- Left Faction
The Left Faction ( _he. סיעת שמאל, "Siat Smol") was a short-lived political party in
Israel .History
The Left Faction was formed on
20 February 1952 (during the second Knesset) as a breakaway fromMapam in the aftermath of thePrague Trials . Theshow trials in which mostly Jewish leaders of theCommunist Party of Czechoslovakia were purged, falsely implicatedMapam 's envoy inPrague ,Mordechai Oren , as part of a Zionist conspiracy. This, and laterNikita 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 ,Yisrael Bar-Yehuda ,Yitzhak Ben-Aharon andAharon Zisling set up Ahdut HaAvoda-Poale Zion,Hannah Lamdan andDavid Livschitz created theFaction independent of Ahdut HaAvoda , whilstRostam Bastuni (the firstIsraeli Arab MK representing a Zionist party),Avraham Berman andMoshe Sneh 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.External links
* [http://www.knesset.gov.il/faction/eng/FactionPage_eng.asp?PG=114 Party history] Knesset website
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