Fig Leaf Party Struggling To Convey Authenticity

“Political donors want to use us for their own purposes and have refused to fully get behind our movement.”

Tel Aviv, February 18 – A once-hopeful new player on Israel’s electoral scene has had trouble convincing the electorate of its sincerity, activists lamented today.

The Fig Leaf Party, established hastily after early elections were announced several months ago, aspires to ally itself with whichever leading party assembles the next coalition. Its leaders believe they can provide a measure of legitimacy for whatever policies the future government seeks to advance, and touts its own ideological flexibility as an advantage in the dynamic environment that is Israeli politics. Their message, however, has for various reasons failed to resonate with voters, with every single survey available indicating the party will not meet the threshold necessary for representation in the incoming Knesset.

The founders, who describe their political views as “pragmatic,” are gambling that the Israeli electorate has tired of ideological battles and is looking for a party that will push forward whatever practical initiatives are necessary regardless of political philosophy. Fig Leaf chairwoman Helech Haruach said in an interview that the existing major parties remain fearful of appearing to betray ideological principles that ostensibly govern their campaigns and policies, and their leadership, whether Right or Left, is looking for ways to push forward what needs to get accomplished without becoming mired in ideology-based opposition.

“The Fig Leaf Party offers what no other party can: across-the-board endorsement for whatever policies the ruling party seeks, so that the government can attend to the business of the Israeli people instead of having to offer compromises to each coalition partner that undermine the impact of the necessary measures,” said Haruach. “Our party can produce an ideological basis for anything imaginable, and Likud, Labor, or whoever can point to us and say, ‘See? We have support from the fill-in-the-blank sector of society.'”

Party secretary Shavshevet Fairweather illustrated Fig Leaf’s potential contribution to pragmatism with the scenario of a government that wants to accept a US-brokered agreement with the Palestinians, one that involves further territorial compromise and the abandonment of various Jewish communities beyond the Green Line. “No Israeli head of government under current circumstances could hope to get buy-in for such an arrangement from the religious-Zionist demographic,” she explained. “And that’s where we come in. We take on the appearance and trappings of right-wingers, call ourselves all the right terms, and endorse the deal. Buji, Bibi, Tzipi – whoever it is, they can then claim to have the support of that community and go ahead with the agreement.”

Fairweather noted that the idea for such a political organization came directly from the American lobbying group J-Street, which bills itself as “pro-Israel,” a description that has little or no bearing on the organization’s activities. “Also we saw what Buji and Tzipi did with the term ‘Zionist’ in naming their joint roster, and figured there was a serious future in such things,” she said.

However, the Israeli public has not warmed to Fig Leaf’s pragmatic agenda, a fact that Haruach and Fairweather attribute to a shortage of funding and confusion over an older niche party called Green Leaf that campaigned specifically for the legalization of marijuana. “Political donors want to use us for their own purposes and have refused to fully get behind our movement,” said Haruach.