Tamar Zandberg, the new chair of Meretz, has entangled herself in a web of lies with the revelation that she consulted a right-wing strategist, Moshe Klughaft, during her campaign to lead the leftist party. Her actions are much more than a personal blunder. Zandberg’s crash just three days after a resounding victory in her party's primaries on March 22 forced Meretz, once considered at the forefront of the Israeli left, to come face to face with its internal leadership crisis. What it sees is not pretty.
Over the past decade, Meretz lost huge numbers of supporters. It shrank so much that it is now a small party whose continued existence is sometimes questioned. Yet, despite its crises, the party has always managed to survive and hold fast to its ideology, even as Labor, its big sister on the left, seemed to abandon its principles and inch toward the right.
