Tomorrow's Meretz party primaries are an opportunity to talk about the Left and its importance to Israel in 2022. Not just another column of the "What's wrong with the Left?" variety, and not propaganda that trumpets the absolute righteousness of the beautiful Left.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

My decision to live in Sderot, where most voters lean Right, forces me to answer that question on almost a daily basis. In my opinion, the Zionist Left in Israel, and Meretz as its flagship, is vital to Israeli society as a whole. Even to my friends who vote for the Likud, Yisrael Beytenu, and the Religious Zionist party.

What does the Left represent in the Israeli marketplace of ideas? First, commitment to social justice. There is a direct link between biblical concepts of a rest day on the Sabbath, forgiving debts in a shmita year, rights of workers, and care for converts, orphans, and widows, and the social justice of the Left. In the political arena, this is the place to turn these slogans into actions: a far minimum wage for all workers, eradicating contract employment, real investment in a safety net for those who live in poverty. "Justice, you shall pursue" – and achieve. When I came to Netivot with Meretz, I was embraced by families who were benefitting from a law on public housing than then-MK Ran Cohen had spearheaded. Israelis with disabilities benefit from the late Ilan Gilon's struggle to increase disability stipends.

The Left's second major emphasis is on politics – aspiring to diplomatic agreements and reconciliation in a way that will implement the call of the declaration of independence, and a hand extended to help neighboring states and the Palestinians who live among us arrive at a state of prosperity and good neighborly relations.

Meretz also sheds light on the darker corners of the occupation and our military occupation of the territories, both by questioning its morality and pointing to the heavy costs we are all forced to pay to maintain the situation. Even for those who think that it is a necessary evil, it's important that there be someone to point out everything that is evil in the current situation. To those who think that Israel can do much more to end the occupation and make deals that will ensure both peace and security, this is crucial.

The third pillar is human rights, community rights, and the rights of the individual. Shulamit Aloni, one of the founders of Meretz, campaigned to revoke the legal ban on homosexual relations, which put is in the dubious company of radical Islamist nations. The struggle for freedom of religion and freedom from religion allow most of the people here to enjoy a varied, tolerant life. As we know, Israelis come in 1,000 different shades, and our ability to stay connected to world Jewry and the world as a whole depends on our making a practical stand for human rights.

In the last election, many people voted for Meretz to save the "Anyone but Bibi" bloc. The big challenge facing the shrinking Israeli Left – particularly Meretz – is to prompt Israelis to vote for the ideas of the Left because they're important to society, and if they go unrepresented, we all lose.

The Israeli Left doesn't talk to the people who primarily steer clear of it, in the geographical and social periphery. The Left's oversight pains me. But despite all this, I'm proud of the Left and committed to expanding our grip on Israeli society.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Do we need Meretz in the government? appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Twenty-one years have passed since the first Qassam rocket struck my city, Sderot. It happened on April 16, 2001, and ever since the city's character has changed in many ways. Last week, we returned to the bomb shelters and fortified rooms, reopening the old wounds of the city's children. The day after that sleepless night, I opened the newspapers and couldn't believe my eyes: Some people were saying this one rocket was the result of Naftali Bennett "selling Israel out" to the Muslim Brotherhood movement in his government.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

It's hard to understand these people, when over the past decade we've been hit with thousands of rockets, put out hundreds of fires, buried our dead, lost soldiers, hostages, and have been forced to flee our homes for an accumulated period of months. Assuming these people aren't completely detached from reality, and that history for them didn't begin in June 2021, it seems the safety of Sderot's children depends on one's political position.

What these people are proposing, apparently, is to go back to what we experienced over the past decade. As a resident of Sderot, I mainly have local and regional sentiments. I'd be happy for any solution that stops the cycle of terror. When Benjamin Netanyahu held an initial cabinet discussion in 2018 over an arrangement in Gaza, I stood with my friends in support of such solutions. When Israel Katz was the only cabinet member who publicly recommended a new strategy for the war against Hamas (building an artificial port island off the Gaza coast), his words were echoed in the civilian "Hope Instead of War" campaign.

