Why does the Right Keep Turning Left?

By Moshe Feiglin

7 Av, 5763 (August 5, '03)

Excerpted from Moshe Feiglin's book, "The War of Dreams"

What happened to Sharon?

That is not a new question. The Right has often asked it in various forms: After Begin destroyed Yamit, after Netanyahu surrendered most of Hebron to the Arabs, and again and again every time the National Camp seems to lose its way.

Usually, the Right tries to find the answer on the personal plane: Begin was tired, Bibi is not dependable, Sharon wants to enter history or is influenced by his sons. Every right-wing leader and his weaknesses…every right-wing leader and his own ideological collapse. But even if Sharon were to be replaced by one of the major Likud politicians today, we would also have to search for the personal reason that caused him, as well, to implement the ideology of the radical Left. We wouldn't even have to bridge such a blatant discrepancy between his past declarations and actions and his present policies, as is the case with Sharon.

So what is it about the Likud that causes its leaders to veer sharply to the Left after they are elected?

The Left's answer to this question is simple and, on the surface, convincing: Reality. In order to be elected, the Likud's leaders can rant and rave about Israel's security. But when they are already in office, things look a bit different…

That may sound convincing, but the path taken by the Left has proved to be patently unrealistic. The ideology of the Left has caused Israel's situation to deteriorate to the point of tangible existential danger in all the major areas of Israeli life: security, economy, society and most important – the very will to exist as a nation. The Israeli public is showing increasingly worrisome signs of apathy. In the last elections, the Israelis did not elect the Right. They simply opened their eyes momentarily and fled from the Left in fright.

If so, the question becomes even more potent: If the Left's path is not realistic, why do the Right's leaders cling to it?

The basic answer is that there is simply no other path available today. To be more precise: There is no national goal today other than the goal that the Left has fashioned. It is not that the Likud has not heard of other ideologies. The Likud Constitution itself delineates a political direction diametrically opposed to the path upon which Sharon leads us:

Safguarding the right of the Jewish Nation to the Land of Israel as an eternal and inalienable right, perseverance in the settlement and development of all parts of the Land of Israel and applying sovereignty over them. (The Likud Constitution, Chapter 2, Goals).

But in order to tread on this political path, our national goals must be defined – and that is the great difference between the Left and the Right. There is complete correlation between the Left's national goal and its policies. The Right, however, is in a state of denial as to its own ideological goal. Consequently, when the Right's leaders are elected, they find themselves with irrelevant policies.

The difference between the Likudnik and Laborite revolves around the difference of identity. While a person from the National Camp fashions his worldview around his national identity, the person from the Peace Camp attempts to blur his identity and opts for universal brotherhood.

Both camps, though, have unequivocally accepted that Israel's national goal is peace. By definition, this goal expresses the universal worldview of the Left. The National Camp – from Beitar through Religious Zionism -- has essentially surrendered its ideology and national goal. The National Camp did not consolidate Israel's national identity around its Land and values as a preliminary stage to its focus on the nations of the world. Instead, it adopted Leftist concepts that focus first and foremost on the nations of the world as a stage in blurring Jewish national identity.

Consequently, when the Likud's leaders are elected, they find themselves in a Catch-22: If we define our national aspiration as peace, the goals of the National Camp become irrelevant. Bereft of a defined national goal and clarity, the rightist leaders hurry to adopt the policies of the Left.