In 1948, a handful of Jews performed an act of political resurrection when they re-established a state in the land of Israel. Daniel Gordis asks: Has it fulfilled its founders’ dreams?
Gordis is correct about there being a lot of hatred, though it's hard to know how deep it goes. It's fair to assume that Israel has simply caught whatever America has, as it always does. It used to take 10-20 years, but I guess now with communications being what they are it's almost instantaneous.
I've been telling my friends, some of whom are involved in efforts at rapprochement or the judicial reform, that they should look to the best of what's been written about America, by people like Haidt, to get a leg up on dealing with Israel's problems.
Which brings me back to this interview. Gordis is a good guy, but he has catastrophized the judicial reform. Right now, this very moment, there is no institutional check on the Israeli High Court. It has abandoned the requirement of standing, which means it'll take a case from anyone who cares to complain about a government action (or inaction); it has declared everything justiciable, which means it is willing to overrule absolutely anything the government decides; it has denied the government independent legal counsel; and it has ruled without any reference to the legal code.
Were I of Gordis' cast of mind I would say Israelis are already living under a dictatorship, and besides what I've already described I can easily bring specific cases where the Court has used these powers to demolish people's homes, hold suspects -- even minors -- for long periods without charging them, abrogate property rights and prevent the free exercise of religion. But while all that is true, it isn't enough to describe Israel as a dictatorship or to entertain serious fears of it becoming one any time soon.
The same is true for the proposed judicial reforms, but catastrophizing them justifies any-and-all opposition, from blocking major highways to trashing Israel among the western financial and political communities.
The proof that the panic is ginned up can be seen in the threats that the protest organizers have made against the center-left parties who are trying to hash out a compromise with the government. The organizers don't want to neutralize the danger from the reform, they want to topple the government. This isn't my interpretation, it's what they're saying.
I'm not going to bore the reader (any further) by showing where Gordis is wrong about the history of the reform and Netanyahu's relation to it, or where public opinion stands, or any number of other things. One thing worth mentioning, though, is his focus (and yours, Ms. Weiss) on some unpalatable coalition members. Here, too, we have echoes of our current moment in America. Kevin D. Williamson has written often about the "cooties" mentality, where your association with the wrong people by itself makes you tainted. And many have commented on how each side sees its extremists as aberrations and the other sides extremists as representative (and don't think Gordis' side doesn't have extremists -- people in positions of authority who've called for civil war, bloodshed and political assassination).
Ordinarily, you work against this sort of wild overreaction. It's too bad you didn't do it here too.
I’m an Israeli living in Israel (by way of America) and this is all completely true. I’d add to it that Weiss and Gordis briefly mention the conflict between Ashkenazim with power and Mizrahim without it, but sort of gloss over it without taking it that seriously. My guess is that’s because they are Ashkenazi and maybe don’t know many Mizrahim.
Mizrahim like the one I am married to are not religious in the sense that Americans would define “religious”, but they are deeply traditional, fairly conservative, and very connected to Judaism. Mizrahim have been treated with contempt by ashkenazim as long as Israel has existed. They were sent to live in crappy places, which in many instances remain crappy with poorer education, fewer economic opportunities, and greater danger due to proximity with Arab-Israeli areas, especially the Bedouin camps. Israeli society is rife with nepotism and it’s all about who you know, which is why the people at the top of virtually every institution are still Ashkenazi, as Weiss points out, and why there’s a smoldering resentment on the part of many Mizrahim who have worked their asses off but still not gotten ahead.
Much of this protest movement is institutional panic because of the Mizrahi- and Haredi-leaning demographic shift. You’ll note that tech companies, labor unions, and even the pilots - coveted positions within the IDF - are by and large left-oriented Ashkenazim. The Supreme Court is a proxy representative of them (I say that because it isn’t democratically elected), and the court is essentially the only thing keeping Israeli law and government from becoming as politically conservative as the population actually is. In other words, the protest movement is, in large part, an effort to hold on to what much of the country sees as illegitimate power.
As noted by Mr Berkowitz, the Court has abrogated unto itself virtually unlimited powers. There is actually broad agreement that judicial reform is necessary at some level. The judiciary appoints judges who are buddies of existing judges, with a shared judicial philosophy that is sometimes shockingly out of line with the Israeli public, especially in the more conservative areas. For just one egregious example, Google the prison sentence a judge in Beer Sheba gave to a Bedouin man who broke in and sexually assaulted a 10-year-old in her own home.
Don’t let the protestors goad you into thinking they’re the last bastion of democracy in a sea of fascists. After all, how Democratic is it for them to call for widespread civil and even military disobedience against a democratically elected government? To shut down municipal services, including schools and hospitals, because they didn’t get their way?
I am an American Jew, 99% Ashkenazi - but conservative, living in a sea of lunatics.
This is all about power and the left using morality to hold power. I’ve read so many articles about this over the past 6 months that it makes my head spin. That’s why when I began listening to Bari and herd where she was headed, I turned it off: 🤮.
One thing I learned that was eye opening, is that the Israeli press is ten times worse than the US press. Brutal.
Thank you for that explanation. It sheds some light onto the situation for those of us who don't follow Israeli politics closely. Generally, I'm sympathetic to the position of Netanyahu, if only because of my admiration for his obvious contributions to Israel's successes, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's right on everything.
1. I grew up in Central America and your description of how things work under the Ashkenazim sound just like how things work in Latin America. Nepotism and who you know gets you everywhere.
2. The Ashkenazim sound just like Democrats.
An aside: It seems to me from the description of the ultra-conservative Israelis, that they get a free ride. If I am not mistaken they also pay no taxes. They get all of the benefits of society but have none of the responsibilities. Again, just like Democrats.
Those who work do pay taxes. There’s just a lot less of them because half the potential workforce (men) almost exclusively study Torah. This, in addition to the government family financial assistance plus funding to religious institutions, results in them being a net drain financially in a major way. People are far more upset about them not serving in the IDF, though. The free ride is more about lives than money.
However, there’s a good argument to be made that they are the drivers of many of the better parts of Israeli society. They certainly keep Judaism alive, and the overall birthrate in the country is higher because the religious Jews make having kids very easy. Like everyone else, they are a big, complicated group of people with many different perspectives, opinions, and levels of observance and contributions so society.
Funny but not exactly how it works. They’re not looking for new meaning or anything else. They’re studying it the same way you would study math - to learn it, along with the massive tomes of additional Torah scholarship, including old legal reasoning. It’s part of the reason religious Jews make such great attorneys - they’re doing it from infancy.
I have to disagree with you. I don't think they keep Judaism alive. If the ultra conservatives were to disappear tomorrow, the ordinary Jew who goes to temple would keep Judaism alive. Just like the ordinarily Christian keeps Christianity alive.
No, they would not. I am secular and I am Jew and raise my grandchildren aware what Judaism is and Jews are thanks to religious Jews. Jews would dissipate as they did in the countries without religion, as it happened in Soviet Union and happening here in USA if they do not encounter antisemitism. I met these too
No, they wouldn’t. The “ordinary” Jew in Israel scarcely practices Judaism at all. Within one generation, thousands of years of scholarship, knowledge, and tradition would be lost. There are other Orthodox Jews who would keep much, but not all, of it going for sure, but the ultra-Orthodox exert a pressure to keep the ship steering in a certain direction. I’m not saying they’re not a drain, I agree that everyone should serve the country (it’s personal for me - I have two sons), and I’m not even saying I like them. I’m just saying that, like everything and everyone else, they’re a mixed bag.
Look, I am a gentile and doesn't know what he is talking about but it is hard for me to believe that the only devout Jews are the Ultra Orthodox Jews. Christianity is kept alive by average Christians as is Judaism.
You say thousands of years of knowledge and tradition would be lost. These guys have been studying the ancient texts for thousands of years and still haven't figured out the meaning of God's word. If they haven't figured it out in the last 5 thousand years what makes them think they will in the next 5 thousand years?
It is like the old medieval Christian theology students who debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
Please don't get me wrong. I am a strong supporter of Israel. It is just hard for me to take the Ultra Orthodox sect seriously.
You speak with no facts at your disposal at all. It would be as accurate if we were to accuse you of being a burden on the U.S. How do we know and how do you know? There are large numbers of religious Jews that do serve in the Israeli military. There are large numbers of religious Jews who run companies, work for large corporations, serve as doctors, and work in hundreds of other tax paying jobs.
At the risk of being called out, your description of the Ashkenazim versus the Mizrahim has echoes of the reaction to Jews that is often described at anti-semitism in the Western world. Perhaps it is about one group of folks objecting to another, the one that holds sway over them. In politics, law, economy, social movements, American Jews are at the forefront of all of it. America Jews are overwhelmingly Ashkenazim. Maybe much of the claimed anti-semitism is really an objection to powerful groups casting others to a position of powerlessness.
American Jews are SOME of the people at the forefront. Most Jews are not in positions of power, and most people in positions of power are not Jews. Mormons are vastly overrepresented in the CIA and FBI and nobody has anything to say about that because there isn’t some underlying conspiracy theory suggesting Mormons are controlling the levers of power. I understand people objecting to those in positions of power of them, but to direct that ire at Jews writ large is silly.
