As the Netanyahu government bulldozes through its judicial legislation, talk among Israelis has turned to visceral fear and intransigence: Both sides feel this is the moment they win – or lose – their country
By: Anshel Pfeffer
Over the last few days I’ve found myself in conversations I never imagined I’d ever have. Since these are conversations with Israelis, everything is couched in at least semi-humorous tones, but the topic is deadly serious: the various ways a civil war might suddenly break out, and who would win.
If the balloon goes up and civil war begins between supporters of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and loyalists of the Supreme Court and the judiciary, will law enforcement, the security agencies and the military take sides? And if so, which? Excuse me for not delving into any of the detailed scenarios here – just thinking about them makes me sick.
It sounds almost crazy to engage in such speculation in a 75-year-old country where there hasn’t been anything close to a hint of a military coup. Meanwhile, the conscription-based Israel Defense Forces is still widely regarded as a meritocratic “people’s army.” But people are wondering, if push comes to shove, to whom will this or that unit remain loyal?
This week is my 26th anniversary as a journalist, and I often ask myself on this occasion what I would have written differently early in my career knowing what I do today. Now I’m wondering whether I was right just four weeks ago when, in this column, I dismissed the prospect of a civil war.
On Monday I was driving on Tel Aviv’s Ayalon Highway when an electronic billboard flashed the slogan “Brothers or War.” My first surprise was that an organization with the resources to launch that kind of campaign was using words about a milhemet ahim, a war that to the Israeli ear is worse than any old civil war. It’s a war between Jews. My second surprise came when I went online to find out which organization had posted the slogan.
The Jewish People Policy Institute – not that long ago a rather sleepy quasi-governmental think tank founded by the Jewish Agency – is the last group you’d expect to be inserting itself into this most toxic of political controversies. The institute has become more independent in recent years, but I was still startled to see its campaign.
The institute’s president, Yedidia Stern, explained to me that he was acting well within the institute’s mandate to, as the group’s mission statement says, “bolster cohesion in Israel, among Diaspora Jews, and between Israel and the Diaspora.” He added that, as the dean of Bar-Ilan University’s Law Faculty in 1995 when one of his students assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, he’s on a mission to prevent Israeli society from breaking down.
Stern highlighted Rabin’s murder and the 2005 Gaza pullout as the two events in our lifetimes when Israel came closest to civil war. Now he says we’re even closer.
Surely those two examples from recent history are proof that a civil war in Israel is highly unlikely. After all, the assassination of a leader is often literally the first shot in such a war. But Rabin’s killing was roundly condemned by all but a tiny fringe of Israelis and wasn’t followed by a breakdown in public order or the democratic institutions.
Likewise the Gaza pullout – which Israelis call the disengagement – was a lot less violent and disruptive than many predicted at the time. The dismantling of the settlements in the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank took just nine days (the IDF originally believed it would take up to 10 weeks). And while roughly a third of Israelis opposed the disengagement, most settlers only passively resisted and only a handful tried to violently obstruct the evacuation.
So why should a constitutional change that doesn’t involve anyone getting shot or being evicted from their homes constitute more of a risk of a violent upheaval pitting Israelis against each other?
When I wrote on this subject four weeks ago, my argument was based on a somewhat cynical assumption. I assumed that ultimately, or at least for the foreseeable future, Israelis who deeply worry that Netanyahu’s plans will spell the end of our democracy will have too much of a vested interest in the country’s prosperity to risk taking things to the brink.
After all, even after the changes to the legal system, this group would still remain the wealthier, better-educated and at least materially more comfortable part of society. They would still have their secure bubbles.
A civil war would only be feasible if they stood to lose that security, if and when demographic forces created a Jewish fundamentalist majority – which would take at least another generation.
What I’ve seen and heard on the protests’ front lines and on social media in the last few weeks has led me to question that assumption.
The fear of many Israelis about the Netanyahu government’s overhaul goes way beyond concerns about lower credit ratings and slumping foreign investment. And while the issue at hand is the Supreme Court’s power, it’s greater than that. It’s a deep, visceral and immediate fear of losing one’s country.
An independent and strong Israeli judiciary has become a symbol for what relatively liberal and certainly most secular Israelis feel they belong to and can be proud of. And for that section of the public – generations that have “given” more to the country in the shape of military service, casualties in Israel’s wars and tax bills – the solemn pact with the nation is being broken.
That feeling is mirrored on the other side. Many people in the religious-Zionist community have been carrying around a similar trauma for 17 and a half years since the disengagement, when they considered the uprooting of communities an unforgivable act by an uncaring establishment. And now is the time to make sure that it never happens again. Among the ultra-Orthodox there is a feeling that the current government, which to them symbolizes the true Jewish spirit, is the historic dénouement of the secular fake Jewishness whose downfall was always inevitable.
Not all Israelis are in those groups. Many on either side of the political divide could easily live with a compromise – a “softer reform” where the balance between the court and the Knesset was recalibrated, with at least some of the current opposition parties taking part in the process.
But at this point, Netanyahu and his allies have no interest in any compromise. They feel that this is their moment and they’re fueling intransigence on both sides. And those feelings that this is a critical moment, to win or lose a country, have greatly escalated over the last few weeks.
I still think that on balance, more Israelis still have a greater interest in somehow keeping the ship afloat – together. But I’m a lot less certain of this now than I was just four weeks ago.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Palestinian Media Center In Europe.
Source: Haaretz Newspaper
