Interview with Zehava Galon, head of Meretz This is a terrific piece about Zehava Galon, the new head of the Meretz party in Israel. Some of you met her a few months ago. She is almost the last hope…. I no longer know what will help, but I am going on the (formerly Meretz USA, now Partners for Progressive Israel) Israel Symposium. Read about her. Think about coming with us, Oct. 20-27th. When things look this bad, as the Chinese say, and I’m paraphrasing, it is surely a time for opportunities.–Lilly Meretz leader Zahava Gal-On is not looking to be loved She’s proud to be an outspoken leftist, even if it annoys politicians, settlers and army officers alike. By Neri Livneh | Jul.12, 2012 [The following is an abbreviated version of a long article available at the Haaretz website by registration or subscription only.] …. “It’s pretty common for people who meet me face to face to be amazed that I’m not scary and that I’m actually nice,” Gal-On told me. … [But] Gal-On apparently intends to keep “annoying” everyone. That’s who she is: an avowed leftist and secular, a fighter for human rights, an opponent of the occupation, and a supporter of social justice who opposes religious coercion. …. There are people in the party she heads who are perceived as less annoying because they don’t insist on the whole “package”: Nitzan Horowitz focuses mainly on green issues, while Ilan Gilon, an amiable social justice activist, is perceived as being “one of the people” more than she is. Meanwhile, Gal-On insists on firmly expressing her views on every controversial issue, and in a voice that, for some reason, really seems to bug men in particular. … …. in 2011, Gal-On returned to the Knesset, and during that year was elected to lead Meretz: a classic leftist who sees the struggle for social justice also as a fight against the occupation, against the violation of Palestinian human rights, against continued illegal construction in the territories and excessive budgetary allotments to the ultra-Orthodox. …. “As head of Meretz, I am putting forward a comprehensive worldview. I think the left has an opportunity; Meretz has doubled its strength in the polls. They’re talking about six seats. I think Meretz has the chance to get 10. I think leftists didn’t vote for Meretz last time because they voted for Kadima in order to stop Bibi [Netanyahu], and now they see, especially after [Shaul] Mofaz’s rotten maneuver, that Kadima is essentially a satellite party of Bibi. People who voted for Barak were disappointed, too.” But they can also vote for Labor headed by Shelly Yacimovich. “Not now, not after Shelly Yacimovich called Labor a centrist party and said, ‘Yes, borders are important but the state is more important.’ And I’m saying that Labor has already done more than just look a bit to the right; it’s already made a sharp turn. Besides, Labor was a partner in all of the coalitions lead by right-wing parties and Shelly Yacimovich has also said that she would not rule out being in a coalition with right-wing parties. “Therefore I see Meretz as the sole Zionist leftist party. I like to say that the left has Meretz and the left has a leader and Meretz is the leader of the left. The pre-election polls we did showed that there are a half-million people who subscribe to Meretz’s positions and this means that the public support for the left’s positions is a lot larger than its representation in the Knesset. I want to make Meretz’s list a place for fighters. Leftists who aren’t ashamed to say that they’re leftists. Fighters.” Aloni’s successor In conversation, Gal-On is just as much a natural listener as she is a talker. She exudes empathy and has tremendous reserves of patience, which helps to explain how she survived in the political wilderness outside the Knesset, and why she makes no effort to temper her ideology in order to curry favor with the public. One source of this courage may be her tight-knit family and her very stable and supportive marriage, in addition to her wide circle of friends, and her awareness that there is life beyond politics. She is an intelligent woman with a sense of humor, with whom it is a pleasure to discuss any subject, from buying shoes to great literature − and especially the movies, which she and her husband go to see at every opportunity. She is an avid reader, is very close to her two sons and her brother, looks after her widower father, and between the faction meetings, the long days at the Knesset, the trips to settlements and all the media interviews, she still always finds time to have her hair done. Due to unexpected interruptions on her part and mine − which included hospital stays, political revolutions involving Netanyahu’s huge coalition, as well as the death of Gal-On’s mother − our encounters were spread out over a four-month period. … at a breakfast at the home of Shulamit Aloni on the occasion of International Women’s Day, Aloni congratulated Gal-On on being elected head of Meretz and lavishly praised her as a worthy successor…. In Aloni’s lovely garden, surrounded by several dozen rather opinionated women, Gal-On truly seemed the embodiment of the “international woman” whom the day was meant to honor. Her dedicated and tenacious activity over the years on behalf of every issue related to women’s status cannot be exaggerated. A few days later, Gal-On’s mother passed away, so … we met was during the shivah, in Gal-On’s spacious apartment in Petah Tikva, which was mobbed with guests, including an array of political figures, some from rival parties, such as Finance Committee Moshe Gafni, with whom Gal-On frequently spars in the Knesset. “Political differences aside, I have good relationships with most of the Knesset members,” she says. You can be the friend of people with extreme right-wing views or with ultra- Orthodox men who won’t shake your hand? “No, I’m friends with my friends, and most of them have views that are quite similar to mine, but I certainly can maintain a friendly relationship and courteous relations with people whose views are very different from mine.” And where is the boundary? If a person is a racist or issues calls for violence − that doesn’t get in the way of your friendship? Is there no one you won’t speak with? “There is. Michael Ben-Ari. I don’t speak with him or about him. When I came into the Knesset I said there is one MK about whom and with whom I won’t speak. He is worse than [the late extremist Rabbi Meir] Kahane. He is the worst product of Kahane and he managed to enter the Knesset through the front door, and this is appalling. For years, when Kahane got up to speak, other MKs left the hall, but today Ben-Ari receives legitimation. He is the worst combination of racism, messianism and someone who calls for violence.” …. Zahava Gal-On, 56, grew up in the Petah Tikva housing project where her father still lives, but was born in Vilnius and came to Israel with her parents, Aryeh and Yaffa Schnipitzky, when she was four. “The amazing thing is that three languages were spoken in our home − Yiddish, Polish and Russian − and I never spoke any of them until 1990, when all my cousins from Russia came and I stood there in the airport and suddenly found myself speaking Russian to them.” When she arrived here as a child, the family lived in a transit camp: “I remember the huts, everyone there was a new immigrant, it was a real ingathering of the exiles. Everyone had the same status and spoke many languages. I remember that as a kid I spoke Romanian and Arabic. And it continued in my neighborhood in Petah Tikva, which was a neighborhood of immigrants. We were all children of immigrants. It was only when I got to the Scouts that I realized there were other groups.” …. Her father was a plumber who worked for a subsidiary of Solel Boneh, and her mother, who recently passed away, who’d earned a master’s degree in English when still in Vilnius, was a teacher. Gal-On: …. I grew up in an atmosphere of giving. My mother was the ‘anchor.’ “My father was in the Red Army. My mother and her family fled. …. throughout the war my mother had been carrying around his doctorate in that suitcase. My uncle became a world-renowned professor. Benjamin Nadel. He’s 93 now.” The house in Petah Tikva was “a working-class home and also a hive of activity and mutual aid that was filled with stories of the Shoah. My deaf aunt was a seamstress and fixed all the clothes people received in care packages from America. My mother, mother-in-law and aunt all died in the past three years.” Gal-On’s “wonderful brother” was born in Israel. Gal-On went on to be very active in the Scouts, served in the Paratroopers and right after the army married Pesah Gal-On, who had been her boyfriend since the 12th grade. By age 26, she was a mother of two sons, Yiftah and Nadav, now 32 and 30. She studied special education at Beit Berl, but never worked in the field.