As Israelis mark their 78th Independence Day, with Yom Ha’atzmaut beginning Tuesday evening, they face an imminent choice that cuts deeper than any single policy debate. The election that must be held by October will not be only about Iran, Hezbollah or the Palestinians — even though these issues are certainly huge. Instead, the heart of the matter is whether Israel is to remain a modern, civic state grounded in equal obligation — or whether it will slide toward a theocratic and hierarchical order in which religious authority shapes public life and the burdens of citizenship are no longer equitably shared.

Israel is by any measure a remarkable success. A small country under constant threat, it has built a dynamic economy, a powerful military, and a vibrant — if increasingly strained — democracy. Despite the past years’ wars, the per capita GDP, driven by a strong shekel, has roared past $60,000 a year, far higher than that of Germany, France or the United Kingdom.

But success can obscure underlying fractures. The wars that followed the catastrophe of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack have upended and destroyed lives, and the burdens are not shared equally. At the same time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault on the judiciary and democratic institutions have created a devastating chasm between his remaining supporters and highly energized opponents.

But the thing that most animates opponents of the government — and every poll shows them in the majority — may be the special privileges accorded to Netanyahu’s Haredi partners, chief among them the continued draft exemption for tens of thousands of Haredi youth.

Anger over this imbalance has skyrocketed amid these years of war, which have left the Israel Defense Forces stretched perilously thin, with some Israelis serving reserve duty for more than half the year.

Three recent incidents have thrown the existential angst of this discrepancy into harsh relief.

Last week, four IDF servicewomen lit a barbecue on base on a Friday night after sundown. Within days, they were sentenced to two weeks in military prison, a sentence eventually reduced after public outcry.

Their infraction was framed not simply as a breach of discipline, but as “harming religion and Judaism.” It was Shabbat, and the act had offended the increasingly demanding religious guardians scattered throughout the military.

Around the same time, several young women finishing two years of IDF service were fined and brought before disciplinary proceedings for “immodest dress” on the very day of their discharge. Their transgression: wearing jeans and sleeveless tops as they celebrated their release, a tradition with considerable mileage for both genders. The military later acknowledged that the handling of the case deviated from its own regulations — but still docked a third of the women’s salaries.

And during the Jerusalem Marathon, held in heavy heat, male soldiers were permitted to run in shorts, while female soldiers were required to run in long pants, in line with modesty concessions that appear to have been meant to assuage city officials, many of whom are religious. The military at first issued untruthful denials, then promised an investigation. Avigdor Liberman, a leading opposition figure, condemned the order, saying that “anyone who thinks that a female soldier wearing shorts is a problem — is himself the problem.”

Sure, these are small stories. None, on their own, would define a country. But together, they tell a larger story that has become, in a national sense, the talk of the town.

It’s no coincidence that all feature women soldiers. These incidents are, in particular, an affront to a defining old story of modern Israel in which young sabra women were a point of pride. The fact that women served equally in the military, sometimes even in combat roles, set Israel clearly apart from its far less progressive Middle Eastern environs.

Now, increasingly, politicians from the religious right are starting to question whether women should serve at all — not out of any leniency, but out of a hyper-conservative notion of segregation of the genders under a religious patriarchy. It’s not exactly that Israel as a whole is moving in this direction — it is rather that the religious sector has grown brazen during the long years of Netanyahu’s coddling, especially since 2009.

All Israelis understand this. Many are scandalized. Most, I believe, are worried and unhappy. A growing minority, to be sure, is pleased. Most alarmingly, the fault lines on the issues of women’s service also align with people’s positions on the “bigger” issues. When women are increasingly subjected to one kind of double standard, and the Haredim benefit from another, questions of what kind of country Israelis are fighting for become harder to answer.

A sense that the Netanyahu government is committed to elevating the priorities of Haredim and ultranationalist but non-Haredi religious politicians has fueled anguish over this question. Many mainstream Israelis are starting to feel that the increasing effects of right-wing religious policies are making their lives impossible.

This issue — visceral though it is — is only the tip of the iceberg. A profound demographic crisis surrounding the Haredi population threatens Israel’s future. The Haredi birthrate currently comes to almost seven children per family, and the community — currently at a sixth of the population — is a serious economic drain, living on significant subsidies. As it continues to grow, the economic demands on non-Haredi Israelis of sustaining a community that does not contribute to communal defense and is seen as making exorbitant demands while contributing little will threaten the country’s continuation.

