Something peculiar has happened to Israeli politics: almost everyone’s supposedly “right-wing.” Politicians who fervently oppose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government claim the label, as do many others who disagree with Likud on fundamental things.
Some declare the Left-Right dichotomy obsolete, yet still seem terrified that somebody might mistake them for “left-wing.” What’s going on? What exactly does “right-wing” mean in Israel?
It certainly doesn’t mean the economic Right. I’m basically a capitalist. I may not believe the market cures all social ills, but the market, with guardrails, is the best economic principle we have. By that definition, much of Israel’s “Right” is leftist.
The constituencies most dependent on state transfers vote for parties of the Right, and unlike US working-class voters voting against their economic interests, these Israelis are being logical. They favor the huge public spending flowing to them from the pro-welfare “Right” and vote accordingly.
Fine. Perhaps being right-wing means being a Zionist.
Consider the strange case of me. I consider the Jews a people by any reasonable historical definition of that word, rather than merely adherents of a religion scattered among diasporas.
Peoples are entitled to national self-determination, and Jews, therefore, had every right to establish a nation-state in their ancestral homeland, even after a diaspora lasting 2,000 years, which I do admit is odd (many things in life are odd).
I also regard the fixation on the Nakba as disproportionate. Israel’s creation involved displacement and brutality, which was tragic for individuals, but the middle of the 20th century was filled with collapsing empires, border changes, and population movements. The partition of India uprooted many millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs to create coherent states.
Elevating the Palestinian displacement into a uniquely monstrous event that confers an eternal claim against the very existence of Israel is absurd. Much more unusual was the abuse of refugees in their host societies, from which they were mostly ethnically indistinguishable.
And while Palestinian national sentiment exists powerfully today – whether Israelis like it or not – its historical claims are far weaker than advocates pretend.
Before the confrontation with Zionism helped forge a distinct Palestinian identity, the Sunni Arab inhabitants of (and migrants to) Mandate Palestine were part of the wider Arab Levant, with local and religious identities, mainly.
Being right-wing doesn’t alter the perspective on how the Palestinian identity was formed
On a national level, the differences between Palestinians and people in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon were minor at best. There was no ancient Palestinian nation marching through history toward sovereign statehood, and the world does not owe this. I do think it may offer a way out of the conflict – but the borders must be safe for Israel, and any Palestinian statehood must be demilitarized.
I am also extremely hawkish about terrorism. When lives are in imminent danger, I favor giving the security services extreme latitude to stop the threat. My concern for the rights of terrorists resembles my concern for the rights of mobsters: minimal, and mainly because one is innocent until proven guilty in a civilized society.
By this point, I should be safely ensconced on the Right – no? Yet by the bizarre twists and turns of Israeli politics I’m a left-winger (or, via the rebrand, a “centrist”).
Why? Well, I want Israel to remain a Jewish state.
There are millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel can incorporate them with equal rights and not be a Jewish-majority state; it can rule them without equal political rights and not be a democracy; or it can attempt to remove them, which would be both immoral and strategically insane (as this would bring on global isolation on a scale that could devastate its economy, destroy crucial alliances, and undermine its ability to defend itself).
That leaves some form of partition. I have no particular attachment to the precise arrangement. The territory Israel relinquishes could become an independent Palestinian state, yes.
But one of the great missed opportunities in Israeli history was Likud’s scuttling of the 1987 London Agreement pursued by former prime minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein, which might have enabled Israel to withdraw from much but not all of the West Bank while placing it under Jordanian rather than independent Palestinian control.
Demilitarizing a region of an established country is easier than attempting to demilitarize an entire sovereign state. Likud’s
Yitzhak Shamir was not smart enough to see this.
My second “left-wing” credential is wanting Israel to remain a liberal democracy. Elections determine who governs, while democracy requires institutions that constrain what governments can do.
Citizens possess rights that survive elections, minorities require protection from majorities, and an independent judiciary is critical in a country lacking a written constitution, a second legislative chamber, and other checks on executive power.
This was once an entirely respectable position on the Israeli Right. Former prime minister Menachem Begin’s reverence for independent courts was central to his political worldview, and Netanyahu long defended the independence and stature of Israel’s judiciary.
The strange transformation of judicial independence into a supposedly left-wing cause attaches directly to Netanyahu’s criminal trials.
My third “left-wing” offense concerns the haredim (ultra-Orthodox), and here the ideological inversion approaches absurdity. I believe children should learn mathematics and English and acquire skills needed in a modern economy.
I believe adults should support their families – not study Torah as a default vocation, receiving stipends rather than paying tuition. I believe citizens should equally share the obligations of citizenship, including military service when needed and as reasonable.
A desire to see all Israeli citizens share the military burden isn’t leftist
Yet defending an arrangement in which an ever-growing community receives enormous public support while significant parts of it minimize their participation in the productive economy and the military is now a hallmark of Israel’s Right. This arrangement will bankrupt Israel, with consequences far beyond living standards.
A poorer Israel becomes weaker and more vulnerable. Prayer will not finance Iron Dome interceptors, develop military technology, or generate the tax revenues required to sustain a first-world army.
So there we have it. My “leftism” consists principally of wanting to preserve Israel as a Jewish-majority state, prevent it from becoming an impoverished theocracy, and protect it from sliding toward elected autocracy.
I’m pretty sure most Israelis want the same – yet many of those same people insist that they are “on the Right.” The especially confused among them even vote for Likud and its allies, who undermine all these principles.
The first explanation lies partly in the failure of the peace process, the Second Intifada, and the waves of Palestinian terrorism that destroyed faith in its assumptions. October 7 deepened Israelis’ skepticism about peace.
Yet this should not logically make them want to become forever entangled with the Palestinians because of the settlements foolishly built by the Right.
Second, Netanyahu spent decades brilliantly delegitimizing “the Left.” The most revealing moment came in 1997 when he was caught on camera telling the revered Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri that “the Left forgot what it means to be Jews.” That gaslighting nonsense, repeated in different forms for decades, was politically brilliant.
This sad confusion about labels creates confusion about reality – in a country that desperately needs clear thinking.
I’m happy to call myself a capitalist, a Zionist, a security hawk, a liberal democrat, and a supporter of territorial partition. Those words convey actual information. So when someone announces they’re “right-wing,” I ask for something more useful.
I’d like to know about the Jewish-majority state, who will work and pay for it, who will defend it, and what limits will constrain its government from deciding to shut down The Jerusalem Post and calling it the will of the people.
Then we can decide who is conservative and who is radical. We can decide who wants the best for Israel. The old terms really are dead, but the disagreements are not. Resolving them requires us to end the confusion.
The writer is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and publisher of danperry.substack.com
