Mapam
The Mapam - United Labor Party ( hebrew מפ״ם - מפלגת הפועלים המאוחדת Mifleget HaPoʿalim HaMeʾuchedet ) was a left-wing Zionist party in Israel that existed from 1948 to 1996. She represented Marxist and later social democratic positions and was associated with the HaSchomer HaTzaʿir youth movement . It was succeeded by the Meretz party .
history
The Mapam was created on January 23, 1948 from the merger of the workers' party HaSchomer HaTzaʿir and Achdut haAwoda - Poalei Tzion . It was the party of the left kibbutz movement (Kibbutz HaArtzi) . HaSchomer HaTzaʿir ("The Young Guardian") had already formed as a youth organization in 1913 (from 1919 in Palestine), but in 1946 also founded a party of the same name. Achdut haAwoda - Poalei Tzion emerged in 1946 from the merger of the Mapai spin-off Achdut haAwoda ("unity of work") with the left wing of Poale Zion . In addition, former fighters of the elite paramilitary unit Palmach, which was disbanded in 1948, had a great influence on the party. The first general secretary was Meir Jaʿari , who led the party until 1973. In the first Knesset election in January 1949 , Mapam received 14.7% of the vote and 19 of the 120 seats in parliament. Until the mid-1950s, it was the second largest party in Israel after the Mapai. Rostam Bastuni , who became the first Arab Israeli to join the Knesset in 1951 , was a member of the Mapam.
Originally, the Mapam was oriented towards the Stalinist Soviet Union , which it identified as the true antithesis of fascism . This changed in 1952 with the anti - Semitic Slansky trial , which shook hopes for support from the USSR in Israel. At the show trial in which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia accused, imprisoned or liquidated 14 leading members, including 11 Jews, the Mapam and its representative Mordechai Oren were accused of participating in a Zionist conspiracy in Prague . After the Prague trials and later Khrushchev's secret speech about the crimes of Stalin , the Mapam moved away from the communist positions and became a more moderate, social democratic party. A large number of Mapam leaders, including Moshe Sneh , left the party in 1952, temporarily formed a “left-wing faction” and then joined the Communist Party (Maki). In 1954, a rather "right" wing of the Mapam - around Jitzchak Tabenkin , Jisra'el Bar Jehuda , Jitzchak Ben Aharon and Jigal Allon - split off and formed the Achdut haAwoda ("unity of work") party.
The Mapam was in the opposition until December 1955, when it participated as a junior partner in the Mapai-led cabinet of Ben-Gurion V , in which Mordechaj Bentov and Yisrael Barsilai served as ministers for development and health, respectively. Mapam remained in government until 1961. During this time, the party recorded election results around 7 percent and was mostly represented by nine MPs in the Knesset.
In 1969, Mapam joined the electoral alliance HaMaʿarach ("the connection") with the Labor Party ( Avoda ) as a smaller partner, in which the previous rival Mapai and Achdut haAwoda had merged the year before. For the next 15 years the Mapam MPs sat in the Knesset in a joint HaMaʿarach faction and were represented in the governments of Golda Meir and Yitzchak Rabin until 1977 . Meir Talmi replaced Jaʿari as general secretary of the party in 1973. After 1977 the left bloc and with it Mapam were in opposition to the governments of the right Likud. Viktor Schem-Tow took over the leadership of the party in 1979.
After the 1984 election , the Mapam left the Labor Party in protest of Shimon Peres ' decision to form a "government of national unity" with the Likud. The six Mapam MPs again formed their own parliamentary group. In the 1988 Knesset election , Mapam ran as an independent party, but received only 2.5% of the vote and three seats. For the 1992 election , the Mapam allied itself with the civil rights movement Ratz and the liberal Schinui to form the electoral coalition Meretz , which represents the Israeli peace camp. The Mapam merged in 1996 into the Meretz political party, which changed its name to Meretz-Jachad in 2004 after another merger .
Web links
- Noam Sheizaf: Socialist Universalism or National Project? A look at the history of left parties in Israel. In: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Israel Office. 2016, accessed May 4, 2017 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mordecai Naor: Eretz Israel. Könemann, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-89508-594-4 , p. 258.
- ↑ Noam Sheizaf: Socialist universalism or national project? A look at the history of left parties in Israel. In: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Israel Office. 2016, accessed May 4, 2017 .