I Am a Leftist Thanks to… Empathy

Calling someone a leftist in Israel today is almost a sentence of exile. Not a physical exile, but an exile of affection, of belonging. Upon hearing that word, it’s as if people retract their hearts and lock their doors, leaving the air thick with a heavy silence, like a stone in the stomach. Being a leftist is being the other, the foreigner in your land, the foreign body in the social fabric. It’s carrying a label that, for many, represents weakness, utopia, and betrayal. It is as if the pursuit of justice were a childish whim, an unnecessary stubbornness when it’s the only thing that keeps us human amidst the chaos.

I am a leftist. And I am proud. Because I know that between the lines of history, where the cry of the majority drowns out the whisper of the forgotten, the left bent down to lift those who had fallen, it was the left that opened its arms to the mothers who lost their children on the borders of a never-ending conflict, that built bridges while others erected walls. It was the left that insisted that a country is not made only of strength and militarism but of schools, hospitals, libraries, spaces where dialogue is louder than the noise of guns.

They say that being a leftist in Israel is to be naive, a dreamer without direction. It’s looking to the sky, hoping peace will fall like rain, without realizing the ground is dry and cracked, thirsty for practical, pragmatic solutions, for the harshness of reality. But I say there is no greater pragmatism than wanting to live in a country where one’s rights do not mean the erasure of another’s. Genuine naivety is believing that oppression can bring security and that fear can build a nation. There is no more fragile fortress than one built on the backs of the weak.

Being a leftist is having your eyes open to the pains others pretend not to see. It’s feeling in your skin every injustice, every exclusion as if it were your wound. It’s being lashed by others’ disapproval, disdainful glances, and sharp words that try to reduce the fight for equality to mere youthful stubbornness. But it also carries in your chest the certainty that social achievements, those that guarantee dignity to every human being, are not trophies to be displayed but bricks in the construction of a world where no one has to crawl to survive.

No one remembers that it was the left that laid the foundations of Israel’s social safety net, that fought for workers’ rights, that established universal healthcare and public education for all. No one acknowledges that it was the left that believed in coexistence, that promoted peace agreements with neighbors, and that pushed for equality and minority rights long before it was fashionable to do so. In Israel, these achievements are taken for granted, or worse, dismissed as relics of a naive past, as if the very fabric of our society wasn’t woven with these threads of empathy and solidarity.

In Israel, being called a leftist is almost an insult, an offense whispered in the corners, in the corridors of power, and in family gatherings. However, the actual offense is not the word; the commitment to the other and the empathy that disintegrated amidst polarization has been lost along the way. There is an abyss between us, and instead of seeking bridges, we are content to throw stones back and forth as if each insult could mend the growing crack.

I am a leftist, and I know that our fight is not to be loved but so that no one else has to feel the weight of invisibility. That our cause is not about winning but not accepting that others lose their rights. Because, in the end, being a leftist is refusing to close your eyes to the humanity around us. And if that is a cause for shame, let it fall upon those who turn their backs on others while we keep moving forward, proud of every battle fought, every small victory wrested from the impossible.

Being a leftist is a burden, yes, but it is also carrying a flame. And as long as some care, dream, and fight, that flame will not go out. It shines in the dark, stubborn, insistent, like a beacon for those who still believe that tomorrow can be different.