The Left Faction was a short-lived political party in Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

.

History

The Left Faction was formed on 20 February 1952 (during the second Knesset

Israeli legislative election, 1951

Elections for the second Knesset were held in Israel on 30 July 1951. Voter turnout was 75.1%.-Results:¹ Rostam Bastuni, Avraham Berman and Moshe Sneh left Mapam and set up the Left Faction. Bastuni later returned to Mapam whilst Berman and Sneh joined Maki. Hannah Lamdan and David Livschitz left...

) as a breakaway from Mapam

Mapam

Mapam was a political party in Israel and is one of the ancestors of the modern-day Meretz party.-History:Mapam was formed by a January 1948 merger of the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party and Ahdut HaAvoda Poale Zion Movement. The party was originally Marxist-Zionist in its outlook and represented...

 in the aftermath of the Prague Trials. The show trials in which mostly Jewish leaders of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in Czech and in Slovak: Komunistická strana Československa was a Communist and Marxist-Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992....

 were purged, falsely implicated Mapam

Mapam

Mapam was a political party in Israel and is one of the ancestors of the modern-day Meretz party.-History:Mapam was formed by a January 1948 merger of the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party and Ahdut HaAvoda Poale Zion Movement. The party was originally Marxist-Zionist in its outlook and represented...

's envoy in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

, Mordechai Oren, as part of a Zionist

Zionism

Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 conspiracy. This, and later Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...

's Secret Speech at the 20th Party Congress in the Soviet Union, led to Mapam moving away from some of their more radical left wing positions, and towards social democracy.

Unhappy with the move, several Mapam MKs left the party; Moshe Aram

Moshe Aram

Moshe Erem was an Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for several left-wing parties and factions from 1949 until 1959, and again from 1965 until 1969.-Biography:...

, Yisrael Bar-Yehuda, Yitzhak Ben-Aharon

Yitzhak Ben-Aharon

Yitzhak Ben-Aharon was an Israeli left-wing politician.He was a Knesset member from the first to the fifth Knessets and in the seventh and eighth, and a former Minister of Transport and General secretary of the Histadrut. The philosopher Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon is his son.-Early life and...

 and Aharon Zisling

Aharon Zisling

Aharon Zisling was an Israeli politician and minister and a signatory of Israel's declaration of independence.-Biography:Born in Minsk in the Russian Empire , Zisling emigrated to Palestine in 1904...

 set up Ahdut HaAvoda-Poale Zion

Ahdut HaAvoda

Ahdut HaAvoda was the name used by a sequence of political parties that existed firstly during Mandate Palestine and later in Israel. Its original version, led by David Ben-Gurion, is one of the main ancestors of the modern-day Israeli Labor Party....

, Hannah Lamdan

Hannah Lamdan

Hannah Lamdan was a Serbia-born Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for several left-wing parties between 1949 and 1965.-Biography:...

 and David Livschitz

David Livschitz

David Livschitz was a Russia-born Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Mapam, the Faction independent of Ahdut HaAvoda and Mapai between 1951 and 1959.-Biography:...

 created the Faction independent of Ahdut HaAvoda

Faction independent of Ahdut HaAvoda

The Faction independent of Ahdut HaAvoda was a short-lived political party in Israel.-History:The Faction independent of Ahdut HaAvoda was formed on 20 January 1953 as a breakaway from Mapam in the aftermath of the Prague Trials...

, whilst Rostam Bastuni

Rostam Bastuni

Rostam Bastuni was an Israeli politician and journalist, and the first Arab citizen of Israel to represent a Zionist party in the Knesset.-Biography:Bastuni was born into a Christian family in Mandate Palestine from the mixed city of Haifa...

 (the first Israeli Arab MK representing a Zionist party), Adolf Berman

Adolf Berman

-Biography:Born in Warsaw under the Russian Empire , Berman attended the University of Warsaw, where he earned a PhD in philosophy...

 and Moshe Sneh

Moshe Sneh

Moshe Sneh was an Israeli politician and military figure. One of the founders of Mapam, he later joined the Israeli Communist Party , and was one of the leaders of a more pro-Israeli split in 1965.-Biography:...

 established the Left Faction.

However, the party ceased to exist on 1 November 1954 when Bastuni returned to Mapam and Berman and Sneh joined the communist party, Maki

Maki (historical political party)

Maki was a communist political party in Israel. It is not the same party as the modern day Maki, which split from it during the 1960s and later assumed its name.-History:...

.

External links

• Party history Knesset website