These solutions flickered briefly before never amounting to anything. My children and I have been on the receiving end for the past 21 years; Hamas is a murderous organization that violates human rights in Gaza and Sderot. I, however, was raised on the values of a proactive Zionism that forms reality and doesn't just react, on an Israeliness that is creative and finds solutions rather than one that stagnates and freezes in place. The strong side can determine facts on the ground and change a strategy that isn't proving itself – the siege strategy the Olmert government declared in 2007 – for one that is effective.

The strategy needs to complement the new diplomatic environment, of the Abraham Accords, to include bolstering ties with Egypt. Military officials talk about the following equation: Rehabilitating Gaza's infrastructure and building a seaport, allowing Gazans into Israel en masse to work, and a series of shared economic projects to provide electricity, water, and health to the Strip. What's the return? Quiet, and bringing back Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, in addition to the remains of Israeli soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, killed during 2014's Operation Protective Edge.

Such an initiative would require significant help from Egypt, Qatar, the European Union, and the United Nations. It isn't simple, but we've seen the effort that's been invested into trying to resolve the large-scale war in Ukraine. In comparison, the 21 years of war with Gaza are negligible. It's a matter of political will, determination, and creativity. The people arguing that a Netanyahu government would be better for the residents of the Gaza periphery need to remember that you can't fool all the people all of the time. The government of "change" needs to internalize that the window of opportunity has closed and that those who are incapable of implementing new solutions are being derelict in their duty.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post It's time to try something new in Gaza appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

For the majority of Israelis, the wave of price hikes is not a minor thing. When taking into account the half of all working Israelis who earn less than NIS 6,000 ($1,870) a month, the hundreds of thousands with disabilities, the more than one million elderly, and unemployment that has yet to return to pre-COVID levels – most people are in trouble. Adding hundreds of shekels to our monthly budget will sentence many of us to overdraft, perpetual debt, loans and the gray market.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

The government's vacillation on this issue is embarrassing. This is an ongoing problem that places Israel at the top of Western countries in terms of basic existence goods and impossible housing costs. None of this will be resolved with a celebrity boycott of Osem pasta.

An emergency situation necessitates quick and serious action. The government's most pressing task is to build an iron wall to protect the poor. When Israel is the champion of the Western world in the proportion of workers below the poverty line, and the finance minister proposes increasing the minimum wage by half a shekel, it's a bad joke. The "Standing Together" NGO's "40 minimum" campaign is a step in the right direction and a central component of the iron wall's foundations. It's important to remember that we are also workers, not just consumers. A situation in which a job cannot pull one out of poverty in Israel is disgraceful and requires immediate amendment.

Israel also "excels" at handing out the lowest living stipends in the West. Instead of protecting the tens of thousands of people who rely on a guaranteed minimum income and increasing it significantly, the Finance Ministry protects the most basic living stipend for a couple at a cost of NIS 2,497 ($780) per month. Can anyone even start the month with such a sum? Can they pay for housing, food, gas, electricity, and water? Not to mention such "luxuries" as communication, education, and culture. The second component of the iron wall needs to be updating and increasing the basic living stipend, including disability, elderly, and food stipends from Social Security.

The price hikes also exposed the massive profits of the supermarket chains, which have exploited the COVID crises to increase their profits and dole out obscene salaries to the owners and executives. Everyone reveals their true face in a crisis. This is an opportunity to legislate a maximum salary law and address the greed that allows these owners and CEOs to make 100 times their low-level employees. It was people like this who caused the fall of the Second Temple.

The iron wall must also include oversight on basic goods. It has been proven countless times that opening the market to imports and slogans in the vein of "competition" end up harming the workers and boosting profits for the chains. A free market is important, but basic sustenance needד to be kept outside the bounds of unfair and sophisticated competition. Baby food, whole wheat bread, olive oil, and other basic goods must be accessible to us all. Housing, too, is a basic right, which in Israel has become a distant dream.

Basic sustenance also included education and health. In Israel, "free education" costs thousands of shekels. Public health costs thousands of shekels in private insurance. The Israeli public has doubled what it pays for private health insurance over the past decade. Investment in robust and real public health and education infrastructure can reduce the cost of living in Israel, because not everything starts and ends at the supermarket.