Perhaps you have been too long away from the States. A sizable proportion of the axes of power in the US - be it in Wall Street, Finance, the Arts, Journalism, or Politics, etc. - are Jewish. Far more than the proportion of Jews in the country as a whole.
Look, I am not saying that there is no antisemitism; there certainly is. I am saying not every objection to those in power is antisemitism, but that accusation is tossed out like a trope so often, folks are calling objections "dog whistles". Bari Weiss is a prime example of that. She believes that objections to Zionism are inherently antisemitic.
If it matters, I have been from my earliest days and will remain so to my end a strong supporter of Israel. A big fan of Bibi. I think the current social dispute in Israel between those seeking to rein in the Supreme Court and those seeking to maintain that wild and unordered power structure. But I am troubled by Zionism.
So what if a lot of the “axes of power” are Jews? So are the people bringing massive amounts of good to the world - Jews are overrepresented in medical research, Nobel peace prizes, etc. Do Jews writ large therefore deserve gratitude as well as suspicion or something? Of course not.
Wow. the fact that there are a disproportionate number, or even a 'sizable number' of Jews in those industries is not at all the same thing as 'most people' in those industries being Jewish, or that Jews 'run' anything. Making sweeping statements about Jews being 'in power' IS a dogwhistle and it does have enormous impacts on the spread of antisemitism.
It's impossible to tell anymore what the real situation is and what is hyperbole. When Georgia voting reform becomes "Jim Crow 2.0" and January 6th becomes an "Insurrection" let alone the Summer of 2020's "Mostly Peaceful" protests, how is anyone able to make rational judgements on the events going on in Israel?
Your point is well taken, but I think the answer lies in your phrasing of the question. You gave three examples of wild exaggeration (though a pedant could make a case for the second one). I think one's default position should be "It's probably not what the loudest and angriest voices are saying it is."
I listened to Dan Senor talking to John Podhoretz about this and Senor was trying to sell Podhoretz on the glories of the anti-Netanyahu street movement.
Without knowing much about the details of Israeli politics, it was instantly apparent that Senor was pulling all of the deceptive linguistic ploys, emotionally extortionate tactics, and psychopathically manipulative framing tricks that are used by the Marxist Democrat extremists in this country, and by narcissistic abusers generally.
It was truly disgusting. Find the episode of the Commentary Magazine Podcast with Dan Senor if you want to be creeped out.
Worth noting that the Pentagon documents leaked showed Mossad organized the protests against Netanyahu and an FBI whistleblower testified under oath that the Jan 6 footage they can’t release is because it exposes the embedded FBI agents.
March 27th. He swings John towards his position. Then listen to March 30th and John has basically swung back, to what I believe is the correct position, after Biden attacked Israel. I think Biden just reminded John of how maniacally devoted the global left is to destroying Israel, and he snapped out of it.
Fair warning; I am extremely sensitive to psychopathic manipulators so you almost certainly will not find Senor’s performance as sickening and brazen as I did.
IMO Israel needs more capitalist center secular Jews like Gantz and Lapid, while the US needs more center right and less indoctrinated progressive lefties. Not an expert but the judicial reform there just appears to me to be something proposed to alienate the center left Jews in Israel who do the tech work, pay the taxes and serve in the IDF. It may encourage many of them to leave which is not good. Can you give me some actual examples on how the Israeli supreme court hampers the religious right wing Jews from already dominating and doing what they want to do? Looks to me like they already have plenty of power and privileges.
Many people from across the political spectrum have called for judicial reform, ever since Aharon Barak's "Constitutional Revolution" in the High Court. Before then the Court could strike laws down, but behaved in a manner consistent with the "consent of the governed" -- much like SCOTUS. I know of no evidence that anyone is trying to do the "high tech progressives" one in the eye. (Incidentally, it's worth noting that there are plenty or right-wing and religious people in high-tech, and I know a bunch who have complained about their management making it seem like the whole company is against the reforms.)
Most of the country identifies as at least "traditional" on the religious scale, which translates to an amorphous belief in the God of the Hebrew Bible and adherence to some amount of Jewish ritual (keeping kosher, having a special Friday night dinner, observing mourning laws, etc.). The Ultra-Orthodox (= 𝘏𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘮) account for about 13% of the country, and many of them contribute to the workforce, though few serve in the army.
Examples of the Court riding roughshod over people it doesn't like:
It forbade a Haredi concert in a public park (for which they had a permit) because their men and women sit separately. This, even though there was no woman plaintiff claiming she wanted to sit on the men's side.
It ordered the closing of a university program for Haredi men because it wasn't open to women -- again, this was a program explicitly for Haredi men and no women were trying to get into it.
It ordered the demolition of homes over the Green Line that encroached by about a meter on land that wasn't clearly part of the town, even though there was no Arab claimant to the land and even though inside the Green Line cases like that are taken care of though financial arrangements rather than demolition.
The Court has considered striking down a Basic Law recognizing Israel as the Jewish State, despite the fact that there's no basis in the code of laws for them to decide such a thing.
I'm not a lawyer, but I know there are lots of cases of abuse. I still maintain that a person with some perspective will not get too worked up about them.
Religion is more entrenched than in the US, but that's not saying much. There's no such thing as civil marriage, for instance, but it's not that all marriage is according to the state religion -- that would be an element of theocracy. Rather, Jews can be married only in Jewish ceremonies, Muslims in Muslim ceremonies, Christians in Christian ceremonies.
There's a fairly large civil service of rabbis handling things like kosher certification, but nobody is forced to eat only kosher.
So I'd say Israel isn't theocratic, but religion, especially Judaism, has legal standing.
Jews are the majority, but those of other faiths are free to practice their own religions guided by their own religious leaders. There’s a reason the Baha’i people moved their headquarters to Israel from Iran, an actual theocracy.
As previously mentioned, they do not follow the doctrines of standing and justiciability as we do. As a result, the Court there is in essence a super legislature entertaining and deciding clearly political issues as opposed to strictly legal ones.
Just to clarify - Gantz and Lapid are not capitalists. I don’t think they have a crystallized economic ideology except for some undefined wishy washy social support system. Lapid is a journalist populist. Gantz is an army man, and army men are great at spending money and not designing a budget or espousing economic principles.
Likud was sort of the capitalist party led by Bibi but has long sacrificed those principles for politicking with the haredi non working population and other groups who whine about inequality.
(The ashkenazi- mizrahi divide has been real but less so in recent the generation, except everyone uses identify politics for their own narrative so it appears to be worse than it really is. Now some right wing people argue that only Mizrahi Israelis can be real right wingers. But a large segment of this population is not necessarily capitalist.)
He sure began coming across as more and more superior in the manner in which he wrote about people, policies, actions -- I’d almost call him an elitist.
Kevin Williamson is perhaps my favorite political commentator. His "disdain" is more for certain destructive cultural norms of America's lower classes than for people, a disdain that he has well earned by growing up in the middle of those destructive cultural norms.
First, I wrote "lower," not "lowest." Second, what else would you call the proliferation of one-parent, mostly fatherless homes, drug and alcohol abuse, lack of personal responsibility, etc. "Ruthless and arrogant condescension" my white, hairy ass.
Thanks for the explanation. FWIW it made me LOL not clutch my pearls. In light of your explanation I withdraw the condescension crack. I still don't like the low class crack though. In my America everybody counts equally, regardless of socioeconomic status. But to answer your question regarding the issues you delineated, I call it the result of years of Democratic policies. In the best light those policies were ill-advised and misinformed but I begin to suspect a darker truth -that they were deliberately designed to create an ever-growing class dependent on Democrat largesse thereby assuring Democrat control of government and ultimately control of every aspect of every American's life.
Thanks Lynne, for your response. I apologize that I got a little uncivil there. I couldn't resist responding to the silly assertion that KDW harbors some disdain for working-class, middle America, a culture that he's a product of and produced his insights. While he was raised by a divorced mom in West Texas and I was raised in a stable, two-parent home in rural Western Colorado, I feel an affinity with KDW and his experiences and observations that seem right on most of the time. While KDW has been writing about his experiences and the socioeconomically disadvantaged for a long, long time, it is my observation that the approbation on the right towards his writing surfaced when he linked some of those issues to the tendency to become true believers in Trump, who he rightly detests. I find it interesting, if KDW is the "elitist" he is smeared as, that after working his ass off to rise above his modest beginnings, travel the world and become a professional success who could live anywhere he wants, that he chose to settle down back in his hometown of Midland, TX. Not only do I consider KDW to be one of the good guys, I consider him to be an "elite" voice is sensible, serious, reasoned conservative punditry. And he's also and excellent writer and highly entertaining to boot.
That's correct. Netanyahu was forced to form this coalition because the more mainstream parties won't play ball with him any more. Why he's determined to stay in power is a mystery, as Gordis says, but he's done what he had to do to hold the coalition together. The straightforward response is that Netanyahu should have retired from politics after his last government. The other mainstream parties clearly view him now as radioactive and won't touch him. As long as Likud remains Israel's most popular party, the dilemma is inescapable.
As for the judiciary, yes, the Supreme Court has arrogated to itself all sorts of powers that no other supreme court in the Western world has. It started in the early 90s, with no real legal basis. It's not true that judicial reform hasn't been a live and legitimate issue in Israeli politics -- it has been for nearly 30 years. Israeli politicians have talked about it for that long in each election. Before the 1990s, the Israeli supreme court was by design not that strong.
