They've given up on Israelis - Haaretz

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Wed., December 12, 2007 Tevet 3, 5768

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They've given up on Israelis

By Avirama Golan

Tags: Israel

"Israel's Jewishness is like a sword against our necks," Hadash general secretary MK Mohammad Barakeh declared at his party's convention last Friday. "Hadash," he added, "does not accept the demand that every Jew can come to Israel." With this, Barakeh coined a new interpretation for the slogan "Two states for two peoples": one national state, Palestine, for the Palestinian people, and a second state, Israel, for those who live there. A national home for the Jewish people - no way.

This interpretation has prevailed in Hadash in recent years and has silenced other voices. The movement still takes pride in its definition as a "Jewish-Arab party" and calls upon leftists "to support the movement in which Jews and Arabs are partners, who without blurring their identities work together for peace and a just distribution of the state's resources," but these words have lost their meaning.

The argument under way in Hadash is not heard outside the circle of its voters and supporters, but it exemplifies the depth of the rift in the party and how its new leadership is dragging it into a narrow, dead-end street. It's hard to believe that the new leadership, which has pushed out a politician with definite civil-leftist positions like Issam Mahoul, is connected to the social movement it was back in the mid-1990s.

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Hadash then, headed by Tamar Gozansky, succeeded in raking in votes from the veteran left, which was persuaded that Hadash was the only party truly concerned for the weak and that it was ahead of the entire political spectrum in its insistence on partitioning the land into two states.

A look at the internal debate within the party shows that there is disappointment over the disassociation between that Hadash and today's. It is expressed in two central complaints: First, against Hadash's linking up with nationalist groups and even forces of an Islamic nature - both of them ideologies that contradict the character of the movement; and second, against the edging out of women from realistic places on the party list for the Knesset, and Jewish women in particular. Hadash members and veteran leftist activists have no hesitation nowadays in saying openly that they regret the grating division into "Jews and Arabs" and the movement's distancing from the civil definition of "Israelis."

"The Hadash convention and council," wrote Alex Macias in Hagada Hasmalit (The Left Bank) journal, "are held in Nazareth and Haifa, almost entirely in Arabic. The Israeli flag is not flown at them. The Palestinian flag is." Macias should not be suspected of fighting for "Jewish" nationalist symbols. On the contrary: He wants a civic symbol that unites. Many of those disappointed with Hadash, especially Jews, but also Arabs, feel as he does that the new values voiced by the leadership are no longer concordant with their basic principles.

Macias' protest against the ethnic division expresses the root of the problem. The question is not whether it is the number of Arabs and the number of Jews on the Hadash Knesset list that determines the party's character, but rather the question as to how many Israelis will be on the Knesset list, and to what extent the leaders of the party still see Hadash as Israeli, with a civil-rights agenda. Since Hadash succumbed to the separatist-nationalist and populist stream, and decided to join up with MK Ahmed Tibi of Ra'am-Ta'al and later with Balad, and chosen to turn its back on a social and civil agenda in favor of questions related to Palestinian nationalism, to the detriment of the right to national realization for Jews - it appears that the answer to these questions is negative.

Many people will unite against the occupation; few will agree to knock the national ground out from under their feet in order to be acceptable to former MK Azmi Bishara and his successors. As Hadash has chosen to slam the door in the face of anyone who is not capable of being a Balad enthusiast, it has lost a large public, which is seeking and not finding elsewhere a home on the militant economic and social left. In so doing, the party is not only thinning its ranks and becoming marginal and negligible, it is also playing into the hands of the right and strengthening its anti-civic, nationalist agenda.

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1.	They`ve given up on Israelis	10:07	\|	Ralph	11/12/07

2.	vote Hadash!	10:09	\|	Leon Rosgarten	11/12/07

3.	Balad `s a mainstream party and Israeli Interior Minister Sheetri	10:27	\|	Absolute Sweden	11/12/07

4.	What Transpired in the Interim?	11:07	\|	Yaakov Sullivan	11/12/07

5.	Really, Leon!! #2	11:17	\|	Yaakov Sullivan	11/12/07

6.	The Left has given up on common sense	11:27	\|	Z Lando	11/12/07

7.	#2 be careful leon you might end up like the other leon ?	11:37	\|	victor hardman	11/12/07

8.	"over the top", Yaakov?	11:53	\|	Murray	11/12/07

9.	No to a Jewish State	12:44	\|	Gary M. Cooperberg	11/12/07

10.	First they tried war,now through the back door	12:47	\|	PETER SM	11/12/07

11.	to Victor Hardman #7	12:53	\|	Leon Rosgarten	11/12/07

12.	leon	13:06	\|	aline	11/12/07

13.	Reply to Gary Cooperberg (Post No. 9)	13:16	\|	Johnny Weintraub	11/12/07

14.	@2, bravo leon	13:20	\|	vladimir	11/12/07

15.	# 11 Leon Rosgarten	13:23	\|	Igor	11/12/07

16.	Dear Tovarish Leon .Enjoy your posts & have missed them	13:25	\|	PETER SM	11/12/07

17.	A message to Cde Leon	13:29	\|	K Y	11/12/07

18.	International justice demands Jews leave	13:48	\|	Raed Kami	11/12/07

19.	International justice demands Jews leave	13:49	\|	Raed Kami	11/12/07

20.	Well done, Leon	14:01	\|	Murray	11/12/07

21.	#11 llleon confirms total failure of communism	14:07	\|	victor hardman	11/12/07

22.	#18 another lunatic signs in! kami kazi pilot?	14:09	\|	victor hardman	11/12/07

23.	#18 Kami`s "International law"	14:14	\|	Hastaroth	11/12/07

24.	to Leon and all you Stalinists	14:27	\|	CWW	11/12/07

25.	International Low you saud	16:20	\|	YourHighnessHanuka	11/12/07

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