Is Israel the Likud Party, the party of the Conservatives, is dominant. But something is changing in the body of this organism, as Mazal Mualem of AL Monitor reports:
Talking to Al-Monitor, the husband said that most of his close friends, who all live in Tel Aviv, have joined the Likud Party in the last few months. “We all identify with the center-left. I am actually thinking of voting for Meretz in the next election. We just reached the conclusion that the Likud will remain in power in the years to come, so we want to influence it from the inside. We want to choose who will be on its Knesset list and promote our own interests,” he said.
He insisted on anonymity, since the party is taking a variety of measures to block the New Likud phenomenon. Likud officials claim that it is actually a hostile takeover of the party and part of an attempt to remove its leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Aug. 14, Maariv newspaper reported that the Likud Party decided to end online registration for the party on its website. In the next few days, the party’s internal court will decide whether to invalidate the party credentials of several prominent members of the New Likud for allegedly acting against the Likud Party from the inside.
This has happened before, albeit from the other side:
The New Likud phenomenon is reminiscent of the Feiglinites, a far-right group that attempted to take over the Likud in the early 2000s to prevent diplomatic concessions that would include a withdrawal from some of the territories. Then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and later Netanyahu, fought against them, claiming that they were engaged in a hostile takeover of the party and its institutions. The group had about 7,000 members in its heyday, and it is believed that many of them voted for other parties, mainly on the far right. Despite their strength within the party, the Feiglinites had a hard time getting their leader Moshe Feiglin into the Knesset in the 2013 election.
Though the Feiglinites began as a foreign element within the Likud, over time they became an integral part of the party landscape. This is because many Knesset members asked for their support in the primaries. As far as results, however, the group did not achieve its objectives; it failed to prevent the 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip and had no real impact on the party’s agenda. It fell apart before the last election, and most of its members left the Likud.
I suspect a history of the GOP would be similar in approach – more and more conservative people joining the party and then forcing out the members already there, aka the RINO approach. In this way the prestige and moral position of the party is assumed by those who haven’t earned it – and we see that today with the the current GOP Congressional leadership, being both extremist compared to their forebears, as well as bloody incompetent.
The problem lies in that parties are perceived to be composed of relatively permanent attributes, but in reality they are truly just the results of their membership’s leanings. Change the membership, change the party. But the typical citizen hasn’t the time or inclination to monitor the parties and its positions and doesn’t realize they may be slowly changing as the years pass.
Democracy is the right to take part in government – if you can find the time.