(Hey, I think all day about the Federalist Papers :) I half-jokingly suggested an inexpensive copy to Israelis I know. It's all there. And it's true -- an independent judiciary is the single most important factor is stopping Trump's massive narcissism.)
The problem with "losing the election" is that when a voter voted for Likud in 2022, he or she didn't vote for what they got when the coalition was formed. But that's a serious problem for any highly fragmented, multiparty system. In any such system, what comes out of the process might be very different from what voters collectively wanted. You see that now in the polls, where Bibi's tanked, with sharply lower popularity.
The secular Ashkenazi elite was once socialist and then lost its faith in the 1970s and 80s, not because they weren't religious (socialism is a secular religion), but because even that mild democratic socialism failed. Hanging above that was the dramatic failure of that elite in the 1973 war. Their children and grandchildren went capitalist and became mainly interested in making money. They now sit at the top of a big rise in inequality -- just like everywhere else in the Western world. Globalization and neoliberalism have boosted the top 10 or 20% of society and not done much for anyone else.
However, it's clear that much of the opposition to the judicial reform and the government is rooted far beyond the secular elite. The extremists in the cabinet mostly haven't served in the army and evaded contributing to society in other ways. A lot of Israelis are rightly angry about the way that this small fringe group, so out of touch with most Israelis, has tried to ram through changes unacceptable to most voters.
My prediction is that Netanyahu (who was certainly instrumental in creating "Start-Up Nation") will back down on the judicial reforms and his government will fail, maybe later not sooner. I hope that will mark the end of his political career, which should have ended a number of years ago. He's just overstayed his welcome. Someone else should lead Likud. The judicial reform issue will remain as a sensitive touch point. Something should be done to better define the parameters of judicial power in Israel. But not by the likes of Ben-Gvir or Smotrich.
One thing irritated me about the presentation of the issues:
The protestors frame their crusade as a struggle for "democracy", yet the majority coalition was elected by ... a majority, while the judiciary is unelected and unchecked. As usual, "democracy" is defined as "whatever the left desires".
To be fair, it's a loaded term and I think Gordis explained that they mean "liberal order" or "constitutional democracy" or something like that, where there are checks on the majority. The thing is, there's nobody arguing against that. The problem is that many of the protesters are effectively saying "You can elect whomever you want, but we're going to keep running things."
Well, not exactly. Less than 50% of votes were for one of the ruling parties, while just over 50% for one of the opposition or Arab parties. The loss of 450,000 left wing and Arab votes for 2 parties that fell under the threshold caused this unusual situation.
When the ruling parties attempt such a transparent power grab, handing 61 'you scratch my back I'll scratch yours' potentially corrupt MKs unlimited power to legislate away any rights they wish, Israeli citizens have a right to peacefully protest the potential infringement of those rights. Nobody is claiming the election was invalid - no "stop the steal" here. But a responsible adjustment of an overly activist SC is nowhere near what the proposed reforms would accomplish.
Israel is not my nation and Judaism is not my religion but I think I am a child of the same God and thus we are intertwined, as is the Muslim faith. All I really know about Israel's inner turmoil is what I have read here. I was surprised to learn that Israel has no constitution and even more surprised to learn that the plan had been to create one but it had not been done in 75 years. Perhaps that is because, as another commenter suggested, of the desire to rely on the Hebrew Bible. It is a curious position to be in. As for your distinguishing the current Israeli turmoil from the Smerican 2020 election I disagree. Certainly as you describe (I think) the cause of the Israeli unrest as a power grab because I think that is precisely what transpired in the US 2020 election - a blatant orchestrated, well-financed effort to control the outcome (power grab) of the election by changing election procedures at the last moment, paying for the procurement of votes via ballot harvesting (to the tune of $402,000,000 by Facebook's Mark Zuckerburg), and collusion between US government agencies and the vaunted town square social media outlets, including FB's Zuckerburg, to suppress information to which voters were entitled. While this may not have amounted to fraud as then defined in statutes required to overturn results, it was immoral and unethical. The American electorate was treated like mushrooms - kept in the dark and fed a steady diet of manure. And it has not improved in the aftermath of that election because now the effort is to silence, diminish, and disregard those citizens who dare to state the obvious. We are calle "election deniers", "MAGA Republicans", and worse. So do not think I am holding the American system as it exists at this time up as a beacon of light in an otherwise dark night. It is not. It has been captured and I am not sure that can be remedied. If it can though it will be because of the system of checks and balances established by the US Constitution via either Congress stepping up and assuming it's oversight responsibility or the courts, ultimately the Supreme Court, curbing Executive overreach. I will say, as a student of the law, I was shocked at what I have read about the Israeli court, selection of judges therefor, and the power grab by court leadership beginning apparently in the 1990s. Which, if true, puts you in the position of crying power grab when that power grab was in response to the court's previous power grab(s) does it not?
I live in Israel and have been immersed for months in this debacle, but have had little exposure to US politics, so I can only comment on what I know. There are those on the right although not a part of the ruling coalition (who I voted for) who have been attempting a responsible reform to "rein in" an overly activist High Court. However, the proposed reforms swing the pendulum completely in the other direction. With a combination of coalition parties in control of judge selection plus a simple majority parliamentary override, and already a unicameral parliament, no constitution nor direct representation, the intertwined executive/legislative branch would hold unfettered power and could then oppress minorities at its leisure. Democracy is more than the majority rule, there must be guaranteed protection for minority and civil rights as well.
If you are interested in a detailed legal analysis (luckily translated into English) I can recommend legal scholar Netta Barak Corren's paper on the subject. It's a deep dive into the history and current proposed reforms and offers alternative suggestions.
I second that recommendation, though I don't agree with Corren on everything. I'll also mention that your vote-counting is flawed (I, for example, voted for a party that was all about judicial reform but didn't make it into the Knesset) and I doubt you know enough about 61 MKs to slander them that way.
If you are going to focus on another countries internal struggles it would be better to give a fair hearing to both sides and what their concerns are. This was not a particularly helpful piece in understanding what is transpiring in Israel.
Correct. Bari could have had the courage to included someone from the other side of this debate, such as Caroline Glick, who has written and spoke extensively on this topic. But no, Bari used The NY Times approach: a one sided eco chamber. So boring and shameful.
Glick wrote a book about the "one-state" solution, that is, having everyone in the region become Israeli. It is so important to learn about left, right, and middle views.
The acreage granted to the Jews who remained after the Holocaust was niggardly and left little room for population expansion. In 2023 AD, or if you insist CE, as in Christian Era, I have no sympathy for the Palestinians. They should apologize for their atrocities and find a new home. Unfortunately, but deservedly, no one wants them.
My best wishes for God’s Chosen People. Shun Leftism. it is intolerant and tyrannical.
Palestinians continue to call for the destruction of Israel. Who can make peace with such people? They do not want land for peace. They want Israel. And the UN continues to finance the descendants of Palestinians who've never lived in Israel. Palestinians are doomed and it is their leadership that is fault -- not Israel.
This crazy, brilliant and maddening bunch of desert nomads who make us laugh and cry, entertain and teach us, heal us and who bequeathed us the basis of civilization, morality and God. If they didn't exist, we'd have to invent them. Is it their deep sense of justice that leads many to embrace the false lure of socialism and leftist causes? As even the author concedes, until Israel cast off its fascination with the collective, it remained economically weak, with soaring inflation and almost in default. Why then this paean to the protests, which are of the left and seek to maintain the hegemony of an unelected Supreme Court that meddles endlessly in legislative matters and functions like the ancient Sanhedrin? (although, in fairness, the links to more rational views was helpful) Bari? Anyone? This cultural leftism truly baffles me.
I am baffled too and very frustrated by what the left has been able to accomplish in terms of consolidating power, in the name of morality. It’s frightening.
The left (a very small minority) prevented an elected government from governing in Israel with the protests against these judicial reforms. Bibi is pretty much toast at this point. But he doesn’t get any credit for the economic progress or security protection that he advocates for.
The left also prevented an elected government in the US from governing with the Russia collusion hoax, where even the media was in on the coup. And now that the entire plot and those involved have been exposed, we here silence.
The only conclusion one can reach is that simple minded people have allowed their morality to cloud their common sense, so much so, that when terrible consequences happen as a result of their policies, they justify the destruction with their morality. It’s really quite amazing. Entire swaths of people have been brainwashed. It’s a religion and it will destroy what human kind has up to this point, created.
I think it is as news anchor Dan Wallace said years ago - once you become educated you become liberal (meaning left leaning not liberal in the sense of classical liberalism) as if one becomes enlightened. But I do not think that is accurate. Rather I think that education allows one to attain wealth and status. And rather than be straightforward about the desire to maintain that wealth and status they cloak that desire in policies that do exactly that while loudly proclaiming it is for the benefit of the marginalized, oppressed, etc..
I think a lot of what drives it--and has driven it since the boomers started protesting--is the fact that young people who have been trained to believe capitalism is evil discover that the comfy, college-educated, middle-class lifestyles they enjoy are a product of capitalism. Money is important to them in a way they scoffed at as youth. The cognitive dissonance must be agonizing.
So it is not surprising that they would do everything possible to convince themselves they are still the "good" people they once considered themselves to be, while simultaneously holding onto their wealth.
