Reacting to Rosner’s ‘Who Killed the Israeli Left?’

I know I should be writing a letter to the editor about why I don’t agree with Shmuel Rosner’s opinion piece, but I’m doing this instead. Rosner is wrong. His blog is simple minded.

First of all, the Israeli Left is not dead, it is wounded and limping. Second, there are many reasons why this is so, but it certainly is not because the Israeli Left is not part of the Israeli family. Third, consider that one million Russian immigrants disenchanted with one extreme form of a Leftist government became new Israeli citizens in the last decades. Fourth, consider that a mainstay of Israel’s Left, the kibbutz movement, is not what it was, and I could go on. Shmuel Rosner seems to be determined to bury the Israeli Left; we should read what he has to say and then seriously engage with that point of view (click on his title): Who Killed the Israeli Left?

This is how J Street’s daily News Roundup summarizes Chemi Shalev’s reaction in Ha’aretz to Rosner’s piece:

The ‘leftists are disloyal’ canard makes it to the New York Times

Responding to Shmuel Rosner, Chemi Shalev says, “Yes, there are those on the fringes of the anti-Zionist left who are alienated from mainstream Israeli society, as Rosner describes, as well as newly disaffected leftists who are questioning their own commitment to Israel in the wake of the recent carnage in Gaza and the growing right wing intolerance towards their views. But they are a drop in the bucket compared to the legions of racist and anti-democratic agitators who increasingly set the tone in Israel’s ruling coalition and in its public and media discourse.”