The government's project to build an economic iron wall is a necessity of the reality afflicting us all. And the sooner it gets to work, the better.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Israel needs an iron wall to protect the poor appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Exactly 10 years ago, the largest social protest in the country's history erupted. Nearly one million Israelis took part in demonstrations across the country and erected hundreds of protests encampments from Kiryat Shmona to Eilat. I, together with the "Shatil" non-profit organization, had the privilege of being among the first on the ground, accompanying and helping not only the leadership of the Rothschild Street protest camp in Tel Aviv – but mainly the camps in the periphery.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The call for social justice first emanated from a limited circle of activists and NGO's and quickly spread to the streets and squares. The demand that the state assume responsibility for ensuring a dignified standard of living morphed from our relatively tiny outcry into a massive countrywide roar. The scope of the protests in Israel, in ratio to the overall population, was larger than any other protest movement in the world in those years.

I recognize that we accomplished some things and am grateful for the thousands of Israelis who spearheaded this wave. However, it's also clear to me that the protest movement imposed boundaries and a glass ceiling on itself. It challenged the political leadership, but not to the point of overstepping the basic lines of Israeli economics and society. The tragedy of our demand, first and foremost and on the most fundamental level, was that it failed to attract those who could have created true change. The sons and daughters of the poor, the only ones capable of engendering actual revolution.

The effort to link the Levisnky encampment of asylum seekers with the Rothschild encampment – was a failure.  The attempt to link the single-mother encampment with the students in Jerusalem – was a failure. The attempt to attach the encampment of the homeless with the student camps – went nowhere. It wasn't a matter of one side or another lacking good intention. The protest failed to recognize the balance of power between the country's affluent center and the disenfranchised periphery and incorporate that into the heart of the movement. We, as leaders of the movement, also failed to address the deeper ills afflicting Israeli society.

The satiated person does not understand the hungry person. One person is fated to intergenerational hunger with exceedingly limited opportunities to exit the cycle of poverty. Others, meanwhile, face difficulties on their path to securing a spot on the pyramid of the satiated. These are two completely different worlds. Those in the light cannot see those in the dark, even if they squint. Those in the dark see those in the light very clearly, and their hearts turn bitter. And so the opportunity to foster real change falls by the wayside.

The social protests accomplished important things in terms of discourse and policies, but it was limited. Important projects that were born in the spirit of the protest movement have the potential to generate deep change.

The coronavirus pandemic is providing another opportunity for change. The American administration is using the crisis to create global taxation. It is investing trillions of dollars in infrastructure and plans to fight poverty and climate change. We can learn from them.

The social protest gave voice to an important outcry. It will only be realized if the leadership in the periphery can rally the poor and disenfranchised and project their voices to the masses.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post A decade ago, our protests weren't radical enough appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The citizenship law is experienced in this country as a political arm-wrestling match. The main focus is on whether the coalition will prevent family reunification between those living in Israel and those in the Palestinian Authority. The Meretz and Ra'am parties are leaning toward opposing the law, and the opposition, which had re-ratified the interim law 12 years running when Benjamin Netanyahu was in power, is threatening to join them. Failure to reapprove the law won't topple the government, but it will instigate a battle of narratives that will seek to pin the blame, on one hand, on Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, and on the one hand, on Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and the remaining members of the opposition.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Amid this clamor, we can find a little bit of substance. The argument is framed as a security imperative on one hand – the law was born during the Second Intifada, recommended by the Shin Bet. On the other hand, it infringes on the human rights of tens of thousands of families that cannot live normal lives, including social and medical rights for parents and their children, bans on receiving driver's licenses and more.

My argument is that the country's security is a very important consideration, and can be preserved while improving the human rights of those living among us. We can be cynical about the Right's narrow political considerations. It's okay to remind ourselves that these are tens of thousands of families, mostly with temporary residency status that leads to daily annoyances and worse, while the Right wants to annex some 4 million Palestinians. It's also okay to remind ourselves that the same Shin Bet that wants to prevent family reunification has authorized citizenship for thousands of "collaborator" families, who the police view as chiefly responsible for the rampant crime in Arab society under the auspices of Shin Bet-granted "immunity."