Thank you. And I do think a lot of the current unrest here in the States stems not just from.the anti-war protests in the 60s and 70s but also the civil rights protests. Shortly after the turn of this century there was a some mistreatment of black students at a high school in Louisianna and busloads of protesters arrived. The news interviewed a young woman who was positively gleeful to have something to protest "the way her grandparents did". You should have seen my head swivel to take that in. And even today most of the "protesting", at least the part that is not actually rioting, seems pretty festive.
I think applying American political labels and categories to Israeli politics is largely a mistake. It is an even greater mistake to apply the political leanings and habits of American Jewry to Israel. American Jews are largely Ashkenazi and shaped by European and American mores and a century or so of assimilation. Israel has a much broader swath of cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
It’s an interesting article, but I would hope that an article from the Israeli right gets shared, too. Every Jew should love Israel and I’m afraid, here in America, the Jewish left have left the love fest. Am Yisrael Chai! Long live the state of Israel, regardless of its political and judicial warts.
Bari, as an Israeli living in the US, and who loves your work generally, I'm disappointed in your approach to this subject.
After Matti Friedman's essay, I was hoping that this time around you'll bring someone (for or against, it's your choice) that will go into the details of this incredible constitutional moment that Israel is going through. Typically a nation's constitutional moment is at its time of birth, but not here. Instead, you chose to (again...) bring someone who does not add anything substantial or detailed to the table, but again whines and panics about how bad Bibi and IBG are. How can you "paint in broad strokes" as you put it, a judicial and constitutional crisis that has been 75 years in the making, created by Ben Gurion and weaponized by Aharon Barak?? There are incredibly interesting and fascinating questions to be asked here from the legal and political science standpoint, and all we get (yet again) is a subjective emotional point of view of a single individual? It would've been intriguing to have a discussion similar to the one you had with the Yale constitutional law expert after the Dobbs ruling.
My pleasure. One of the articles provides a great history lesson about the various “groups” of people that make up the current Israeli electorate, where they come from and why the left is such a small number.
Secular elitism is the destruction of Zionism; Israel must, if it is to survive as a Jewish state, avoid at all costs the malaise of our western liberal post-modern nonsense. Israeli culture must embrace a muscular nationalism based on the Jewish culture and yes identity and thereby exclude, yes exclude, non Jews. It’s a big world, tell them to go elsewhere; the all encompassing nonsense of globalization and cultural annihilation preached from the pulpits of the liberal cathedral cannot be allowed to destroy Israel, and destruction it will surely bring. The religious left will destroy Israel, their nonsense will lead to another catastrophe for Jews, what Alexander Solzhenitsyn called: “the pitiless crowbar of events.”
If any group can escape the nonsense afoot in this world, it must be the people who survived the holocaust; you must defeat the leftists or perish.
Some argue that it was the lefty leaning group (I forget the name) within ancient Israel that caused the Romans to target and focus on this former colony, and to destroy the Second Temple.
The elitist left will indeed destroy Israel. The good news, as a population this group is in decline in Israel.
I think the lefties are well intended, but frankly, dangerously deluded. The holocaust demonstrated the Jewish people have a different reality, their history is one of unparalleled and unremitting tragedy. Israel is in a tough neighbourhood and we know sooner or later Christians and Muslins alike will scapegoat the hebrews. It won’t be different this time - that’s arrogance. These leftists risk everything, for what, political fashion, bogus woke claptrap, idealistic wishful thinking, this is beyond comprehension. The religious left is dangerous.
Divided societies and civil wars are deeply partisan by nature, and Israel's current struggles are no exception. Our own Supreme Court has passed rulings that are not terribly popular with much of the nation, and I believe that rule by judicial decree is the result of in ineffectual or non-existent legislature. The similarities of Israel's plight and our own seem obvious; the solutions, not so much.
The differences are that both the left and right wings of the American supreme court (nominally) owe fealty to the Constitution and are appointed by elected politicians, while the Israeli Supreme Court rules by fiat and appoints its own judges, making it an arbitrary oligarchy.
There are several facts that come to mind. When the U..S was celebrating it's 75th fourth of July, Blacks were enslaved, Native Americans were systematically being slaughtered, children were working in mines & sweat shops & women were disenfranchised. So people in glass houses.......! The majority of Israeli Jews were either survivors of the Shoah or forced to flee Muslim countries where they had lived for a mellinium. The majority landed in what is now Israel because there was no where else to go. No one country wanted them. The Shoah along with the universal rejection by every civilized nation is & will always be a stain on humanity. Why should there exist a Jewish state? It's estimated that several hundred thousand Jews were killed by the Romans. Not to be outdone Islam including Mohammad, Saladin & the Ottomen Empire killed several hundred thousand Jews. The Crusaders murdered 1-200,000 while the Inquisition murdered 3-400,000. Pogroms managed to murder 200,000 & we all know the number murdered between 1933-1945. And the beat goes on! Wir sind zuerst Deutche, Keine Juden. Food for thought!
What a remarkable people, and what a powerful story of survival and success. I have no fear that the Israelis will fail in their experiment of independence as a modern democratic state. Mazel tov!
I’m left feeling like I’m missing a big chunk of the story. But to be fair, I can’t be bothered to pay attention to US politics anymore as it makes me too angry so the politics of another country are not on my to-do list.
The Israelis are under no obligation to answer a Palestinian question. Only the Palestinians can answer that. That they continue to drown in hatred while the Israelis flourish is proof that all their previous answers are wrong.
The Abraham Accords as they currently exist with a several countries, plus adding new such agreements with Israeli’s other Arab neighbors (think Saudi Arabia), can and will silence the Palestinians. They will no longer have support.
Outside support is the only thing keeping their absurd claims and hopes alive. Never in history has a group been so explicitly genocidal towards another, waged repeated extermination wars and lost, and still been allowed to make demands of the merciful victors. At any other time in history, Israelis would been seen as 100% justified in wiping the Palestinians off the map. That they have not speaks volumes of the ethics of the Jewish state as much as the effectiveness of the social mores of the West.
Leave the status quo as is. Continue working with Arab neighbors to have more Abraham type peace accords and solve the Palestinian problem from without Israel, not from within. Bibi has articulated this strategy in his book and it is a very good one. Make it so that Arab neighbors depend on Israel (economics, financial, technology, agricultural, travel, science, etc…) so that Israel’s Arab neighbors put pressure on the Palestinians to stop or just begin to ignore the Palestinians. You already see this in some Arab countries. They are quiet about it. But moving in this direction.
The idea (Oslo Accords ) of not being able to have peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved was wrong. A terrible premise. It created the Palestinians “veto” and gave too much power to this corrupt dictatorship.
Gordis is correct about there being a lot of hatred, though it's hard to know how deep it goes. It's fair to assume that Israel has simply caught whatever America has, as it always does. It used to take 10-20 years, but I guess now with communications being what they are it's almost instantaneous.
I've been telling my friends, some of whom are involved in efforts at rapprochement or the judicial reform, that they should look to the best of what's been written about America, by people like Haidt, to get a leg up on dealing with Israel's problems.
Which brings me back to this interview. Gordis is a good guy, but he has catastrophized the judicial reform. Right now, this very moment, there is no institutional check on the Israeli High Court. It has abandoned the requirement of standing, which means it'll take a case from anyone who cares to complain about a government action (or inaction); it has declared everything justiciable, which means it is willing to overrule absolutely anything the government decides; it has denied the government independent legal counsel; and it has ruled without any reference to the legal code.
Were I of Gordis' cast of mind I would say Israelis are already living under a dictatorship, and besides what I've already described I can easily bring specific cases where the Court has used these powers to demolish people's homes, hold suspects -- even minors -- for long periods without charging them, abrogate property rights and prevent the free exercise of religion. But while all that is true, it isn't enough to describe Israel as a dictatorship or to entertain serious fears of it becoming one any time soon.
The same is true for the proposed judicial reforms, but catastrophizing them justifies any-and-all opposition, from blocking major highways to trashing Israel among the western financial and political communities.
The proof that the panic is ginned up can be seen in the threats that the protest organizers have made against the center-left parties who are trying to hash out a compromise with the government. The organizers don't want to neutralize the danger from the reform, they want to topple the government. This isn't my interpretation, it's what they're saying.
I'm not going to bore the reader (any further) by showing where Gordis is wrong about the history of the reform and Netanyahu's relation to it, or where public opinion stands, or any number of other things. One thing worth mentioning, though, is his focus (and yours, Ms. Weiss) on some unpalatable coalition members. Here, too, we have echoes of our current moment in America. Kevin D. Williamson has written often about the "cooties" mentality, where your association with the wrong people by itself makes you tainted. And many have commented on how each side sees its extremists as aberrations and the other sides extremists as representative (and don't think Gordis' side doesn't have extremists -- people in positions of authority who've called for civil war, bloodshed and political assassination).
Ordinarily, you work against this sort of wild overreaction. It's too bad you didn't do it here too.
I’m an Israeli living in Israel (by way of America) and this is all completely true. I’d add to it that Weiss and Gordis briefly mention the conflict between Ashkenazim with power and Mizrahim without it, but sort of gloss over it without taking it that seriously. My guess is that’s because they are Ashkenazi and maybe don’t know many Mizrahim.
