Reviving Israel’s Left Will Take Decade
In a gloomy building behind a gray iron fence on Jerusalem’s Emek Refaim street, a group of intellectuals are holding court. They are dealing with the lost goblin of Israeli politics: the left.
The somewhat pretentious goal of the group is to revive the Israeli left, which collapsed 12 years ago following the failure of the Camp David peace talks and the eruption of the second intifada. This revival process is expected to last no less than a decade; and during that time, the revivalists will brain-storm and devise plans and policy positions suited to a resurgent left-wing camp. At the end of the period, these idealists hope, Israel will regain the political structure that characterized it for most of its life before the year 2000: a contested political arena divided into two large ideological camps, the left and right, each with a coherent world view.
The name of the new think tank committed to leftist renewal is Molad – The Center for Renewal of Democracy. Molad’s chairman is former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg. It is headed by two young people: Director Avner Inbar, a doctoral student in political philosophy at the University of Chicago, and research director Assaf Sharon, from Stanford University’s philosophy department.
The center is funded by left-liberal foundations and groups from the U.S. associated with the Democratic party.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
