How politics is redefining 'left' and 'right' in Israel
Israel's political right and left were once defined by their approach to the Palestinian issue, but now the distinction is being applied to almost every area of debate.
The brouhaha over the speech by Israel Defense Forces Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan — which continues to reverberate even after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on May 10 that it is "behind us" — proves that something has gone deeply wrong with the traditional division between Israel's political right and left.
Golan picked a problematic day on which to make his comments, May 4, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, and his hard-hitting comparison between 1930s European Nazism and current trends in Israeli society stung. The remarks themselves should have been a matter of course in the kind of democratic society that Israel aspires to be.
