Israel's opposition leader challenged from all sides
Labor Party head and opposition chair Isaac Herzog is finding himself on shaky ground, coping with a corruption investigation that rivals believe is damaging to the party.
The latest edition of The Economist dedicated an article to the chairman of the Israeli opposition, Knesset member Isaac Herzog. The headline was phrased as an almost rhetorical question: "Curtains for Herzog?" The article itself described him as a politician whose fate has been sealed, an opposition leader who has failed to provide an alternative to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and whose party, Labor, is unable to present a coherent and effective alternative to Netanyahu’s Likud. In short, an ideal opposition chairman for Netanyahu.
For Herzog, an avid reader of opinion pieces in the world’s major newspapers, this one was particularly stinging. It presented a miserable image of Herzog as seen by foreigners who have no axe to grind and who just a year ago considered him a possible candidate to bring down Netanyahu’s regime.
A day before the article came out, Herzog was confronted with a hard-hitting April 21 Haaretz editorial that simply called for him to be replaced. The reason: his troubling and apologetic remark at a political rally in the town of Ashkelon. He said that the public perceives Labor as a party that "always loves Arabs." This unfortunate comment, which seems to have been designed to enhance Herzog’s efforts to pull the Labor party to the right and plug the drain of its supporters to the centrist Yesh Atid party of Yair Lapid, was damaging. It exposed a loss of direction and confusion within the main Israeli center-left party and presented Herzog as a desparate man, days after he was questioned by police on suspicion of campaign funding fraud. The storm generated by his remark, which also drew fire from within his own party, only intensified calls for him to quit or to suspend himself as long as he is under investigation.
Nonetheless, at the beginning of the week, fate seemed to be smiling faintly in Herzog’s direction. It seemed the chairman of the Zionist Camp could breathe easy as far as a criminal indictment goes. Based on police leaks on April 24, there may be insufficient evidence for an indictment and the police intends to recommend that the case against Herzog be dropped.
