantage of this by frequently attacking their chairman. Some of it is deserved; some of it isn't.
Nevertheless, history may not exonerate the Labor leader for his performance. Perhaps it would have been better if Labor had sat this government out in the opposition. Its clear that having joined Olmert's coalition, the Labor Party has not made its promised difference. Had Avigdor Lieberman and Benjamin Netanyahu's parties entered the government in the place of Labor, in all likelihood, its response to Gilad Shalit's capture would have been exactly the same. Why choose to have followed a similar ideological path? Of course Gilad Shalit deserves to be rescued. But not at this expense.
What would Israel's reaction have been like had Peretz chosen a different response to this crisis? Its hard to tell. Based on emails forwarded to me by peace activists in the days immediately following the March elections, (where Peretz sounded surprisingly hawkish), potentially marginal. Regardless, Peretz' performance has been a disappointment. Not just because he's proven predictably inexpert at defense matters, but because Peretz has shown a profound lack of moral leadership required to balance the demands for retaliation made by a humiliated IDF, and a Prime Minister seeking any excuse to further his policy of unilateralism.
The point being is that at present, there is an unhealthy ideological symmetry within Israel's governing coalition. This remains bad for Israel's long-term prospects as a parliamentary democracy. With Hamas threatening a resumption of attacks against civilian targets in Israel, and the IDF further immiserating Gaza and arresting Palestinian parliamentarians, its hard to see what leadership Israelis can rely on to make responsible decisions and prevent further violence.
Joel Schalit is Managing Editor of Tikkun
On Jul 16, 2006, at 9:17 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
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> On Jul 16, 2006, at 12:07 AM, Michael Perelman wrote:
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>> But with a left wing defense minister? What is with him?
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> Obviously he had to prove his toughness.
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> Doug
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