Yossi Sarid: Israel's fearless politician
Op-ed: The former Meretz chairman's voice, loud and clear and uncompromising, held up a cruel mirror to Israelis' face. He will be greatly missed.
Yossi Sarid was a fearless politician. Throughout his career, he said and did what he wanted, without any comfort considerations and without taking into account the potential damage to his party or to the political camp he headed.
He was cruel to the strong, including himself, and soft as butter towards the weak. The more lost, desperate the cause, the more it attracted Sarid with magic ropes. He was a team player, both in the Labor Party and in Meretz, but he was first of all a soloist.
And he spoke well and wrote well, two qualities which today's public discourse is missing so much. In accurate Hebrew, so rich in its sources, brilliant, profound. He said what he meant: That was why even people who disagreed with him could like him.
Like many others, he made his first steps in the political system as a spokesman. But very soon it turned out that he is at his best not when he phrases other people's statements, but when he expresses his own ideas in words.
He never had his own camp, his own circle. He didn’t built his power on the acceptable give-and-take of politics. He didn’t need it. It's only natural that there was never a blot on his character. He didn’t care about money. He didn’t care about power for the sake of power. He didn’t owe anyone anything.
We met many years ago, even before he became a politician and I became a journalist. We had a friendly relationship, but we were not close friends: Friendship between a politician and a journalist is a difficult thing, perhaps impossible. But I did get to listen to him quite a lot throughout the years, to follow his moves, to be impressed by his sharp mind.
Sarid's ability to turn a political event into a story, into a drama with a lesson at its side, was unusual. His wit was impressive, his cruelty was fascinating.
On one of the many flights to Cairo, in the midst of the process with began with the Oslo Agreement, the pilot welcomed "Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and his entourage and Minister Yossi Sarid and his entourage." Peres was surrounded by his people, Sarid arrived alone. There was no escape from concluding that we journalists were his entourage.
His aspiration for peace wasn't altruistic. Sarid wasn't a pacifist. His starting point was the State of Israel, its existential threats, the concern for its future. The vision was pragmatic, close to reality, non-messianic, free of romance. From this aspect, at least, he was and remained throughout his career within the central stream of the Labor Movement.
The crisis suffered by the Left after the failure of the Camp David talks in 2000 affected him too. The hope to divert the State's history in a different direction was dashed. It seems the feeling of a missed opportunity did let go of him for the next 15 years. He saw his hard work go down the drain, and wasn't happy about it.
He had another side: Great sensitivity to injustice, especially injustice towards individuals, but also injustice towards communities, sectors, entire populations. And a weariless, very non-political urge to expose everything he saw as a lie and as hypocrisy.
His voice, loud and clear and uncompromising, held up a cruel mirror to Israelis' face. He will be greatly missed.
