A Lobour dove has suddenly become a serious contender for the party leadershp. But could he beat Sharon?
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1028185726586&p=1012571727102
Alessan? Anyone? Heeello…
Give me time, man. I’m working here, supposedly.
Actually, I’m still thinking this one over. You could say that I’m the Doper most qualified to deal with the situation - after all, not only am I Israeli, I also lived in Haifa for nineteen of my twenty-eight years, I voted for Mitzna twice, I’ve met the man on several occasions, and my father, who’s involved in municipal politics in a roundabout way, works with him fairly often. So I may have some stuff to say - but I’ll have to use some filters here, because there’s a certain level of personal involvement.
For the record, I like Mitzna. He’s very smart, extremely sharp, reasonably charismatic and pretty honest (for a politician). He comes across as a very intense, controlled and hyper-focused and also somewhat austere, no-nonsense and unsentimental - the type of politician who engenders huge amounts of loyalty and respect, but not actual love. He’s done a pretty good job with Haifa - kept the city running smoothly and relatively prosperously, despite large populations of Arabs and Russian immigrants, and despite the nasty recession the country’s in. On the other hand, he’s a bit of an autocrat, and he’s perhaps a bit too chummy with the building contractors who make up one of the city’s most powerful lobbies.
The interesting thing is – people in the know have been aware for some that Mitzna has been waiting for the right opportunity to enter national politics. I guess he found it.
Now, as for his future… first he has to take control of the Labor party, which could be the easiest thing in the world, or the hardest. Ever since the last elections, Labor has been in the crapper, and current polls predict it losing nearly a third of its strength. Part of this is because of the general shift of the public rightward, another part is defection of voters disgusted with its cooperation with Sharon – defection to other left-wing and centrist parties, mainly Tommy Lapid’s Shinui (a move strengthened by Labor’s apparent pandering to the ultra-orthodox). But the main reason is the erosion of Labor leadership and message. Barak slunk home in shame; Peres is an irrelevancy` Ben-Ami was shouldered out both by Ben-Eliezer and by the hatred of the Israeli-Arab community (he was Minister of Internal Security – i.e. Attorney General – during the awful and lethal riots of October 2000). Burg and Ramon have both stepped up to the bat and proved less than worthy, although Ramon still has illusions of adequacy. As for the party’s message – agenda – goal – platform, well… there isn’t one. The Laborites are either for Sharon or against Sharon; they have no actual vision of their own, or at least, no united vision. All they have is Benjamin Ben-Eliezer.
Now Ben-Eliezer – or Fuad, as most people call him – is an interesting case. In a nutshell, he’s a boss masquerading as a politician. He’s a classic party hack – a backslapper, a glad-handler, the kind of guy who knows the names of all his activists’ kids, who shows up at any wedding he’s invited to (including mine… hey, it’s a small country). He’s also devious, genially corrupt, completely lacking in charisma and television skills, and without vision, ideals or any of the other pesky details that make up a statesman. True, he’s done a decent job as Defense Minister, and his loyalty to his country is above reproach. He also – and this needs to be said – has a lot more experience in national-level government. When all’s said and done, the fact of the matter is that Fuad comes across as a guy who found himself in control of the Israeli left almost by accident, and he’s going to hold onto it with whatever he’s got.
Another thing – the “Barak Factor”. After the general fiasco that was Barak’s administration, the Labor party (and Israeli public in general) is somewhat wary of retired generals who start political careers from the top, and often fail quite miserably. Many see Mitzna as another one of those (I’ve already read commentary to the effect), conveniently ignoring his 9 years as mayor of Haifa… probably because they conveniently ignore Haifa, Israel’s third largest city on a regular basis anyway.
Sorry about that. Personal peeve.
So this is the situation in the Labor party – Mitzna is probably more qualified, and has a much better chance of beating Sharon in general elections` Ben-Eliezer, on the other hand, is already in power, and has near absolute control of the Labor party mechanism. If Mitzna wants to be Labor’s next candidate he’ll have to both receive endorsements from leading Labor politicians – something that’s alrwady started to happen – and more importantly, seize control of the party boss by boss, branch by branch and activist by activist, because Israeli party politics are won and lost in the street. He’s made some good first steps – Haifa is his – but he has a lot further to go.
He also has to see if his general political agenda, which is somewhat dovish, would be palatable to Labor voters. His main advantage over Fuad here is the fact that he actually has some sort of vision. As of now, he looks good, and he’s leading the polls. Everyone’s waiting for his first mistake.
As for going against Sharon… next post. OK?
Thank you for that very thoughtful response.
“Heeello…” was meant as a joke of course. But it worked!
Free Tigana!
Tigana?
To be honest, this played out more like a GQ than a GD thread. 
A quick reply:
First of all, if current polls are accurate, and there are no significant developments (e.g. a halt to the intifada together with a serious peace initiative, some major scandal/ blunder by Sharon), Labor doesn’t have much of a choice of winning the elections no matter who runs. The next elections are without direct election for the Prime Minister, so the voters only pick one party. The country has made a vast swing to the right, and the left is still pretty fragmented.
Mitzna might have a chance of gaining the leadership of the Labor party, but I can see a likely scenario where he takes the wind out of Ben-Eliezer’s sails, but when the public gets to know him more he’ll end up upseting some constiuency (either religious/ secular, left/right, immigrants/native), causing him to lose popularity.
We’ll have to wait and see…
Oh I hope he’s got a chance, I truly do.
Amen to that.
Alessan seemed about to post more, so in case he just forgot (or someone else have something to add), I’m bumping the topic.
Links for anybody else wondering who Amram Mitzna is. 
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/08/17/israel.out.of.left.field.ap/index.html
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/transcripts/2002/aug/020820.gradstein.html