Yair Golan's Missed Opportunity

Interests, sweet talk, and political promises broken without blinking have always been the lot of Israeli politics, both right and left. Benjamin Netanyahu did this to Nir Barkat and Gal Hirsch in 2020, and is currently on the verge of a political drama with the announcement of reserved spots for three senior ministers — Israel Katz, Haim Katz, and Gideon Sa'ar — who may be displaced due to internal party anger.

The other side is not free of such games either: the elders of the tribe surely remember the move by the late Shimon Peres in the early nineties, which received the nickname "the stinking trick" from the late Yitzhak Rabin, in which portfolios and budgets were promised to the Haredi factions in exchange for their support in toppling the Shamir government. These promises evaporated when the agreements collapsed and Peres was left without a majority. In 1999, immediately after being elected Prime Minister, Ehud Barak broke a signed promise to Yitzhak Mordechai to receive the Defense Ministry and kept the position for himself. He also prevented Shimon Peres from receiving the promised Foreign Ministry in favor of David Levy, in what was defined as a political humiliation.

Yair Golan and his party seek to present a governing and leadership alternative to lift a public that for years has not believed the promises of its elected officials. It starts with keeping one's word to a mother, a single parent from Ofakim, who not long ago lifted the spirits of an entire public. And yet, the story of the cancellation of the reserved spot for Einav Zangauker in the Democrats party after it was promised to her by party leader Yair Golan is particularly disappointing. It is a personal injustice to her, but also a political injustice to the voters, who were not given the opportunity to vote for Zangauker in the primaries and to bring her into the renewed version of the party.

True, Zangauker, the mother of hostage survivor Matan Zangauker who became the face of the struggle for the return of the hostages, does not have a parliamentary background. We do not know her views on the settlements or public education. But what we do know: within the pool of voters for the Democrats party, Zangauker is a much broader consensus than other worthy candidates who entered the list. Among many left-wing voters, Einav is a symbol, or at the very least the closest thing to a symbol that left-wing voters have had in years.

Integrating her into the party would have been a statement. A statement that the party believes Zangauker symbolizes courage, determination, steadfastness, and mutual responsibility. And by the way, what is more left-wing than being a symbol both for Israelis and for Palestinians in Gaza, who called Zangauker during the days of the struggle "Umm Kabira" (Great Mother)? Food for thought. Zangauker did the incredible when she left the Netanyahu camp and became the most prominent fighter against him. It would not be an exaggeration to say that such courage is hard to find, perhaps not even among the party members.