Leftist lies killed Meretz

Nobody cares about Meretz because we’re fed up with false promises of peace
Uri Orbach

I was glad to see this week that nobody cares about the Meretz party. Yossi Beilin is gone, Haim Oron will replace him, and a handful of Knesset seats will continue to sell their spoiled political goods under the banner of, in one way or another, “land for peace.”

The common analysis argues that Meretz’s political failure is actually inherent in its ideological success. Now, when both Kadima and Labor and even Likud adopted Meretz’s ideas, the public is no longer interested in the party that promoted these ideas for years.

Those who want to get Meretz’s vision no longer need to cling to the successors of Shulamit Aloni and Yossi Sarid, but rather, can do it from the heart of the consensus via sister parties such as Kadima and Labor. Meretz is dead, but Olmert and Barak carry on.

This analysis has much truth to it, but not the entire truth. Meretz was deserted by most of its voters because hundreds of thousands of Israelis stopped believing that we can make peace with the Palestinians.

Ever since the Oslo Accords, the number of Israelis who think that we should separate from the Arabs and from territory in Judea and Samaria has grown, but the number of citizens who think this will bring peace has declined.

Meretz did not only sell us the vision of ending the occupation over the years. It promoted, with massive media support, the terrible lie that the settlements are the root of the problem and that withdrawing from the territories would lead to calm and peace. Regrettably for us, Meretz and the Labor party attempted to realize this vision, and this exacted a heavy human toll on us.

Ariel Sharon made do with uprooting communities not for the sake of peace, yet this tactic too brought only blood and fire to Sderot and Ashkelon.

Nobody to talk to

Therefore, when Meretz members try to understand why nobody wants them, they should look in the mirror. Their failure did not only come about because they managed to instill the idea of withdrawal in other parties, but also because they promised that peace was at our gates. If only we withdraw here and give up something there, the Palestinians will stop fighting us.

Bitter reality proved to most of the Israeli public, certainly the Jewish one, that there is truly “nobody to talk to.” It happened because the ideas promoted by Meretz and the Left were tried on people. Beilin and Oron and Ran Cohen can continue feeling sorry for themselves and tell everyone that they were always right. Yet the truth is that Meretz is dying out not because of its truths, but rather, because of the lies it marketed to us.