A generational change, Thursday, November 10, 2005

Not since 1977 has an Israeli electorate sent such a dramatic message. The 64,000 Labor Party members who by a slim two percent margin chose 54-year-old Amir Peretz over the 82-year-old Shimon Peres as their party leader was dubbed ‘8-9 on the Richter scale of Israeli politics,’ by Israel Radio’s Hanan Kristal, who later said the ‘the tsunami in the Labor Party will become a hurricane through the entire system,’ predicting elections by March-April.

The state-owned station, by the way, was the only media to carry Dr. Avraham Katz’s poll predicting a Peretz win as the polls closed, and he even predicted a narrow gap. Army Radio carried a Smith Institute straw poll that predicted a landslide for the Nobel Prize winner who lost an election once again.

So, there was mourning for Shimon – most notably by Shimon, who was not heard from all night and through the dramatic announcement just after 6 in the morning of the final results. Some of his people rushed to a party appeals court to demand recounts at 13 stations, which was done, but Shimon himself remained silent – not even calling Peretz. Maybe he was sleeping -- he is, after all 82. Just as likely he was composing himself for the speech he has given so many times in the past – he is there to serve the state, and serve it he will in whatever way the state asks him to serve. Conventional wisdom this morning seemed to be that Shimon would soldier on, certainly not retire. Peres, as of 11 in the morning, had not called Peretz, who in his victory speech called on Peres twice for the world’s most veteran politician to help carry the burden of leadership.

So, while Peres slept, sulked, or seethed, the Peretz victory was clearly the message this morning after a long night of vote counting that ended with him taking 27,098 votes for 42.3 percent of the vote, and Peres winning 25,572 votes, 39.96 percent of the vote. Binyamin Ben Eliezer proved his camp is alive and well, with 10,764 votes, and Ben Eliezer, who won the party chairmanship over Avrum Burg by a much narrower margin but only lasted two years in the job, was among the first to call Peretz to congratulate him within an hour of the Peretz victory speech. He’s already jockeying for a defense ministry portfolio in a Peretz government, which might not be as far-fetched as it sounded only a few weeks ago.

Amir won with unequivocal declarations in favor of a social democratic party, appealing to the voters the Likud has lost to growing poverty in the so-called periphery. Those are the neighborhoods and towns, moshavism and villages where the shirtless teens who cheered Menachem Begin in 1977 have become grandparents and don’t see any better life for their grandchildren then they had as angry youngsters who wanted to throw out ‘the Alignment,’ the strange bureaucratic name Labor chose for itself in its final years of decaying rule.

Now, for the first time in years, Labor is being led by someone who speaks the language of the Left as unabashedly as the spokesmen on the Right. Amir is deeply rooted in Labor, even though he spent the last 10 years out of it, since he became Histadrut chief in the 1990s and he formed his own One Nation party, which won 2 seats in the current Knesset. The other MK in the party quickly moved to the Likud. Last year, Peres brought Peretz back into the party. At the time it was considered a Peres move to counter Ehud Barak’s maneuverings but as of last night it had turned into a Trojan horse. It obviously backfired.

Peretz’s victory comes in handy for him since the Knesset recently passed a bill sponsored by Likud faction chief Gideon Saar that was aimed against Peretz, preventing an MK from being head of the Histadrut, the trade-labor federation that has dwindled in size and influence but still provides protection to hundreds of thousands of wage-earners.

It’s said that Peretz uses the Histadrut organization like an old-time socialist ruler, and everyone agrees he has the best organization. But his appeal goes beyond the working class and the poor. Poet Natan Zach was one of the first of the cultural elite to add his name to Peretz’s cause. Peretz may not speak English or French, but he probably can get by in Arabic, and there is intellectual substance to his rhetoric, his strategy and his tactics. Yitzhak Ben Aharon – who turns 100 next year – and Lova Eliav, two legendary leaders of the Left, endorsed him, but so did Benny Gaon, an icon of the wealthy Ashkenazi establishment of neo-capitalists.

