Is any leader good enough for Israel’s center-left?

Last week I asked here Where is the Next Netanyahu?

It appears that the opposition will have a tough time beating Netanyahu. Maybe it lacks the right candidate, but it is more likely that it lacks the right worldview. Netanyahu keeps winning, among other things, because the public agrees with him – as odd as that might sound to his political opponents, in Israel and abroad. That is why the lack of attractive opposition candidates is not the interesting story when it comes to the state of Israeli leadership. The interesting story concerns the lack of viable options from within the coalition: Israel, if it continues believing what it believes today, won’t eventually replace Netanyahu with an anti-Netanyahu, it will replace him with a new-Netanyahu. A newer model. A fresher model. With a similar political worldview.

Today I will offer an update based on two developments.

The first one is the decision by Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to officially close the case against former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi in the so-called “Harpaz affair.” Ashkenazi was for a long time a suspect in a case concerning the race to the nomination of his successor as IDF Chief of Staff several years ago.

He is now – at least for some time – the new sought-after potential leader of the anti-Netanyahu opposition. “Wooed by two parties,” the Labor party and centrist Yesh Atid, Ashkenazi seems to be taking his time before any decision will be made. He has the charisma of a silent, macho warrior. He has experience. He has sharp political elbows and many friends (and also enemies). He knows that in the last three decades the only times in which a left-of-center leader was able to take the government away from the right were when the center-left had a candidate much like him: the late Yitzhak Rabin, and Ehud Barak. Both warriors, both former chiefs of staff of the IDF.

Ashkenazi would be welcome as the number two of both Labor’s Herzog and Yesh Atid’s Lapid. But he probably thinks he should be the number one leader of any party that gets to recruit him. Amir Peretz, of the Labor party, was Defense Minister and appointed Ashkenazi to be his Director General and later the IDF’s Chief of Staff. He could be the man that crowns Ashkenazi and guides him through the treacherous waters of politics.

Ashkenazi could be it. That is, if the Israeli center-left still wants it.

Now I’ll turn to the second part of the update: I do not usually encourage my readers to read editorials of newspapers, and surely not the editorials of Haaretz. But today I will suggest that you read it, because whether you agree or disagree with its content, this editorial is an excellent manifestation of the wide gap between Israel’s hard left (which Haaretz represents) and Israel’s mainstream.

The editorial attacks Labor leader Yitzhak Herzog – Israel’s leader of the opposition – for being, well, racist, right wing, and a Netanyahu-like political leader. Herzog, in recent weeks, has intensified his attacks on Netanyahu and his government and called for Israel to “separate from the Palestinians,” but apparently nothing is good enough for some people:

Anyone who manages to overcome the revulsion Herzog’s racist words evoke, in an effort to focus on the content of his message, is in for disappointment. His proposal is no more than a collection of clichés that seem to have been assembled from the talking points of Netanyahu in the best case and by the Facebook posts of Yair Lapid in the worst case. It appears that Herzog’s reading of the situation is no different than Netanyahu’s: “We’re in the midst of a third intifada;” “an ISIS spirit;” “effective ways to deal with Hamas and incitement.”

Here is the body count: Netanyahu and his coalition partners are all, obviously, unacceptable to the left. Lapid, the declared centrist, is also unacceptable. Herzog, the leader of the largest left-of-center party, is also unacceptable. This leaves the left with Meretz (5 Knesset seats) and the United Arab Party (13 Knesset seats).

Here is the problem, unmasked: If Lapid, Herzog and their friends cannot even hope to count on the more leftist parties and voters as potential members of a center-left coalition – then there is no center-left coalition to be talked about. Ashkenazi or no Ashkenazi, the center-left camp is incoherent and fractured to an extent that makes any coalition that does not include right-wing and\or Haredi partners almost impossible to imagine.

The vicious attack on Herzog also reveals the painfully short time that any leader of the Labor Party gets before he is cast aside to make way for a newer, shinier model of something. Yes, Ashkenazi could be the next Barak – but it should be noted that Barak was not the most successful Israeli PM of all time, partially because of his lack of political finesse.

And Ashkenazi could also be the next Yitzhak Mordechai, the next Amnon Shahak, the next Ami Ayalon, the next Amram Mitzna, the next Dan Halutz – all worthy military leaders that for brief moments seemed like the next leader of the center-left camp. They never made it. Mordechai and Shahak formed a party that was a great disappointment (they lost to Barak). Ayalon failed to become the leader of the Labor Party. Mitzna was defeated by Ariel Sharon. Halutz joined Kadima and quickly left.

So it is quite possible that Ashkenazi’s best days as a yet-to-be-a-politician are now.