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Last update - 22:37 12/02/2009 How the left elevated Lieberman By Daniel Gutwein Tags: Israel News  Lieberman feeds off a combination of economic woes, a lack of social security and Israel's defense problems Avigdor Lieberman's achievement in the elections is yesterday's story. His forecast that he will get 30 seats in the next elections is an indication of what he is aiming at - turning Yisrael Beiteinu into the ruling party. Lieberman is not a fleeting episode. In the current elections, he dislodged the Labor Party from its position as an alternative to forming the government and, more important, he established his own position as the political answer to the objective that the left failed to achieve. Already in the previous elections, Lieberman had made his mark beyond "the Russian street," with the assistance of Netanyahu's edicts. Since then, as the privatization of the welfare state sentences more and more of the public to a lack of social and economic security, exacerbated by the global economic crisis, so the popularity rises of Lieberman, who supports Netanyahu's economic outlook but is perceived of by his supporters as being the person who will save them from it. The victims of the privatization regime, who are desperately seeking social security, could have been partners to a social-democratic policy - had the left offered this to them. However, the left stutters and they flee from its lack of certainty into the arms of Yisrael Beiteinu, which in this way becomes the pivot of Israeli politics. Advertisement Lieberman's strength is fed by that same mix that has aroused the extreme right in Europe since the close of the 19th century - a combination of economic woes and a lack of social security (and in the case of Israel also lack of personal security because of the security situation in the country) which creates a feeling that the nation's end is drawing near. This feeling is transferred to "internal enemies" and arouses a yearning for "a strong leader" who will replace democracy - which is perceived as being a failure - with certainty and stability. Fascism, as Zeev Sternhell has said, "is neither right nor left," and in this way Lieberman also succeeds in breaking the traditional lines of distinction between the left and the right. He is prepared to divide Jerusalem, and even to extend the left-wing principle of dividing the land to within the Green Line, as a means to annulling the citizenship of the Arabs in Israel, as the extreme right demands. Even his election slogan "no citizenship without loyalty" breaks the moral code of democracy while adopting the logic of the anti-Haredi [ultra-Orthodox] incitement preached by the Shinui party, which was presented as a means of defending the soul of democracy. The "conditional citizenship," as Lieberman would have it, turns citizenship from a universal right into a benefit for certain sectors of the public. Most of the public is apathetic to this assault on the foundations of democracy, having been conditioned over many years to accepting the sectarian principle that was the means to dismantling the welfare state. Lieberman's "conditional citizenship" has clear economic significance. It is yet another blatant step on the way to sectarian conditioning of a wide variety of civil rights, from national insurance and health to work and freedom of movement. Thus the "conditional citizenship" proves to be a means of defending the welfare regime - denying rights from the Arabs is supposed to improve the relative economic situation of the Jews, but without harming the principle of privatization. The left has no answer for this trick. On the contrary, "the Lieberman danger", like the war in Gaza, supplied it with an excuse to renounce the social agenda and wrap itself in the political-legal agenda. Instead of trying to win over Lieberman's supporters, the neo-liberal left (a unique Israeli combination of diplomatic dovishness and right-wing economics) related to them with the same attitude that it in the past treated supporters of Menachem Begin from the lower classes - it called them "Kahane supporters," cut itself off from them and left them to their fate. Lieberman provided the Israeli left with an excuse to ignore the lesson that the European left learned from the collapse of democracy in the 1920s and 1930s, according to which a welfare state is a sine qua non for the struggle against fascism and the theories of hatred that it disseminates. The neo-liberal Israeli left, which supports the privatization regime out of considerations of class, is blind to the fact that this regime, much more than any deep-seated hatred, is the fertile ground in which Lieberman's roots sprouted. But there is one person who understands this very well, and that is Lieberman himself. He knows that so long as the left does not offer a social-democratic alternative with a welfare state at its center that can deal with the basic problems of lack of security and fear, he will be able to continue to successfully sell via them his deal of "neither left nor right." The writer teaches in the Israeli History department of the University of Haifa. Bookmark to del.icio.us   How Israel voted See Israel election results by city/sector. Israeli cover girls Israeli model Bar Refaeli lands Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover.   1.   The use and abuse of `Fascism` 08:53  |  UlfT 13/02/09   2.   Words of wisdom, talk-back silence says it all though... 13:52  |  Butch 13/02/09

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