Peretz campaigned on domestic issues – his victory speech however spoke clearly to the peace question. He said he believes in ‘economy in the service of man, man in service of peace, and peace in service of the economy … It’s a cycle of life, he called it, and it moves and moves and will translate into ballot after ballot for Labor

But his speech was aimed at the estimated one million Israelis who are considered working poor, to Israelis who feel discrimination and inequality, irrespective of ethnic background or religion or when they came to the country. He reiterated his promise to raise the minimum wage to $1,000 a month and promised to reinstate some of the deep cuts into the Israeli welfare system made by the Sharon government. But he also spoke to the middle class that fears slipping into the lower middle class because it has seen how the lower middle class sank into poverty. He incurred Menachem Begin’s name, making a Hebrew rhyme that pointed out that Begin won in 1977 not because of the Greater Land of Israel but because of ‘Second (class) Israel’ and that was not only why he won the primaries against Peres, but why he would win against Sharon in national elections.

As usual for him, he spoke with the kind of believer’s fervor that has long been absent from the Leftist discourse in Israel, but he seems to have learned to control over his oratory, and despite accusations of ‘radicalism,’ ‘antiquated socialism,’ and ‘anti-reformism’ made by Yosef Lapid against him, he is not against reforms, and his socialist models are both uniquely Israeli and drawn from the major social democratic parties in Europe. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange only dipped a percent and a half, and the dollar was strengthened by half a percent, a relatively normal morning at the booming market.

Amir promised to work for unity in the party. He’ll need it. The Labor Party has been devouring its leaders for years, but in the last decade, since Rabin’s assassination, has been lethal. Peres, Barak, Ben Eliezer, Mitzna, and Peres again have served as party chairman. But Peretz is more charismatic than Ben Eliezer, and tougher than Mitzna; besides, Peretz’s only real enemy in the party is Barak. There’s a chasm of distrust between them – or at least that’s what their rhetoric says. Peretz represents classic social democratic positions in support of welfare mechanisms and workers’ rights, while Barak, claiming to represent ‘the new Israeli economy,’ bemoans socialism as outdated. Peretz calls Barak a Netanyahu clone.

But Peretz’s biggest promise to the voters was that he would build Labor as an alternative to the Likud, and he made clear in his speech that his top priority was to pull out of the government. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called him with congratulations (Sharon also called Peres and Ben Eliezer, his bureau specifically announced) and they set a meeting for Sunday to talk. But Peretz will have to deal with recalcitrant ministers and MKs who think Labor should remain in office while he argues the only way for it to return to power is to become an alternative to the Likud.

His victory immediately revived talk of a ‘big bang’ party – Sharon quitting the Likud, Shimon Peres and other joining him – to capture the Center. But that’s speculation about the future. Today, Amir Peretz made history. Shas leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef called Peretz to offer congratulations, but as of noon, Peres had not called Peretz to offer congratulations. ‘Shimon,’ said Peretz in his victory speech after party secretary general Eitan Cabel announced the results, ‘unlike others in the past when I say it, I mean it, I really need you, I really want you by my side, I want your advice. If not for me, for the party, and if not for the party, do it for the state, for our children.’

At noon, Peretz went as promised to Yitzhak Rabin’s grave. In another four days, the Hebrew calendar date of the Rabin assassination will be marked. In a strange way, Peretz may represent Rabin more than any other Labor politician since then. While he was known as Mr. Security, Rabin always had a social agenda – in his first term it was foiled by the religious parties, but in his second term, he put investment in education and infrastructure at the top of his agenda, something that has not happened since.

In any case, the coming days and weeks will show if Peretz can control the reins of a potentially unruly party, prove that he has indeed revived the Left in Israel, and some time between March to June – we can probably expect elections in Israel.

Yitzhak Rabin's Last Speech, which he delivered at the Tel Aviv peace rally on Nov. 4 1995

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