The suicide of the Center-Left?

• Author: GIL HOFFMAN
• Date: 17 January 2021
• Published date: 17 January 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"Like a whale that lost its sense of direction, you are storming the beach again and again and trying to commit suicide," he told the activists. "And I, with my limited strength, am trying to push you back to the water to save your life. But you don't want, you don't want. You insist on committing suicide."

Twenty-seven years later, Israelis enjoy the universal healthcare that has enabled more than two million of them to obtain coronavirus vaccines. But the Israeli Center-Left appears to still be on the beach, gasping for air.

The difference is that the Labor Party is very far from being the leviathan it once was. Instead, there are several parties in the Center-Left, all gasping beneath the surface of the elusive 3.25% electoral threshold.

The only parties that are safe in the bloc are Yesh Atid in the Center and Meretz on the Left. The parties hovering around the threshold are Blue and White of Benny Gantz and the Israelis Party of Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai.

Well below the threshold there are Labor, the Veterans Party of former Labor MK Danny Yatom, the Tnufa Party of former Yesh Atid MK Ofer Shelah, the Democratic Party of anti-Netanyahu protesters, the Economy Party of former accountant-general Yaron Zelekha and part of the Telem Party of former Likud minister Moshe Ya'alon, who is fielding candidates with very little in common.

Gantz has called on them all to unite and begrudgingly admitted that Yesh Atid chairman Lapid will be their leader.

But if anything, they have been doing the opposite, attacking each other, splintering further and further and wasting ridiculous amounts of money on billboards, bus signs and ads online. None of them drafted former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, who could have been a game changer. If the situation stays the same as it is now, there could be hundreds of thousands of votes that will be wasted on parties that will not end up represented in the Knesset.

Lapid has remained steady at 14 seats instead of rising. Huldai has gone down and not up. And Gantz has not left politics, making it harder for parties...