From Left to Right

INTRODUCTION

Some Israelis privately bemoan the passing of the "Old Israel" whereby a new society—different from the ones from which they had emigrated—would be constructed. Nostalgia aside, today's start-up nation proudly boasts innovation and entrepreneurship—values to be admired and emulated—yet the gap between the "haves" and "have nots" actually resembles that of western Europe. "Egalitarianism" is not a word to be mentioned in polite company.

The transition in Israel to a full-bloodied global capitalism occurred in the 1980s, influenced by Reaganomics and Thatcherism. Many were pleased to see the back of a Mapai-dominated command economy that practiced the economics of stagnation and an embedded byzantine bureaucracy. While Shimon Peres authored this transition in the 1980s, its underlying premise enhanced the transition from the ideological Left to the ideological Right between 1959 and 1983. Benjamin Netanyahu idealized and idolized the American model and left his opponents bereft of a plausible, ideological alternative.

A watershed in this transition occurred when Menahem Begin famously won the 1977 election as the head of Likud coalition of parties. At its inner core was the far Right Herut, which was estimated to have won only 20 out of the 43 seats that Likud had amassed. Herut by itself had only won 14 seats in the first Israeli election in 1949. Begin had shrewdly built a right-wing coalition, the Likud, based on private enterprise, promoted by the Liberals and defectors from Labor. He broadened this in government to include disillusioned and alienated Labor figures such as Moshe Dayan, Ariel Sharon, and Yigal Yadin—and cultivated the already radicalizing next generation of the National Religious Party. As the Right coalesced, the Left disintegrated.

CULTIVATING THE LIBERALS

In the 1950s, Begin had rejected several overtures from Mapai in order to create a clear alternative to socialist Zionism. It drew upon other national struggles—the Polish, the Italian, the Irish—and was underpinned by passion, tradition, and incendiary rhetoric to create a polarized opposite to the prevailing political wisdom.

Begin began to cultivate the General Zionists—the Polish Jewish middle class of the fourth Aliyah—initially as non-socialists. Their political fortunes were then in the ascendency until electoral reversals and an appetite for a return to power rendered them vulnerable to the charm and blandishments of Menahem Begin.

By the 1959 election, the General Zionists were internally split between the right-wing faction that won eight seats while the Progressives attained six. In May 1961 these two factions united as the Liberals. The Progressives were deeply opposed to any alignment with Begin's party because of Herut's aspirations for a Greater Israel and its refusal to join the Histadrut. They argued that "demagoguery and liberalism are a contradiction".

However, the new Liberal party improved its combined representation by only three seats in 1961. Herut remained static at 17—the same number as the Liberals. It was no resounding electoral success for the Liberals. Begin's approaches to them were still rebuffed. Begin persevered and responded in an article entitled "We have patience". It was clear, however, that together Herut and the Liberals possessed 34 seats and were now within striking distance of Mapai's 42.

Ben-Gurion understood the danger of a future right-wing coalition as far back as the early 1960s and wished to include the Liberals in a Mapai-led coalition. Levi Eshkol had even signed an agreement with the Liberals. The central committee of Mapai, however, was seduced by the prospect of a wider coalition with other socialist parties such as Ahdut Ha'avodah.

MAPAI'S DESCENT INTO THE WHIRLPOOL

In the 1960s Mapai gradually embarked on a political freefall due to Ben-Gurion's insistence on resurrecting the Lavon affair. This led to a split and the formation of Rafi in 1965 at the same time as the Liberals had finally entered into an electoral pact with Herut. While each party attained the same number of seats in 1961, Begin offered the Liberals disproportionately more advantageous places on a joint 1965 election list, to the detriment of...