The Jewish tenants who moved into 25 apartments in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan on Sept. 30 really irked former Labor Party Minister Ophir Pines. Not because it was a provocative move by the right wing designed to make it hard to divide the city; there have been similar actions in the past. What upset Pines is the silence of the center-left parties.
Pines — who remembers very different days of activism by the peace camp and a leadership that knew how to shape an alternative — uncharacteristically decided to write a finely honed, painful and critical post on his Facebook page. He signed off with this message: “There once was a peace camp in Israel, but no more.”