A Vote for Labor is a Vote for Israeli Democracy

Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid party celebrated its first anniversary the other week. As absurd as it seems, that is quite an achievement.

It’s a shame that the Israel public has been so easily fooled into treating voting for the Knesset like making a choice at an ice cream parlor. There are so many options to choose from, the nuanced differences between them often negligible or simply fabricated. They have different faces and are painted up in different colors (though in the case of Kadima and Tzipi Livni's Hatnua even that is barely true). The national aspiration for stable, rational government has dissolved in face of the pomp and glitter of an entirely consumerist approach to democracy. I'm not sure who are more to blame: the egoists who flash fry new political parties like they are start-up companies knowing they will eventually sell out to the bidder with the deepest pockets, or the Israeli public for letting it happen in front of our noses, encouraging it even by offering up our precious votes. 

Here are a few key points to consider:

• A full 10 % of seats (12) in the current Knesset are held by parties that did NOT contend in the last elections (what?). One of those parties Atzmaut (Independence), holding 5 seats, will not contend in the coming elections, nor will its founder and leader, Ehud Barak.
• More than 1/6^th (23) seats could be won in the coming elections by parties that did not even exist two years ago (Hatnuah, Yesh Atid, Otzma LeYisrael, Eretz Chadasha, Am Shalem). Hatnuah, slated to win about 8-11 seats, did not even exist two months ago.
• Kadima was formed at the end of 2005 and less than 6 months later won 29 seats in the elections. Eight years later, according to some polls at least, the party is set to receive at best two mandates. With no historical or ideological foundation to stand on, we will not be seeing them in the next elections.
• Bayit HaYehudi, founded five years ago, holds three seats in the current Knesset. Their current leader has held that position for two months, and is set to bring them an additional ten seats in the coming election. A year ago he was a member of the Likud.

In the face of this sweeping whirlwind, it is no wonder that more than a quarter of Israelis, ten days before election day, still didn't know who they would be voting for—it's hard enough just to keep up with the names of all the parties and which leader belongs to which. I've had a number of conversations with Israeli-born acquaintances who in a matter of two weeks have told me about three different political parties that they are voting for, from as distant ideological poles as the left-wing Eretz Chadasha to the right wing religious Bayit Hayehudi (the same person had considered both of them as options).

Amid the debris of crumbling democratic rationality, one party stands alone as having the necessary experience to lead this country, and the true vision to justify it in doing so. Avoda, the Israeli Labor Party, formed in 1968 from the merger of three older parties: Ahdut Haavoda, Mapai, and Rafi, the first two having formed in 1919 and 1930 respectively, and both of them having formed from mergers of even older Labor Zionist political and youth groups dating back to the beginning of the 1900s. 

The Labor Zionist regime oversaw the establishment of the early pre-state agriculture and industry, absorbed the successive waves of olim, developed the infrastructure of the future state, established all the social, cultural and economic institutions upon which the state was to be founded, developed the Hagana , the earliest incarnation of the IDF. Under Labor Zionist leadership the Jewish community fought and won independence from the British and brought the dream of Jewish statehood to fruition. They went on to win the War of Independence, establish and defend the borders, and win another miracle victory in the Six Day War of 1967. The Labor establishment managed to create and develop a mighty military force feared by our enemies and revered throughout the world, while at the same time developing a system of public services, healthcare and culture that radiated light to the Jews and all people of the world.

Labor and its predecessors have provided 8 of this country's 12 prime ministers.

Simply no other party in the center-left bloc has the same historical clout to guide us through the many social, economic and strategic challenges that we face as a country now, and will face in the years ahead. Certainly no other party in the entire political gamut has the gumption to face said challenges while having us strive to be an exemplary state, a full member of the family of nations, accepted not for buckling to external influences, but for managing to uphold the principles of justice, equality, democracy and good governance in the face of grave and difficult obstacles.

Shelly Yachimovich has vowed not to join a government with Netanyahu and Likud Beitenu. This is because she is serious about either running the country, or leading a conscientious opposition. Labor will not become a flavor in an ice cream parlor, to be added and subtracted according to the whims of an ever-more sectorialized public. Every citizen serious about ousting Bibi and returning sanity to this country must resist the urge to vote for a niche, boutique party that looks nice today, but will vanish tomorrow like an ice cream cone under our Levantine sun. Only Labor seeks real responsibility for our country and our future. Choose whimsically and risk seeing your vote evaporate into nothing with a party that doesn't cross the threshold or will change its tune (and name) with the changing weather.

The law and my conscience allow me just one vote—that vote will be, has to be, for Labor.

 --Gabe