And yet, I want to assume there is a real, poignant national security argument. This concern is predicated on past and often inaccurate statistics from the days of the Second Intifada, whereby Palestinians who become Israeli citizens are more involved in terrorist attacks.

It's important to understand that receiving Israeli citizenship is complicated and onerous for anyone who isn't Jewish, regardless. It can take years just to obtain residency status, followed by countless checks and proofs of marriage, cohabitation, children and more, until the long-awaited citizenship. And even then, the interior minister can decide to disapprove the citizenship. The law preventing Palestinian family reunification sweepingly negates the right to citizenship, with very few exceptions. In other words, if over the coming weeks Ayelet Shaked fails to secure a majority to renew the law, the only thing that will change is that her ministry will have to deal with each citizenship request on a case-by-case basis.

The law is a source of misery for tens of thousands of families that live among us anyway. It detachedly seeks to enforce an imagined reality of "separation," as if negating the right to receive medical care from a national health fund will keep Palestinians out of Israel. Just a reminder: There is a large Palestinian Arab minority in Israel, and tens of thousands of Palestinian cross the Green Line every day to work. We are all fated to live in this one place, from the river to the sea. If we want to live and prosper here well into the future, we need to work with this reality, not with the fantasy that the Arabs will somehow disappear overnight.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Citizenship law or not, the Arabs won't disappear appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Sometimes, a major disaster can turn out to be a chance for rescue. The oil spill on Israel's coast, the worst ecological disaster the country has seen in 40 years, could be one. The findings are still unclear, but what is clear is that the massive oil leak has been catastrophic for animals and plant life on our coastline, and will dog us for months to come. The images of sea turtles suffocated by oil will stay with us for years.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

When I was starting out in the environmental movement some two decades ago, I missed something. As Dov Khenin describes it, we thought that if we only opened the polluters' eyes, we could create change. Because who isn't in favor of clean air and water? We were wrong. We fell into what ecologist Garrit Hardin termed back in 1968 "the tragedy of the commons." In capitalist reasoning, something has value when it belongs to someone. When someone belongs to everyone it belongs to no one.

The Baba Kama Tractate tells of a man who was cleaning his yard of stones, throwing them out into the street. A passing Hassid asked him, "Why are you throwing stones from a place that does not belong to you to a place that does? The strone-thrower dismissed him in wonder, until the day he tripped on one of the stones that was in the common area and was injured. The Talmud describes the responsible view of the common as "Hassidism."

We need to admit that Israel lags behind the western world in everything having to do with environmental responsibility and legislation. While European countries and even the Gulf emirates are working on plans to wean themselves off oil dependency, we are looking to invest in the "black gold" that is choking off our future. The existing oil laws do not allow close supervision of oil and gas drilling. Do you want to guess which tycoons blocked any changes to it?

A plan that costs nearly a billion shekels ($306 million) proposes building an oil pipeline from the bay of Eilat to the Mediterranean Sea, ending at the refinery area of Ashkelon. Rather than getting rid of the 4,000 dunams (988 acres) of one of the most ecologically dangerous places in Israel, the plan would massively increase the quantity of oil concentrated there. Rather than protect the Arava region, which already choked on some 5 million liters of oil that spilled into the Evrona nature reserve in 2014, the danger will increase manifold, at our expense.

Amazingly, environmentalism and the economy are now heading in the same direction. Solar energy and renewable energy in general are the hottest things in energy high-tech all over the world. But the "startup nation," awash in sunlight, is leaving the field to the leaders of future trends. The oil disaster is a slap in the face that should wake us all up.

The most-quoted Midrash tells of the task god gave to the first human. The order to protect the environment is not only a moral and legal obligation, or just an economic opportunity. It is also one of the most important Jewish values.

 Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post A change, or a bleak future appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The generally accepted view in Israel is that President Donald Trump's loss in the latest elections is good for the United States but bad for Israel.

 Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Besides relocating the US embassy to Jerusalem and brokering the Abraham Accords, Trump also showed support for Israel by withdrawing the US from the nuclear agreement with Iran. However, as soon as President Joe Biden took office, he announced his intentions to reinstate the deal without any changes.

So what does that mean for Israel? Is it good or bad news? Let's clarify.

Let me remind you of the basics. The agreement was reached between Iran and the United Nations Security Council's five permanent members, namely China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, along with Germany and the European Union. It limits Iran's ability to install centrifuges, enrich uranium and conduct nuclear research, but most importantly, it includes close monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency of all Iranian nuclear facilities.

This may come as a surprise, but many in the American defense establishment, even in the Trump administration, favored the agreement and opposed the withdrawal. Many Israeli defense officials were of the same opinion. Among them are dozens of formers generals in the US military, former Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs, and nuclear experts. When Gen. Gadi Eizenkot was the IDF chief of staff, he said that there were no signs that Iran was violating the clauses of the nuclear agreement.

One of the primary opponents of the deal is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What is his central argument? That the agreement is not comprehensive: it only delays Iran's military nuclear project but does not eliminate it. Also, it does not restrict Iran's military activities in the region or prevent it from developing ballistic missiles.

In May 2018, Trump withdrew from the agreement, which, among other things, came as a result of the pressure Netanyahu applied on the Republican Party. He managed to get Trump to buy into this controversial move, which came at the expense of polarizing American support for Israel and breaking the two countries' diplomatic norms. Was it worth the price?

Two years later, the effects of the withdrawal are clear: even after placing sanctions on Iran and on companies that trade with it, the move did not produce the results opposers of the agreement were hoping for. Iran's economy did not collapse. Internal resistance from the republic did not increase. Iran's supporters in the Middle East remain strong. All the while, America's standing in the world is dwindling. This is one of the reasons the US was given the cold shoulder by the members of the Security Council when it tried to extend the embargo on arms sales to Iran. The anti-nuclear deal view did not withstand the test of time.

The justified fear of a nuclear Iran does not belong to Netanyahu and Israel alone. It is shared by all countries in the Middle East and the world. Trump's withdrawal from the agreement weakened the pragmatic and moderate forces whose goal is to resolve problems in the agreement, in the region, and in the world.

 Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Israel not the only one troubled by Iran's belligerence appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The coronavirus pandemic is creating more and more opportunities for jealousy, greed, arrogance, and lies. The world's 2,000 leading billionaires have grown their personal wealth by 27.5% over the last few months. A new report from the US Federal Reserve reveals the 50 richest Americans are now as wealthy as half the country combined.

In Israel, there are bad trends, but there are also opportunities.

So how can we turn this crisis into an opportunity?

One answer is solidarity. The vaccination campaign has proven we are still able to trust, that we can put those at highest-risk first, and make the vaccine available to all. Solidarity is an incredible driving force for growth. It will bring the social and geographic periphery into the Israeli economy and the poor, the Haredim, the Arabs, and Mizrachi Jews into the circle of growth. It will do us all good and will give a huge boost to a shattered economy. This is not about compassion or kindness. This is something the whole of Israeli society needs. Societies with huge socioeconomic gaps are untrustworthy and abusive.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

While the health crisis is immense, the ecological crisis at our doorstep is far greater. Our responsibility to the coming generations obligates we transform the energy sector so that it is 100% sourced from renewable energy sources. This will lessen the harm done to our health and ensure a huge advantage to Israeli entrepreneurs in the fastest growing market in the Western world. The environment and health go hand in hand. Accelerated development and environmental damage are the reasons for the spread of new contagious diseases. An economy and an energy sector that benefit the environment and not just the bottom line are in the interest of public health.

While small businesses collapsed absent sufficient government support, cooperatives have thrived. Togetherness has an advantage in the financial world. The Bank of Israel used a number of tools to transfer billions of shekels to the banks and the capital market. The little guy and small businesses had a hard time receiving credit. Credit unions, public banks, and the expansion of postal banking services exist in many countries and are possible here.