Mizrahim like the one I am married to are not religious in the sense that Americans would define “religious”, but they are deeply traditional, fairly conservative, and very connected to Judaism. Mizrahim have been treated with contempt by ashkenazim as long as Israel has existed. They were sent to live in crappy places, which in many instances remain crappy with poorer education, fewer economic opportunities, and greater danger due to proximity with Arab-Israeli areas, especially the Bedouin camps. Israeli society is rife with nepotism and it’s all about who you know, which is why the people at the top of virtually every institution are still Ashkenazi, as Weiss points out, and why there’s a smoldering resentment on the part of many Mizrahim who have worked their asses off but still not gotten ahead.
Much of this protest movement is institutional panic because of the Mizrahi- and Haredi-leaning demographic shift. You’ll note that tech companies, labor unions, and even the pilots - coveted positions within the IDF - are by and large left-oriented Ashkenazim. The Supreme Court is a proxy representative of them (I say that because it isn’t democratically elected), and the court is essentially the only thing keeping Israeli law and government from becoming as politically conservative as the population actually is. In other words, the protest movement is, in large part, an effort to hold on to what much of the country sees as illegitimate power.
As noted by Mr Berkowitz, the Court has abrogated unto itself virtually unlimited powers. There is actually broad agreement that judicial reform is necessary at some level. The judiciary appoints judges who are buddies of existing judges, with a shared judicial philosophy that is sometimes shockingly out of line with the Israeli public, especially in the more conservative areas. For just one egregious example, Google the prison sentence a judge in Beer Sheba gave to a Bedouin man who broke in and sexually assaulted a 10-year-old in her own home.
Don’t let the protestors goad you into thinking they’re the last bastion of democracy in a sea of fascists. After all, how Democratic is it for them to call for widespread civil and even military disobedience against a democratically elected government? To shut down municipal services, including schools and hospitals, because they didn’t get their way?
Very well stated.
I am an American Jew, 99% Ashkenazi - but conservative, living in a sea of lunatics.
This is all about power and the left using morality to hold power. I’ve read so many articles about this over the past 6 months that it makes my head spin. That’s why when I began listening to Bari and herd where she was headed, I turned it off: 🤮.
One thing I learned that was eye opening, is that the Israeli press is ten times worse than the US press. Brutal.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Am Yisrael Chai!🇮🇱🇺🇸
Thank you for that explanation. It sheds some light onto the situation for those of us who don't follow Israeli politics closely. Generally, I'm sympathetic to the position of Netanyahu, if only because of my admiration for his obvious contributions to Israel's successes, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's right on everything.
Two things:
1. I grew up in Central America and your description of how things work under the Ashkenazim sound just like how things work in Latin America. Nepotism and who you know gets you everywhere.
2. The Ashkenazim sound just like Democrats.
An aside: It seems to me from the description of the ultra-conservative Israelis, that they get a free ride. If I am not mistaken they also pay no taxes. They get all of the benefits of society but have none of the responsibilities. Again, just like Democrats.
Regarding taxes, many of them don't earn enough to pay taxes, but they don't have any special exemption.
Those who work do pay taxes. There’s just a lot less of them because half the potential workforce (men) almost exclusively study Torah. This, in addition to the government family financial assistance plus funding to religious institutions, results in them being a net drain financially in a major way. People are far more upset about them not serving in the IDF, though. The free ride is more about lives than money.
However, there’s a good argument to be made that they are the drivers of many of the better parts of Israeli society. They certainly keep Judaism alive, and the overall birthrate in the country is higher because the religious Jews make having kids very easy. Like everyone else, they are a big, complicated group of people with many different perspectives, opinions, and levels of observance and contributions so society.
They have been studying the Torah for thousands of years and they still don't know what it means and haven't found what they are looking for?
Eistein said the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
Funny but not exactly how it works. They’re not looking for new meaning or anything else. They’re studying it the same way you would study math - to learn it, along with the massive tomes of additional Torah scholarship, including old legal reasoning. It’s part of the reason religious Jews make such great attorneys - they’re doing it from infancy.
I have to disagree with you. I don't think they keep Judaism alive. If the ultra conservatives were to disappear tomorrow, the ordinary Jew who goes to temple would keep Judaism alive. Just like the ordinarily Christian keeps Christianity alive.
No, they would not. I am secular and I am Jew and raise my grandchildren aware what Judaism is and Jews are thanks to religious Jews. Jews would dissipate as they did in the countries without religion, as it happened in Soviet Union and happening here in USA if they do not encounter antisemitism. I met these too
No, they wouldn’t. The “ordinary” Jew in Israel scarcely practices Judaism at all. Within one generation, thousands of years of scholarship, knowledge, and tradition would be lost. There are other Orthodox Jews who would keep much, but not all, of it going for sure, but the ultra-Orthodox exert a pressure to keep the ship steering in a certain direction. I’m not saying they’re not a drain, I agree that everyone should serve the country (it’s personal for me - I have two sons), and I’m not even saying I like them. I’m just saying that, like everything and everyone else, they’re a mixed bag.
Look, I am a gentile and doesn't know what he is talking about but it is hard for me to believe that the only devout Jews are the Ultra Orthodox Jews. Christianity is kept alive by average Christians as is Judaism.
You say thousands of years of knowledge and tradition would be lost. These guys have been studying the ancient texts for thousands of years and still haven't figured out the meaning of God's word. If they haven't figured it out in the last 5 thousand years what makes them think they will in the next 5 thousand years?
It is like the old medieval Christian theology students who debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
Please don't get me wrong. I am a strong supporter of Israel. It is just hard for me to take the Ultra Orthodox sect seriously.
Face it they are a drain on Israel society. It is everybody's duty to serve their country.
You speak with no facts at your disposal at all. It would be as accurate if we were to accuse you of being a burden on the U.S. How do we know and how do you know? There are large numbers of religious Jews that do serve in the Israeli military. There are large numbers of religious Jews who run companies, work for large corporations, serve as doctors, and work in hundreds of other tax paying jobs.
At the risk of being called out, your description of the Ashkenazim versus the Mizrahim has echoes of the reaction to Jews that is often described at anti-semitism in the Western world. Perhaps it is about one group of folks objecting to another, the one that holds sway over them. In politics, law, economy, social movements, American Jews are at the forefront of all of it. America Jews are overwhelmingly Ashkenazim. Maybe much of the claimed anti-semitism is really an objection to powerful groups casting others to a position of powerlessness.
American Jews are SOME of the people at the forefront. Most Jews are not in positions of power, and most people in positions of power are not Jews. Mormons are vastly overrepresented in the CIA and FBI and nobody has anything to say about that because there isn’t some underlying conspiracy theory suggesting Mormons are controlling the levers of power. I understand people objecting to those in positions of power of them, but to direct that ire at Jews writ large is silly.
"most people in positions of power are not Jews."
Perhaps you have been too long away from the States. A sizable proportion of the axes of power in the US - be it in Wall Street, Finance, the Arts, Journalism, or Politics, etc. - are Jewish. Far more than the proportion of Jews in the country as a whole.
Look, I am not saying that there is no antisemitism; there certainly is. I am saying not every objection to those in power is antisemitism, but that accusation is tossed out like a trope so often, folks are calling objections "dog whistles". Bari Weiss is a prime example of that. She believes that objections to Zionism are inherently antisemitic.
If it matters, I have been from my earliest days and will remain so to my end a strong supporter of Israel. A big fan of Bibi. I think the current social dispute in Israel between those seeking to rein in the Supreme Court and those seeking to maintain that wild and unordered power structure. But I am troubled by Zionism.
So what if a lot of the “axes of power” are Jews? So are the people bringing massive amounts of good to the world - Jews are overrepresented in medical research, Nobel peace prizes, etc. Do Jews writ large therefore deserve gratitude as well as suspicion or something? Of course not.
What about Zionism troubles you?
Wow. the fact that there are a disproportionate number, or even a 'sizable number' of Jews in those industries is not at all the same thing as 'most people' in those industries being Jewish, or that Jews 'run' anything. Making sweeping statements about Jews being 'in power' IS a dogwhistle and it does have enormous impacts on the spread of antisemitism.
"is not at all the same thing as 'most people' in those industries being Jewish, or that Jews 'run' anything"
Where did you read those words? Not in anything I wrote.
Talk about "sweeping statements". How about making it up to fit your narrative and biases.
It's impossible to tell anymore what the real situation is and what is hyperbole. When Georgia voting reform becomes "Jim Crow 2.0" and January 6th becomes an "Insurrection" let alone the Summer of 2020's "Mostly Peaceful" protests, how is anyone able to make rational judgements on the events going on in Israel?
Your point is well taken, but I think the answer lies in your phrasing of the question. You gave three examples of wild exaggeration (though a pedant could make a case for the second one). I think one's default position should be "It's probably not what the loudest and angriest voices are saying it is."
I think one's default position should be "It's probably not what the loudest and angriest voices are saying it is."
HERE HERE!!! I try to make that my default and it's one of the reasons I enjoy The Free Press so much.
And we have a complicit media to thank for this.
They are the biggest problem Brian especially here in America.
You are spot on!
Very nice explanation and critique.
You are being very kind.
Thank you for bringing into the discussion the other side’s point of view.
A lot has been written.
I listened to Dan Senor talking to John Podhoretz about this and Senor was trying to sell Podhoretz on the glories of the anti-Netanyahu street movement.
