One of the difficulties in making sense of Israel’s nonsensical politics has to do with the fact that the Israeli Left consists of two distinct and separate groups of people.

The larger group of Leftists, those who traditionally were the bulk of the Left, are the fools. These are people who are Leftists because they are stupid. These are people who are attracted to the ideas of Oslo and the rest of the leftist catechism because they truly, if foolishly, believe it can all work. They sincerely believe that Oslo will somehow produce benefits for the Jews. They sincerely believe that the centralist dirigiste worn-out socialist ideas of the Left could work in Israel, even if they have failed everywhere else. Whatever the actual consequences, they sincerely believe they are working for the good of the Jews by promoting the agenda of the Left.

The second group of Leftists are the traitors. They promote Leftist ideas and programs precisely BECAUSE they know that these will damage the country. They endorse them BECAUSE they are harmful to Jews and because they endanger Israel.

Over time, the relative weights of these two groups within the Left have been changing, although I should point out from the outset that, in my view, the bulk of Israeli Leftists still belong to the first group and not the second.

One reason for the change in the weights is that, over time, the day to day evidence of the failures of Oslo has been slowly convincing and moving even some of the most foolish of the Type I Leftists. There are no shortages today of Ex-Leftists, some quite foolish, who have come to realize how harmful Oslo is. To their credit, when they realized that Oslo and Leftist were harmful, they abandoned them, however tentatively. The other Type I leftists have yet to follow their lead either because they are even stupider or because they require even greater and longer proofs of the harmfulness of their ideas.

As time passes, with a new set of PLO atrocities and deceits each day, the ranks of the refugees from the Left, formed entirely of Type I ex-Leftists, are growing.

Type II Leftists are a different kettle of fish. Each atrocity and deceit by the PLO simply REINFORCES their devotion to Oslo and to the agenda of the Left. Each atrocity and deceit for them is a SUCCESS, because in fact their real goal is to see Israel destroyed and the Jews annihilated. Uri Avnery and Noam Chomsky are clearly Type II Leftists. I believe that Michael Lerner is as well. The jury is still out on Arthur Waskow, although I consider him Type I. I do not think he is smart enough to be Type II.

Now, because of the slow movement of Type I Leftists away and out of the Left, the weight within the Left of Type II Leftists is continuously rising. Again, I believe that Type II Leftists are still a minority, although a growing one, within the Left. But their presence is becoming all the more obvious and glaring.

Haaretz used to be the daily newspaper of Type I Leftists. It is now almost entirely written by Type II Leftists, people like Amira Hass and Gideon Levy and Akiva Eldar. Lots of Type I Leftists still read it. Other ex-Leftists of Type I at Haaretz, like Amnon Denkner, a sudden born-again conservative, have resigned.

Type I Leftists still dominate the universities in Israel. But they are losing ground. Some have abandoned their delusions, moving away from the Left, but leaving the Type II Leftists ever more dominant within the Campus Left.

A few days back, we posted a story about a group of Type II Leftists who filed a petition with the Ann Arbor City Council to "divest" and boycott Israel economically. Today, one bovine member of the group appeared on Channel Two news, debating Yuli Tamir, a Type I Leftist from the Labor Party. Naturally it never occurred to the Type II and Type I Leftists who run Channel Two to invite a non-leftist to participate in the debate. In any case, Yuli Tamir made it pretty clear that the petition signers were traitors from Type II in her eyes, people whose activities were discrediting Type I Leftists across the board.

A tougher question is how to classify the remaining denizens of the Labor Party and Meretz. Obviously, those who support the Arab Stalinist-Fascist parties are all Type II Leftists. Meretz and Labor appear to be a mix, and different people would no doubt classify those inside differently. For example, it is pretty evident to me that Yael Dayan and several Meretz MK’s are Type II people. You might disagree.

The toughest of all may be Shimon Peres. The creature who announced at the UN today that most Israelis support Palestinian "statehood". Is he Type I or Type II? I prefer to continue to regard him as Type I, although it is getting harder and harder to maintain this belief.

Perhaps Arutz 7 or the Jerusalem Post could poll readers to see whether they regard Peres as Type I or Type II?

Steven Plaut

Copyright © 2001 by Steven Plaut.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission