The ideological evolution of the Israeli left contains a profound economic paradox. In contemporary political discourse, particularly among the self-styled liberal intelligentsia writing for outlets like Haaretz, intense moral outrage is frequently directed at any expansion of the settlement enterprise. A prime example is the fierce pushback against a plan by an Israeli socialist youth movement to found a new kibbutz-style community in the Jordan Valley. Commentators viewed such initiatives as an intolerable expansion of the occupation and a betrayal of progressive values – the Haaretz editorial read: “Leftists aren’t settlers. The place of the left is in a determined struggle against all settlements.”

It’s comfortable to write this from a nice office in Tel Aviv. Yet, in its rush to condemn the geopolitics of the West Bank, Haaretz ignores the reality that the heavily subsidized settlement enterprise functions as a highly socialist economic ecosystem, while Israel proper has devolved into a hyper-capitalist playground of exorbitant rents and crushing living costs. How can cosmopolitan Israeli “leftists” be so divorced from the economic roots of the term? This blind spot stems from a fundamental misunderstanding prevalent in Western and Israeli progressive circles: the false conflation of economic socialism........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)