Without knowing much about the details of Israeli politics, it was instantly apparent that Senor was pulling all of the deceptive linguistic ploys, emotionally extortionate tactics, and psychopathically manipulative framing tricks that are used by the Marxist Democrat extremists in this country, and by narcissistic abusers generally.
It was truly disgusting. Find the episode of the Commentary Magazine Podcast with Dan Senor if you want to be creeped out.
I'm seeing a few recent Commentary podcasts with Senor, so if you can give me the link or the date or something else to disambiguate, I'd be grateful.
Worth noting that the Pentagon documents leaked showed Mossad organized the protests against Netanyahu and an FBI whistleblower testified under oath that the Jan 6 footage they can’t release is because it exposes the embedded FBI agents.
March 27th. He swings John towards his position. Then listen to March 30th and John has basically swung back, to what I believe is the correct position, after Biden attacked Israel. I think Biden just reminded John of how maniacally devoted the global left is to destroying Israel, and he snapped out of it.
Fair warning; I am extremely sensitive to psychopathic manipulators so you almost certainly will not find Senor’s performance as sickening and brazen as I did.
IMO Israel needs more capitalist center secular Jews like Gantz and Lapid, while the US needs more center right and less indoctrinated progressive lefties. Not an expert but the judicial reform there just appears to me to be something proposed to alienate the center left Jews in Israel who do the tech work, pay the taxes and serve in the IDF. It may encourage many of them to leave which is not good. Can you give me some actual examples on how the Israeli supreme court hampers the religious right wing Jews from already dominating and doing what they want to do? Looks to me like they already have plenty of power and privileges.
Many people from across the political spectrum have called for judicial reform, ever since Aharon Barak's "Constitutional Revolution" in the High Court. Before then the Court could strike laws down, but behaved in a manner consistent with the "consent of the governed" -- much like SCOTUS. I know of no evidence that anyone is trying to do the "high tech progressives" one in the eye. (Incidentally, it's worth noting that there are plenty or right-wing and religious people in high-tech, and I know a bunch who have complained about their management making it seem like the whole company is against the reforms.)
Most of the country identifies as at least "traditional" on the religious scale, which translates to an amorphous belief in the God of the Hebrew Bible and adherence to some amount of Jewish ritual (keeping kosher, having a special Friday night dinner, observing mourning laws, etc.). The Ultra-Orthodox (= 𝘏𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘮) account for about 13% of the country, and many of them contribute to the workforce, though few serve in the army.
Examples of the Court riding roughshod over people it doesn't like:
It forbade a Haredi concert in a public park (for which they had a permit) because their men and women sit separately. This, even though there was no woman plaintiff claiming she wanted to sit on the men's side.
It ordered the closing of a university program for Haredi men because it wasn't open to women -- again, this was a program explicitly for Haredi men and no women were trying to get into it.
It ordered the demolition of homes over the Green Line that encroached by about a meter on land that wasn't clearly part of the town, even though there was no Arab claimant to the land and even though inside the Green Line cases like that are taken care of though financial arrangements rather than demolition.
The Court has considered striking down a Basic Law recognizing Israel as the Jewish State, despite the fact that there's no basis in the code of laws for them to decide such a thing.
I'm not a lawyer, but I know there are lots of cases of abuse. I still maintain that a person with some perspective will not get too worked up about them.
Is Israel a semi theocratic state?
Religion is more entrenched than in the US, but that's not saying much. There's no such thing as civil marriage, for instance, but it's not that all marriage is according to the state religion -- that would be an element of theocracy. Rather, Jews can be married only in Jewish ceremonies, Muslims in Muslim ceremonies, Christians in Christian ceremonies.
There's a fairly large civil service of rabbis handling things like kosher certification, but nobody is forced to eat only kosher.
So I'd say Israel isn't theocratic, but religion, especially Judaism, has legal standing.
So, on the fence. ;)
Um, no.
Jews are the majority, but those of other faiths are free to practice their own religions guided by their own religious leaders. There’s a reason the Baha’i people moved their headquarters to Israel from Iran, an actual theocracy.
Good question. In some sense what she is enduring right now may be where the rubber hits the road as to that answer.
As previously mentioned, they do not follow the doctrines of standing and justiciability as we do. As a result, the Court there is in essence a super legislature entertaining and deciding clearly political issues as opposed to strictly legal ones.
Just to clarify - Gantz and Lapid are not capitalists. I don’t think they have a crystallized economic ideology except for some undefined wishy washy social support system. Lapid is a journalist populist. Gantz is an army man, and army men are great at spending money and not designing a budget or espousing economic principles.
Likud was sort of the capitalist party led by Bibi but has long sacrificed those principles for politicking with the haredi non working population and other groups who whine about inequality.
(The ashkenazi- mizrahi divide has been real but less so in recent the generation, except everyone uses identify politics for their own narrative so it appears to be worse than it really is. Now some right wing people argue that only Mizrahi Israelis can be real right wingers. But a large segment of this population is not necessarily capitalist.)
Thank you very much for this articulated commentary!!!
It's pretty ironic that Williamson takes that stance, considering his obvious disdain for 3/4 of the American population.
Ha. True, but he doesn't claim that one has to shun them or that one is tainted by associating with them.
Before he pulled the ejector seat at NRO and I stopped reading him, he would make noises about moving out of the country.
He sure began coming across as more and more superior in the manner in which he wrote about people, policies, actions -- I’d almost call him an elitist.
He's a curmudgeon, for sure.
Kevin Williamson is perhaps my favorite political commentator. His "disdain" is more for certain destructive cultural norms of America's lower classes than for people, a disdain that he has well earned by growing up in the middle of those destructive cultural norms.
"Destructive cultural norms of Americans lowest classes?" What ruthless and arrogant condescension. A perfect example of "elitism".
First, I wrote "lower," not "lowest." Second, what else would you call the proliferation of one-parent, mostly fatherless homes, drug and alcohol abuse, lack of personal responsibility, etc. "Ruthless and arrogant condescension" my white, hairy ass.
Thanks for the explanation. FWIW it made me LOL not clutch my pearls. In light of your explanation I withdraw the condescension crack. I still don't like the low class crack though. In my America everybody counts equally, regardless of socioeconomic status. But to answer your question regarding the issues you delineated, I call it the result of years of Democratic policies. In the best light those policies were ill-advised and misinformed but I begin to suspect a darker truth -that they were deliberately designed to create an ever-growing class dependent on Democrat largesse thereby assuring Democrat control of government and ultimately control of every aspect of every American's life.
Rush said the same thing, Lynne.
Thanks Lynne, for your response. I apologize that I got a little uncivil there. I couldn't resist responding to the silly assertion that KDW harbors some disdain for working-class, middle America, a culture that he's a product of and produced his insights. While he was raised by a divorced mom in West Texas and I was raised in a stable, two-parent home in rural Western Colorado, I feel an affinity with KDW and his experiences and observations that seem right on most of the time. While KDW has been writing about his experiences and the socioeconomically disadvantaged for a long, long time, it is my observation that the approbation on the right towards his writing surfaced when he linked some of those issues to the tendency to become true believers in Trump, who he rightly detests. I find it interesting, if KDW is the "elitist" he is smeared as, that after working his ass off to rise above his modest beginnings, travel the world and become a professional success who could live anywhere he wants, that he chose to settle down back in his hometown of Midland, TX. Not only do I consider KDW to be one of the good guys, I consider him to be an "elite" voice is sensible, serious, reasoned conservative punditry. And he's also and excellent writer and highly entertaining to boot.
That's correct. Netanyahu was forced to form this coalition because the more mainstream parties won't play ball with him any more. Why he's determined to stay in power is a mystery, as Gordis says, but he's done what he had to do to hold the coalition together. The straightforward response is that Netanyahu should have retired from politics after his last government. The other mainstream parties clearly view him now as radioactive and won't touch him. As long as Likud remains Israel's most popular party, the dilemma is inescapable.
As for the judiciary, yes, the Supreme Court has arrogated to itself all sorts of powers that no other supreme court in the Western world has. It started in the early 90s, with no real legal basis. It's not true that judicial reform hasn't been a live and legitimate issue in Israeli politics -- it has been for nearly 30 years. Israeli politicians have talked about it for that long in each election. Before the 1990s, the Israeli supreme court was by design not that strong.
(Hey, I think all day about the Federalist Papers :) I half-jokingly suggested an inexpensive copy to Israelis I know. It's all there. And it's true -- an independent judiciary is the single most important factor is stopping Trump's massive narcissism.)
The problem with "losing the election" is that when a voter voted for Likud in 2022, he or she didn't vote for what they got when the coalition was formed. But that's a serious problem for any highly fragmented, multiparty system. In any such system, what comes out of the process might be very different from what voters collectively wanted. You see that now in the polls, where Bibi's tanked, with sharply lower popularity.
The secular Ashkenazi elite was once socialist and then lost its faith in the 1970s and 80s, not because they weren't religious (socialism is a secular religion), but because even that mild democratic socialism failed. Hanging above that was the dramatic failure of that elite in the 1973 war. Their children and grandchildren went capitalist and became mainly interested in making money. They now sit at the top of a big rise in inequality -- just like everywhere else in the Western world. Globalization and neoliberalism have boosted the top 10 or 20% of society and not done much for anyone else.
