‘Countries make mistakes’: Israel’s Left believes it can regain control

Meretz councillor LAURA WHARTON doesn’t expect her party will rise from the ashes, but she believes the Left and Centre will move together to reclaim Israel’s government.

When Laura Wharton was a young child in the US, the Vietnam War was raging.

“It seemed like we were doing outrageous things all the time – and we were. But the country returned to itself at some point. Countries make mistakes.”

Now Wharton, who heads Israel’s social democratic party Meretz on the Jerusalem municipality, has seen her country make what she believes is a “terrible mistake”. She describes the far-Right partners in the new coalition as composed of “messianic barbarians, convicted criminals and racists”.

But the veteran social justice advocate, who migrated to Israel as a young woman, has faith Israel will return to itself, and the Centre will combine with the Left to oust a government beholden to ultra-nationalist and Haredi coalition partners.  

Wharton points out that while the outcome of the recent election has delivered a far-Right coalition, a relatively small change could have resulted in a very different government.

“If you do the numbers, Netanyahu only got 48% of the votes because there were so many votes lost [by small parties that did not make the threshold]. My party alone lost 150,000 votes.”

Wharton is frank that she has seen Meretz dissolve on her watch. At its peak in 1992, the party, which runs on a platform of social democracy, secularism, and a two-state solution, had 12 seats in the Knesset. At the recent election it did not reach the 3.25% threshold required to gain a single seat.