Left Faction
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The Left Faction (Hebrew: סיעת שמאל, Siat Smol) was a short-lived political party in Israel.
[edit] History
The Left Faction was formed in 1953 (during the second Knesset) as a breakaway from Mapam in the aftermath of the Prague Trials. The show trials in which mostly Jewish leaders of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia were purged, falsely implicated Mapam's envoy in Prague, Mordechai Oren, as part of a Zionist conspiracy. This, and later Nikita Khrushchev'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, Israel Bar-Yehuda, Yitzhak Ben-Aharon and Aharon Zisling set up Labour Unity - Poale Zion, Hannah Lamdan and David Livschitz created Independent Labour Unity, whilst Rostam Bastuni (the first Israeli Arab MK representing a Zionist party), Avraham Berman and Moshe Sneh established the Left Faction.
However, the party was short-lived, and did not survive to fight the 1955 elections. Bastuni soon returned to Mapam, whilst Berman and Sneh joined the communist party, Maki.