However, it's clear that much of the opposition to the judicial reform and the government is rooted far beyond the secular elite. The extremists in the cabinet mostly haven't served in the army and evaded contributing to society in other ways. A lot of Israelis are rightly angry about the way that this small fringe group, so out of touch with most Israelis, has tried to ram through changes unacceptable to most voters.
My prediction is that Netanyahu (who was certainly instrumental in creating "Start-Up Nation") will back down on the judicial reforms and his government will fail, maybe later not sooner. I hope that will mark the end of his political career, which should have ended a number of years ago. He's just overstayed his welcome. Someone else should lead Likud. The judicial reform issue will remain as a sensitive touch point. Something should be done to better define the parameters of judicial power in Israel. But not by the likes of Ben-Gvir or Smotrich.
Once the people currently collapsing the United States from within ‘finish the job’, Israel will be at the very top of their to-do list.
It’s already happening.
A small minority has prevented Netanyahu from governing.
Absolutely. They are at it already
2025 is only 2 years away.
One thing irritated me about the presentation of the issues:
The protestors frame their crusade as a struggle for "democracy", yet the majority coalition was elected by ... a majority, while the judiciary is unelected and unchecked. As usual, "democracy" is defined as "whatever the left desires".
To be fair, it's a loaded term and I think Gordis explained that they mean "liberal order" or "constitutional democracy" or something like that, where there are checks on the majority. The thing is, there's nobody arguing against that. The problem is that many of the protesters are effectively saying "You can elect whomever you want, but we're going to keep running things."
Definitely, the linguistic games of the left just irritate me.
No dudes, you are actively anti-democratic.
Yes.
Any means to an end.
Well, not exactly. Less than 50% of votes were for one of the ruling parties, while just over 50% for one of the opposition or Arab parties. The loss of 450,000 left wing and Arab votes for 2 parties that fell under the threshold caused this unusual situation.
It is still an attempt to
discredit an election and the power awarded thereby that the protesters disapprove of. As in the US the aim seems to be mob rule.
Described perfectly!
When the ruling parties attempt such a transparent power grab, handing 61 'you scratch my back I'll scratch yours' potentially corrupt MKs unlimited power to legislate away any rights they wish, Israeli citizens have a right to peacefully protest the potential infringement of those rights. Nobody is claiming the election was invalid - no "stop the steal" here. But a responsible adjustment of an overly activist SC is nowhere near what the proposed reforms would accomplish.
Israel is not my nation and Judaism is not my religion but I think I am a child of the same God and thus we are intertwined, as is the Muslim faith. All I really know about Israel's inner turmoil is what I have read here. I was surprised to learn that Israel has no constitution and even more surprised to learn that the plan had been to create one but it had not been done in 75 years. Perhaps that is because, as another commenter suggested, of the desire to rely on the Hebrew Bible. It is a curious position to be in. As for your distinguishing the current Israeli turmoil from the Smerican 2020 election I disagree. Certainly as you describe (I think) the cause of the Israeli unrest as a power grab because I think that is precisely what transpired in the US 2020 election - a blatant orchestrated, well-financed effort to control the outcome (power grab) of the election by changing election procedures at the last moment, paying for the procurement of votes via ballot harvesting (to the tune of $402,000,000 by Facebook's Mark Zuckerburg), and collusion between US government agencies and the vaunted town square social media outlets, including FB's Zuckerburg, to suppress information to which voters were entitled. While this may not have amounted to fraud as then defined in statutes required to overturn results, it was immoral and unethical. The American electorate was treated like mushrooms - kept in the dark and fed a steady diet of manure. And it has not improved in the aftermath of that election because now the effort is to silence, diminish, and disregard those citizens who dare to state the obvious. We are calle "election deniers", "MAGA Republicans", and worse. So do not think I am holding the American system as it exists at this time up as a beacon of light in an otherwise dark night. It is not. It has been captured and I am not sure that can be remedied. If it can though it will be because of the system of checks and balances established by the US Constitution via either Congress stepping up and assuming it's oversight responsibility or the courts, ultimately the Supreme Court, curbing Executive overreach. I will say, as a student of the law, I was shocked at what I have read about the Israeli court, selection of judges therefor, and the power grab by court leadership beginning apparently in the 1990s. Which, if true, puts you in the position of crying power grab when that power grab was in response to the court's previous power grab(s) does it not?
I live in Israel and have been immersed for months in this debacle, but have had little exposure to US politics, so I can only comment on what I know. There are those on the right although not a part of the ruling coalition (who I voted for) who have been attempting a responsible reform to "rein in" an overly activist High Court. However, the proposed reforms swing the pendulum completely in the other direction. With a combination of coalition parties in control of judge selection plus a simple majority parliamentary override, and already a unicameral parliament, no constitution nor direct representation, the intertwined executive/legislative branch would hold unfettered power and could then oppress minorities at its leisure. Democracy is more than the majority rule, there must be guaranteed protection for minority and civil rights as well.
I appreciate the insight Liora. It sounds to me like you need a Mconstitution, but I am admittedly biased toward same.
So as I understand your system the government can be dissolved and a new one elected. Is this a likelihood in your opinion?
Fair point. However, their beloved judiciary is infinitely less democratic than a parliamentary elector system.
If you are interested in a detailed legal analysis (luckily translated into English) I can recommend legal scholar Netta Barak Corren's paper on the subject. It's a deep dive into the history and current proposed reforms and offers alternative suggestions.
I second that recommendation, though I don't agree with Corren on everything. I'll also mention that your vote-counting is flawed (I, for example, voted for a party that was all about judicial reform but didn't make it into the Knesset) and I doubt you know enough about 61 MKs to slander them that way.
If you are going to focus on another countries internal struggles it would be better to give a fair hearing to both sides and what their concerns are. This was not a particularly helpful piece in understanding what is transpiring in Israel.
In fairness Bari gave us two links to countervailing views that I found quite helpful. But our Bari's instincts still lean a bit left, I'm afraid.
A bit? Weiss is pretty much all left. Don't let her exit from the NYT fool you. She was there for a reason in the first place.
Wait. Didn't you advise me to be more temperate? lol
LOL. Though I didn’t think that observation was other than decent, if a bit harsh!
Hey I'm trying.....
Good point, admittedly my interest in this kerfluffle is minimal
Not a bit...
Correct. Bari could have had the courage to included someone from the other side of this debate, such as Caroline Glick, who has written and spoke extensively on this topic. But no, Bari used The NY Times approach: a one sided eco chamber. So boring and shameful.
Thanks for the info.
“Eco” chamber … a fortuitous typo indeed!
Glick wrote a book about the "one-state" solution, that is, having everyone in the region become Israeli. It is so important to learn about left, right, and middle views.
The acreage granted to the Jews who remained after the Holocaust was niggardly and left little room for population expansion. In 2023 AD, or if you insist CE, as in Christian Era, I have no sympathy for the Palestinians. They should apologize for their atrocities and find a new home. Unfortunately, but deservedly, no one wants them.
My best wishes for God’s Chosen People. Shun Leftism. it is intolerant and tyrannical.
Palestinians continue to call for the destruction of Israel. Who can make peace with such people? They do not want land for peace. They want Israel. And the UN continues to finance the descendants of Palestinians who've never lived in Israel. Palestinians are doomed and it is their leadership that is fault -- not Israel.
This crazy, brilliant and maddening bunch of desert nomads who make us laugh and cry, entertain and teach us, heal us and who bequeathed us the basis of civilization, morality and God. If they didn't exist, we'd have to invent them. Is it their deep sense of justice that leads many to embrace the false lure of socialism and leftist causes? As even the author concedes, until Israel cast off its fascination with the collective, it remained economically weak, with soaring inflation and almost in default. Why then this paean to the protests, which are of the left and seek to maintain the hegemony of an unelected Supreme Court that meddles endlessly in legislative matters and functions like the ancient Sanhedrin? (although, in fairness, the links to more rational views was helpful) Bari? Anyone? This cultural leftism truly baffles me.
I am baffled too and very frustrated by what the left has been able to accomplish in terms of consolidating power, in the name of morality. It’s frightening.
The left (a very small minority) prevented an elected government from governing in Israel with the protests against these judicial reforms. Bibi is pretty much toast at this point. But he doesn’t get any credit for the economic progress or security protection that he advocates for.
The left also prevented an elected government in the US from governing with the Russia collusion hoax, where even the media was in on the coup. And now that the entire plot and those involved have been exposed, we here silence.
The only conclusion one can reach is that simple minded people have allowed their morality to cloud their common sense, so much so, that when terrible consequences happen as a result of their policies, they justify the destruction with their morality. It’s really quite amazing. Entire swaths of people have been brainwashed. It’s a religion and it will destroy what human kind has up to this point, created.
Thanks, Brian. I had really hoped this would elicit more insights from others.
The silence is just killing my ear drums.
I think it is as news anchor Dan Wallace said years ago - once you become educated you become liberal (meaning left leaning not liberal in the sense of classical liberalism) as if one becomes enlightened. But I do not think that is accurate. Rather I think that education allows one to attain wealth and status. And rather than be straightforward about the desire to maintain that wealth and status they cloak that desire in policies that do exactly that while loudly proclaiming it is for the benefit of the marginalized, oppressed, etc..