Unionized labor provides further support. When the education minister and Finance Ministry tried to demand teachers take a pay cut and increase their workdays without compensation, the teachers' unions were there to prevent that from happening. There were those who condemned the move, even though they themselves would never agree to have their conditions changed. The organizations won. The recent trend of slandering workers' organizations is cultivated by individuals with vested interests who are interested in their workers being in positions of weakness and without rights.

This lockdown and the coming election will take a heavy economic toll. We should exit this crisis with fewer words and more action to ensure peace, empathy, and faith have the final say.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post 2021's projected growth engines appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Israel is undergoing the gravest political crisis in its history. The last two years have seen a never-ending election campaign that stems from the preoccupation with the political and legal fate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose involvement in corruption cases has led to prolonged public protests and the creation of new political entities.

  Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

But something is not working. Dialogue is essential, but it will always lack meaning if millions of Palestinians live under military rule; if hundreds of Israelis cannot get married in Israel, and if secular Israelis do not have access to public transportation on weekends and holidays.

There's meaning to taking a stance in the era of fake news, too. Israeli needs the Left. When I meet with the heads of ultra-Orthodox yeshivas, they scowl at the word "Left." For them, leftists are those who betray the public, who love Arabs more than Jews, who hate Judaism and whose values differ from their traditional views of family and community, and who would do anything just to oust Netanyahu.

But the Left embodies a holistic worldview, one that values mutual solidarity and takes human dignity seriously.

The Left values the economy. It does not seek to abolish the free market. Just the opposite, it supports small businesses and entrepreneurship.

The Left values peace. The use of force should be a last resort. Morality is important not only in treating others but also in understanding what the prolonged use of excessive force does to all of us, especially our youth.

The Left values civil liberties. It understands that there is room for diversity: that there is a place for an ultra-Orthodox community, but not at the expense of a secular one; that the government should also represent LGBTQ communities, abused women, and people with disabilities.

Israel's Left is plagued by a political crisis. Throughout history, it rejected entire sectors of Israeli society, Mizrahis, Arabs, Haredim. The Left created economic, political, and civic solutions for only a few. This Left departed from the government in 1977, when the Likud won the elections, ending almost 30 years of left-wing rule. But the Left has not lost hope.

The Left returned to power in the 1990s, with a strong and attractive proposal to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its emphasis on security and partnership with the religious sector, with the political and religious legitimization, resulted in the 1993 Oslo Accords. The peace camp set the political tone until Netanyahu came to power in 2009. But the popular peace camp suffered a fatal blow during the Second Intifada and became a faction of civil society and Western diplomacy. The two-state solution still exists as a model for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it no longer attracts the same public and political attention. The status quo that Netanyahu created is the clear winner.

What remains is very little political power. Some fragments of political parties tout "progressive" agendas by claiming to have a strong secular platform, environmental ideas, a slight focus on human rights, and "Anything but Bibi" aspirations.

The Left has been systematically trampled on and delegitimized. It has become Center-Left, but just like in the good old days, it still fails to cooperate with Mizrahis, Arabs, and the Haredim.

All Israeli prime ministers were affiliated with the Labor movement until 1977. The collapse of the Labor party is further proof that even such historical organizations can crumble if they lack direction and meaning.

The Right is winning because it has a clear and concise narrative. It focuses on power. The Right wants to exercise Jewish supremacy "from the river to the sea' by using military and economic power. The Right also manages to forge a political alliance with the ultra-Orthodox parties, giving them free rein when it comes to civic arrangements in religious areas.

The Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv conducted a survey that shows that more than 50% of Jews in Israel define themselves as rightists and only 13% say they are leftists. In 2020, it is convenient for most Israeli Jews to belong to the right-wing camp.

Polls report that the "Anything but Bibi" narrative actually bolsters the Right. There's a chance that those who challenge Netanyahu – Yamina leader Naftali Bennett, New Hope chief Gideon Sa'ar, Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Lieberman, and Telem's Moshe Ya'alon – will succeed in replacing him, but it is also possible that they will help the Likud to take complete control of the government.

