Avi Gabbay, the man who came out of nowhere

The man who came out of nowhere, who was never a Knesset member, who never participated in a cabinet meeting, who has no security-related background and who never managed a political body, had done it easily, nonchalantly, almost naturally. Within seven months, Avi Gabbay—Gabbay who?—made it from the position of an unknown former environmental protection minister to leader of the Labor Party and its next candidate for prime minister.

We have already seen people jump up straight to the position of Labor Party leader—Ehud Barak, Amram Mitzna, even Shelly Yachimovich—but they were all familiar faces. Barak was IDF chief of staff and was crowned while still in the army, Mitzna was an IDF general and a mayor, and Yachimovich was a prominent MK and learned the ropes before entering the leadership race. And then came Gabbay. He defeated Amir Peretz, the Histadrut labor federation, the system, the party, and maybe even himself. His election Monday reinforces what has already been evident for a while—the Labor Party is desperate for something new. It’s a time of changes, that is evident all around the world, and Israel is part of the trend. But it’s not just that. For too many years, Labor has been a dead party. Choosing Gabbay is its way of choosing life. An option of reinventing itself. By picking Gabbay, it picked the new, the unknown, an adventure.

Within seven months, Gabbay made it from the position of an unknown former environmental protection minister to leader of the Labor Party and its next candidate for prime minister (Photo: AFP)

It’s no wonder Gabbay was surrounded by young people on Monday night. These are people who are unaware of their new chairman’s opinions on a variety of issues, of his agenda, of his world view. These are people who don’t care that Gabbay isn’t an MK and therefore can’t serve in the highly important position of opposition leader. What they care about is that he managed to instill hope in them, a possibility for a change. It’s not that he has some kind of crazy charisma. We’ve seen better speakers. But he has the ability to directly connect with people, sound reliable, not bombastic. One of our own. Peretz, on the other hand, has the smell of the mothballs in the party’s corridors about him, the old or—to be more exact—the obsolete. For many people, members of MK Stav Shaffir’s young generation, Peretz represented the party at its worst. Gabbay should be given credit for identifying the most convincing point, the one that can’t be dismissed in any way. He repeated it in every debate or interview like a mantra: Amir Peretz had so many years to make a change and he didn’t do it. Why should he succeed now? Not so long ago, Gabbay said if Peretz or Isaac Herzog were elected, it would be on page 7 of the newspaper. No one would care. If he were elected, it would be the main headline. But it’s not about making headlines. What Gabbay meant was if he were elected, it would be perceived as a revolution, as an upheaval. He was right. The feeling is the Labor Party decided to walk on the edge Monday. It’s as if its voters said, “Let’s go crazy. Let’s do something really insane this time.” In a party in which even Shelly Yachimovich, who has been in the Knesset for only 10 years, is already perceived as a member of the old generation, one can understand the extent of the change. Barak, who faced the cameras Monday night with a coat, as if he was on his way to survey the forces in the Golan Heights as the next defense minister, is right about one thing: It’s a revolution. It will take time before we can assess the magnitude of the change, if there is any change. One thing is certain: Gabbay’s election saved the party—and indeed the Zionist Union—from a split. People like Tzipi Livni, Yachimovich, Shaffir and Micky Rosenthal would have found it difficult to stay in a party led by Peretz. Now, everything is starting anew.

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