Democratic Left Alternative (Yisraeli party)

Democratic Left Alternative
אלטרנטיבה שמאלית דמוקרטית name	Modern Hebrew
Chairperson	Zacharya Ben-Levy
Member of Knesset and Leader of the Knesset Caucus	Zacharya Ben-Levy
Founder	Zacharya Ben-Levy Amir Barbossian Chevy Horowitz
Founded	July 24, 2024 (2024-07-24)
Preceded by	National Liberal Party (in part) Party of the Left (in whole)
Headquarters	Dervaylik
Ideology	Labor-interests Social liberalism Kisoist foreign policy Reformation of monarchy Internal Factions: Jewish left Christian left Social democracy Welfare capitalism Green liberalism Abolition of monarchy (allegedly) Anti-capitalism (allegedly) Secularization of Yisrael (allegedly)
Political position	Left-to-Far-left
Colors	Oriental Red
Seats in the Royal Knesset	37 / 142

The Democratic Left Alternative, also commonly called DLA, Dem Left Alt, or the Reds (colloquially), is a contemporary big tent left-to-far-left third political party in Yisrael, having been an upstart party that collected former members from a constellation of left-wing parties, including the mainstream-left National Liberals and the far-left Party of the Left, as well as politically unaffiliated left-leaning young activists and online "keyboard warriors". It is the largest opposition party in the Knesset, opposed to the governing right-wing Royalist Conservative-led Right Bloc coalition. However, due to maneuvering by the majority, the smaller center-left opposition party Alternative for Yisrael was designated as the official opposition. The party is the largest left-wing party by Member of Knesset seats held in modern, and possibly the entire, Yisraeli political history.

History

Origins

Main articles: Constitutional Liberal Party § Dissolution; Alliance of Greens, Seculars, and Workers; and Knesset § Parliamentary composition since 2004

The Ultra-Left follows in a narrow lane of parties that have made up the hard-left political world in Yisrael. The first of these parties was the Yisraeli Labor Party, which was formed in the late 1950s after labor activists and other left-leaning figures grew disillusioned with the moderate liberalism and anti-union politics of the ruling Constitutional Liberal Party clique of Asher Berkowitz, the first President of Yisrael after the Year of Blood.

The YLP gained some strength in the late 1960s and 1970s, allying with left-wing Con-Lib Boaz Benayoun, the author of the Yarden peace talks. After the backlash to the Yarden Accords, the YLP struggled to elect any MKs during the Binyamin Schwartz era. In the late 1980s, the YLP piggybacked on the growing success of the triangulating Con-Libs, who ran on the weariness among the electorate in the wake of the Schwartz-era fiscal reforms and foreign policy shifts towards the Western Monarchies. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw among the highest YLP vote counts and MKs elected from left-wing areas.

The rest of the 1990s and the early 2000s were characterized by the bipartisan corruption scandals of the Greenbaum and Hillel administrations and a generally centrist and competitive evenly-split Knesset and narrowly-decided Presidency of Yisrael, leading to more voters gravitating to the Con-Libs and Conservatives, depriving many third parties on both the left and right of much attention or interest. In the late '90s, the Green Party emerged on the scene, further dividing the hard-left vote.

The success of the Eitan Herzog administration's green strategy and pro-metropolitan agenda further kept the YLP and the Greens at the margins of the public debate, with both parties electing between 4 and 9 MKs combined in the mid-late 2000s.

By the start of the 2010s, the YLP and the Greens were on life support. They merged together in early 2012 after the 2012 elections, forming a small, left-wing caucus of just four MKs called the Alliance of Greens, Seculars, and Workers. After a strong midterm election in 2018 in which the Con-Libs and other Left Bloc parties made strong gains, the Alliance had doubled its MKs to 8. However, just two years later in the the 2020 elections, the Alliance was wiped out due to the historic three-way race, the Centrist Revolt, and the Hezekian Reaction, falling to one lone MK, who had barely held onto his seat in a stunning collapse of CLP bastions to the United Center Bloc.

Left in the early 2020s

Main articles: Hezekian Reaction, Gran Aligonian crisis (2019-present), Gadir incident, Fahrani Civil War, Neoconservatism (Yisrael), Broken Knesset, and May 6 Knesset riot

In late 2020 and early 2021, the breakdown in party unity between the mainstream left and far left among the Con-Libs caused the far-left flank to strike out, merging with the Alliance to form the Party of the Left while the other ex-Con-Libs formed the National Liberals. The country was gripped with the pervasive fear and moral panic on the Yisraeli left that the rise of the Hezekiah III to the throne and election of Charedi conservative Yitzchok Katz as president meant the fall of Yisraeli electoral democracy into illiberal theocracy and conservative strong-arm rule. However unfounded, this fear gripped many of the left for the entirety of the decade of the 2020s to date, although no purge or crackdown on opponents has been launched by the government or monarchy.

The emergence of a new generational cohort of young leftists in the 2020s looked abroad to global leftist causes, including the Kiso Pact and the Global Observatory of Labor, embracing an eclectic mix of centrist, liberal, leftist, and/or republican politicians in Gran Aligonia (especially during its peak political crisis) and Fahran during its Civil War (2019-2023), all who, in common, rejected the ruling Yisraeli establishment's conservative, religious, and/and hawkish views, as well as showing interest in the political economy structures of the Rubric Coast Consortium and other left- or socialist-organized economies, among others; in contrast, this generation showed a disinterest in domestic left-wing thought as the country's political and cultural establishment moved further towards the political right, religiosity, and internal social order.

Many geopolitical and domestic events caught the interest of the young left, including the fall of the Gran Aligonian monarchy (2019), the subsequent war of wars between President Yitzchok Katz and interim Aligonian Chancellor Leuter Sion (2020), the sudden Hezekian Reaction (2020), the early Hezekian-Katz clashes and alleged defeated far-right royalist coup (2020), the Volf-IDR disclosures (2020), the Enyaman Civil War (2019-2022), the Liberal Democratic Front of Yisrael and its terrorist attacks, the rise of right-wing Yisraeli Christians (2021), the 2022 Sydalon-Yisrael diplomatic crisis over the Yarden Accords, the Gadir incident (2022), and other events.

The narrow failure to elect a center-left president in the 2024 elections, which many on the left embraced a conspiracy theory that the election was stolen by the ruling authorities, as well as the short-lived unwieldy center-left governing coalition in the Knesset in early-mid 2024 where left-wing goals were believed "sabotaged" by their centrist governing partners, induced widespread frustration, anger, and disillusionment on the left. These events fed the failed Oren Saddi-pushed Yarden bill that led to a left-wing mob to riot and storm the Knesset on May 6, 2024. The aftermath of the May 6 riot led to the disintegration of the Party of the Left and the fading irrelevance of the Nat-Libs, leaving an opening in the beating heart of left-wing politics.

Organization and hierarchy

The party was founded by a group of like-minded left-wing social media influencers Zacharya Ben-Levy, Amir Barbossian, and Chevy Horowitz, who collectively had little or no political experience. Upon the formation of their party and viral momentum in late 2024, they attracted the aid and support of longtime liberal-left activists such as the former Party of the Left's Eitan Hadav and Avigdor Zeilig. Eventually, after their electoral win, the group of five formed the party's Governing Council for decision-making.

Election results and current representation

Current representation

The current party leader in the Knesset is MK Zacharya Ben-Levy, an MK from Dervaylik who was formerly a city councilor in Dervaylik and is currently a popular social media influencer and podcaster.

The upstart DLA party picked up, shockingly, all of the Party of the Left's former MK constituencies, as well as a wide sweep of most of the Nat-Libs' MK seats, as well. Former Party of the Left and longtime left-wing MK Avigdor Zeilig joined the DLA and retained his MK seat as a member of their party and has subsequently been mentoring the inexperienced Ben-Levy in Knesset politics.

While the party has only competed in the November 4, 2024 Yisraeli special Knesset elections and thus was only elected into office in the Knesset as of January 1, 2025, the dissolution of the Party of the Left and diminished nature of the National Liberals has seen dozens of left-wing city council and sub-national District legislative seats switch from those parties to the DLA, although none have faced election in their new party as of January 2025.

Election results

Royal Knesset
Election	Leader	Seats won	+/−	Rank	Majority
2024 special elections1	Zacharya Ben-Levy	37 / 142	371	#2	Minority
2024		0 / 142	N/A	N/A	Not in Government

Notes
1. After the Broken Knesset and the May 6 Knesset riot, the King Josiah IV ordered the entire Knesset dissolved and set new elections to recompose the national legislative body on November 4, 2024. In the interim between the dissolution of Knesset and the new special elections, the existing left-wing parties - the Party of the Left and the National Liberals - disintegrated or faded into irrelevance, and frustrated left-wing activists and voters agitated to a new party that would represent their interests. Zacharya Ben-Levy and many other young left-wing activists successfully formed an upstart left party and quickly went viral, riding the momentum in the polls on the left to victory.

International Affiliation and Criticism

The party rhetorically aligns itself with the Kiso Pact countries on foreign policy, voicing support for international republican and secular liberal causes and figures abroad, such as the Global Observatory of Labor and the Kiso Pact's "Products of Socialist Labor" program. However, there is no formal affiliation with any of these global organizations.

Internationally, the DLA has affiliations or publicly-stated sympathies with Latium's Aliis faction, Ghant's Labor Party, Vardana's 11 July Club, Talahara's Unity Group and Community Alliance parties, and Ostrozava's Progresssive and Socialist parties.