The only way for the Left to become relevant again is to create a new narrative, one based on values of fairness and solidarity. It must be an expression of connection between us all, with economic and educational derivatives. The success of any company is measured by the degree of trust between its members. This is the secret of the Scandinavian societies, which are at the pinnacle of happiness and wealth. They should be our compass.

The new narrative also needs to be financially sharp. The coronavirus could have been the Left's opportunity to retake center stage.

The new narrative must address issues of defense and security. To be safe in the Middle East, we need to bring the vision of the Declaration of Independence into reality and reach out to our Arab neighbors. We need to find a suitable solution for the Palestinian people, with whom we share a common homeland. We need to use our natural resources to create a sustainable future rather than a quick profit for private shareholders.

Such a change does not happen on paper. Four things need to change: we need a new and much more diverse leadership; we need to change the language in a way that emphasizes the patriotic connection to Israeli society as a whole and the link to deep cultural and religious traditions; we need to change the content, to promote concrete proposals; we need to change the actions, to focus on the social and geographical peripheries in a reliable, ongoing and trustworthy field activity.

To imagine the future, the Left needs to establish a new political camp. One that Israel has never seen before.  There are no shortcuts. Without this vision, without this narrative, and without this footwork, the Left will continue to fail in its search for meaning.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Israel's Left has been rendered hollow appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The issue of human rights has a dubious reputation among some of us. In the "best" case, they are a matter for liberals, leftists, peaceniks and bleeding hearts. In the worst case, they run in conflict with everything that protects "us," a tool used by our enemies to undermine our security. Such an important worldview, it seems, has never had the misfortune of such terrible public relations.

The enemies of human rights the world over are politicians. Yitzhak Rabin said, "They have no High Court of Justice and no B'Tselem," when explaining the positive aspects of the Palestinian Authority. The detractors of peace point to human rights violations in the PA as an excuse. Politicians on the Right target human rights groups in Israel by presenting them as traitors.

 Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

We all know why. It isn't convenient when people champion the right to protest, whether those protesters are from the Left or the Right. It isn't convenient when prisoners' conditions, Shin Bet and police torture methods, over-policing in Arab and Ethiopian Israeli communities, discriminatory practices by the state, sexual harassment and racism are publicized. It isn't comfortable when the State of Israel needs to explain why it must demolish the homes of terrorists' families, a collective form of punishment whose effectiveness is debatable. It's not easy when there's a need to investigate the deaths of Palestinians, some of them minors. Human rights, it seems, are always for the oppressed and downtrodden.

Abraham was the first champion of human rights. When God revealed his plan to wipe Sodom and Gomorrah off the face of the earth, Abraham didn't cheer. He asked to make sure it wasn't collective punishment. He tried with all his might to stand against God's wrath and to plead his case. His standing is what made Abraham the patriarch of the three great monotheistic religions.

Human rights are sometimes denigrated as contradictory to Judaism, which emphasizes the individual's obligations in this world. The bridge connecting the discourse over human rights to the discourse about the obligations of a Jew isn't at all narrow. Our Jewish obligation is a defense of and a fight for the rights of everyone around us. When Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and many other American Jews rallied in support of the civil rights movement in the US, they did so by virtue of their Jewishness. A Jewish worldview dictates that the world is not forsaken. We are all obliged to take responsibility and to be accountable for our actions. Without human rights, the strong will dominate the weak. Today you have the power, which you exploit to the fullest. Tomorrow this power will be taken from you, and you and your children will be on the side of the downtrodden.

This Thursday, December 10, we will mark International Human Rights Day. On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It opens by stating: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." It states every person's right to life, liberty and security. It includes basic rights as a member of society and the right to "an existence worthy of human dignity." It concludes by stating that "everyone has duties to the community."

On the eve of International Human Rights Day, we will also light the first Hanukkah candle. Nothing could be more symbolic. Wherever a sense of responsibility exists, so does a fight for human rights. In a place where the outside world is not forsaken, there are human rights. In a place that insists upon the human rights of all people, there is light – which drives away much of the darkness.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Why 'human rights' has a bad reputation in Israel appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.