This is a very astute observation, Lynne.
I think a lot of what drives it--and has driven it since the boomers started protesting--is the fact that young people who have been trained to believe capitalism is evil discover that the comfy, college-educated, middle-class lifestyles they enjoy are a product of capitalism. Money is important to them in a way they scoffed at as youth. The cognitive dissonance must be agonizing.
So it is not surprising that they would do everything possible to convince themselves they are still the "good" people they once considered themselves to be, while simultaneously holding onto their wealth.
Thank you. And I do think a lot of the current unrest here in the States stems not just from.the anti-war protests in the 60s and 70s but also the civil rights protests. Shortly after the turn of this century there was a some mistreatment of black students at a high school in Louisianna and busloads of protesters arrived. The news interviewed a young woman who was positively gleeful to have something to protest "the way her grandparents did". You should have seen my head swivel to take that in. And even today most of the "protesting", at least the part that is not actually rioting, seems pretty festive.
A shocking amount of "protesters" are actually paid employees these days.
True. A fair amount of commenters too I suspect.
Agreed lol
I think applying American political labels and categories to Israeli politics is largely a mistake. It is an even greater mistake to apply the political leanings and habits of American Jewry to Israel. American Jews are largely Ashkenazi and shaped by European and American mores and a century or so of assimilation. Israel has a much broader swath of cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
It’s an interesting article, but I would hope that an article from the Israeli right gets shared, too. Every Jew should love Israel and I’m afraid, here in America, the Jewish left have left the love fest. Am Yisrael Chai! Long live the state of Israel, regardless of its political and judicial warts.
Bari, as an Israeli living in the US, and who loves your work generally, I'm disappointed in your approach to this subject.
After Matti Friedman's essay, I was hoping that this time around you'll bring someone (for or against, it's your choice) that will go into the details of this incredible constitutional moment that Israel is going through. Typically a nation's constitutional moment is at its time of birth, but not here. Instead, you chose to (again...) bring someone who does not add anything substantial or detailed to the table, but again whines and panics about how bad Bibi and IBG are. How can you "paint in broad strokes" as you put it, a judicial and constitutional crisis that has been 75 years in the making, created by Ben Gurion and weaponized by Aharon Barak?? There are incredibly interesting and fascinating questions to be asked here from the legal and political science standpoint, and all we get (yet again) is a subjective emotional point of view of a single individual? It would've been intriguing to have a discussion similar to the one you had with the Yale constitutional law expert after the Dobbs ruling.
Please keep up the good work! Up and Up
I am attaching a three part series on this topic.
The other side of the debate.
https://www.thehebrewconservative.com/2023/01/20/what-the-heck-is-happening-in-israel/?fbclid=IwAR0zeQApvl_z7mmHbWTyPEX1KT1aqUAf168JVkhKzcAm87KN2UPnUn0tk10
https://www.thehebrewconservative.com/2023/02/09/regression-to-the-bolshevik-mean-what-is-happening-in-israel-part-ii/?fbclid=IwAR3JhK-MzIjdnZjpDdwdpXSSmK7v6SlShNoMNxqipN0IIE4B0aRBMXC9m5k
https://www.thehebrewconservative.com/2023/03/28/the-conditional-state-what-the-heck-is-happening-in-israel-part-iii/?fbclid=IwAR1pqm6q7BUGqwzyC53WzcdhewIRsXIgVQE9UlB70H0XbHPoBW9E6dvwwgI
Thank you, Brian
My pleasure. One of the articles provides a great history lesson about the various “groups” of people that make up the current Israeli electorate, where they come from and why the left is such a small number.
Secular elitism is the destruction of Zionism; Israel must, if it is to survive as a Jewish state, avoid at all costs the malaise of our western liberal post-modern nonsense. Israeli culture must embrace a muscular nationalism based on the Jewish culture and yes identity and thereby exclude, yes exclude, non Jews. It’s a big world, tell them to go elsewhere; the all encompassing nonsense of globalization and cultural annihilation preached from the pulpits of the liberal cathedral cannot be allowed to destroy Israel, and destruction it will surely bring. The religious left will destroy Israel, their nonsense will lead to another catastrophe for Jews, what Alexander Solzhenitsyn called: “the pitiless crowbar of events.”
If any group can escape the nonsense afoot in this world, it must be the people who survived the holocaust; you must defeat the leftists or perish.
This is so very true.
Some argue that it was the lefty leaning group (I forget the name) within ancient Israel that caused the Romans to target and focus on this former colony, and to destroy the Second Temple.
The elitist left will indeed destroy Israel. The good news, as a population this group is in decline in Israel.
I think the lefties are well intended, but frankly, dangerously deluded. The holocaust demonstrated the Jewish people have a different reality, their history is one of unparalleled and unremitting tragedy. Israel is in a tough neighbourhood and we know sooner or later Christians and Muslins alike will scapegoat the hebrews. It won’t be different this time - that’s arrogance. These leftists risk everything, for what, political fashion, bogus woke claptrap, idealistic wishful thinking, this is beyond comprehension. The religious left is dangerous.
Divided societies and civil wars are deeply partisan by nature, and Israel's current struggles are no exception. Our own Supreme Court has passed rulings that are not terribly popular with much of the nation, and I believe that rule by judicial decree is the result of in ineffectual or non-existent legislature. The similarities of Israel's plight and our own seem obvious; the solutions, not so much.
The differences are that both the left and right wings of the American supreme court (nominally) owe fealty to the Constitution and are appointed by elected politicians, while the Israeli Supreme Court rules by fiat and appoints its own judges, making it an arbitrary oligarchy.
Without a written constitution, what restricts or guides the Israeli Supreme Court?
That’s the core issue - Israel has a handshake agreement when it needs a contract.
I had no idea that a seemingly modern nation like Israel had no constitution. They should, like, you know, fix that.
Britain doesn't either.
But they have a very robust and effective Parliament.
That I knew, but they’ve been a nation for centuries and have historical reasons for not having a Constitution.
That is exactly right, though it mostly appears in the margins, which is why Israel manages to function normally, for the most part.
There are several facts that come to mind. When the U..S was celebrating it's 75th fourth of July, Blacks were enslaved, Native Americans were systematically being slaughtered, children were working in mines & sweat shops & women were disenfranchised. So people in glass houses.......! The majority of Israeli Jews were either survivors of the Shoah or forced to flee Muslim countries where they had lived for a mellinium. The majority landed in what is now Israel because there was no where else to go. No one country wanted them. The Shoah along with the universal rejection by every civilized nation is & will always be a stain on humanity. Why should there exist a Jewish state? It's estimated that several hundred thousand Jews were killed by the Romans. Not to be outdone Islam including Mohammad, Saladin & the Ottomen Empire killed several hundred thousand Jews. The Crusaders murdered 1-200,000 while the Inquisition murdered 3-400,000. Pogroms managed to murder 200,000 & we all know the number murdered between 1933-1945. And the beat goes on! Wir sind zuerst Deutche, Keine Juden. Food for thought!
What a remarkable people, and what a powerful story of survival and success. I have no fear that the Israelis will fail in their experiment of independence as a modern democratic state. Mazel tov!
I’m left feeling like I’m missing a big chunk of the story. But to be fair, I can’t be bothered to pay attention to US politics anymore as it makes me too angry so the politics of another country are not on my to-do list.
It’s really simple.
The left in Israel control the Supreme Court, not the electorate.
Centrists and those on the right are trying to change this, to be more representative of the electorate.
That’s it.
TY!
Well, this is going to be a "messy question" but I am left wondering how the Israelis will answer "the Palestinian question"...
The Israelis are under no obligation to answer a Palestinian question. Only the Palestinians can answer that. That they continue to drown in hatred while the Israelis flourish is proof that all their previous answers are wrong.
This is true.
But there has to be a “strategy” to change hearts and minds.
They just can’t be ignored.
It can and should unless and until the Palestinians indicate a willingness to resolve the issue. The ball is squarely in their court.
The Abraham Accords as they currently exist with a several countries, plus adding new such agreements with Israeli’s other Arab neighbors (think Saudi Arabia), can and will silence the Palestinians. They will no longer have support.
Outside support is the only thing keeping their absurd claims and hopes alive. Never in history has a group been so explicitly genocidal towards another, waged repeated extermination wars and lost, and still been allowed to make demands of the merciful victors. At any other time in history, Israelis would been seen as 100% justified in wiping the Palestinians off the map. That they have not speaks volumes of the ethics of the Jewish state as much as the effectiveness of the social mores of the West.
As I understand it, the UN offered them a state of their own in 1947 and they refused it. It boggles my mind how that became everyone’s problem.
Leave the status quo as is. Continue working with Arab neighbors to have more Abraham type peace accords and solve the Palestinian problem from without Israel, not from within. Bibi has articulated this strategy in his book and it is a very good one. Make it so that Arab neighbors depend on Israel (economics, financial, technology, agricultural, travel, science, etc…) so that Israel’s Arab neighbors put pressure on the Palestinians to stop or just begin to ignore the Palestinians. You already see this in some Arab countries. They are quiet about it. But moving in this direction.
The idea (Oslo Accords ) of not being able to have peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved was wrong. A terrible premise. It created the Palestinians “veto” and gave too much power to this corrupt dictatorship.
Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. May God continue to bless the State of Israel.