If the next government is a centrist-liberal one, it will have its hands full turning back the clock to a time when Israelis felt they could work toward a shared vision of their country’s future. Chief among the problems it will face is resolving this tension — a task that Netanyahu’s coddling of the Haredim has only made more difficult. On previous Independence Days, the atmosphere has been one of joy and hope. Not so now. Restoring optimism and unity to the country is not an impossible task, but it is one that will take laser focus and ferocious determination.

The post Marking Israel’s most joyous day with anguish over the country’s future appeared first on The Forward.

Famesick
By Lena Dunham
Random House, 416 pages, $34

I’m still trying to figure out what to make of Lena Dunham’s new memoir, Famesick. It name-drops shamelessly; there are pointedly casual references to famous friends and acquaintances, and dishy gossip about others. It shares gory details about Dunham’s many, many hospital visits for endometriosis, broken bones, a hysterectomy and complications from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. It is at times incredibly witty and sharply observed, at others self-pityingly indulgent.

But what I can say for sure is that it is the most aggressively millennial thing I’ve ever read.

Dunham is — to quote one of the most iconic lines from the first season of Girls, the show that launched her, at age 24, into the public eye — if not the voice of her generation, at least “a voice of a generation.” By now, we know which one.

This inspires conflicting feelings. I, myself, am a millennial woman, so reading Famesick feels nostalgic. I recognize myself in Dunham’s turns of phrase — the “disjointed prose poetry and abstract ideas of autonomy” that she posted online in her 20s — which is no accident given that I’m certain Girls, which came out when I was a sophomore in college, molded many of my thoughts of myself and my generation and what it meant to be a woman in the early 2010s.

But the subsequent, unending, vicious discourse — critics slamming Dunham, and the show, for being too self-centered, too privileged, too white, too vapid, too sex-obsessed — shaped me just as much. If I related to Girls, and something was fundamentally problematic about it, something must also be fundamentally problematic about me.

That makes it almost physically painful to read a scene like one in which Dunham’s family gathers to support her brother’s gender affirming surgery, a moment Dunahm recalls almost entirely in terms of how it affected her. Her parents are mad at her. She packed poorly. She carries her dog with her everywhere because, Dunham writes petulantly, “she needs me,” and “nobody else does.”

Yet despite these classic Lena Dunham moments, reaction to the book has been almost unfailingly positive. People are rewatching Girls. (I am, too.) They are bemoaning the vicious commentary on Dunham’s body and weight that characterized its run, and posting snippets of its best jokes online to marvel at how witty the show was. (I agree.) The show has aged surprisingly well.

But has Dunham? Famesick feels like it should be some kind of commentary on what it means for millennials to grow up. If Girls was so keenly aware of the forces of the 2010s, shouldn’t Famesick be equally on point? Is the positive reaction to it a sign of a change in society, a softening toward our much-criticized generation?

At times, it feels like it is; Dunham looks back on her heyday during Girls with as critical an eye as her worst haters, naming her faults in the way that has always made her work special, one part wry, one part heartbreakingly honest. In a much more guarded world, where we curate our social media feeds carefully instead of tell-all blogging, her observations about herself carry more weight.

The best parts of Famesick are about Dunham’s parents, both artists. Her mother is overflowing with the kind of New York Lower East Side Jewish artist oddity that feels lost to the bowels of time — she loves psychics, yet her favorite hobby, Dunham says, is finding medical experts. Her newfound fame, she writes, had the worst impact on “the dynamics with the women I’d known my whole life — my mother chief among them, the original frenemy who all would try and emulate but none could best.”

Writing of an argument with her mother that led them to stop speaking to each other, she realizes all the different forces at play in their relationship — Laurie Simmons was an accomplished artist before she was a mother to a celebrity, and Dunham knows she struggles with being eclipsed by her daughter’s fame. “But to express any of this skillfully would only be possible with the kind of high-level, egoless communication that rarely defines the mother-daughter bond,” the actor ruefully notes; instead, they ignore each other for two weeks and Dunham gives her heartfelt speech about motherhood to a ring Simmons had lent her. It’s funny, yet full of pathos, Dunham at her best.

This feels like an observation that should be at the heart of the book, the kind of Freudian root of all of Dunham’s insecurities, pleas for attention, struggles. Yet while Dunham is good at pinpointing her flaws, and they are many, she is not always good at reflecting on them, on where they come from or how to change.

“It seems to me, looking back, that I thought the cure to such widespread disdain — some of it personal, some of it political,” Dunham writes, “was not to show less of myself, but to show more, as if revealing myself down to the guts would allow for some kind of renewed understanding.” But this, she says, she has realized was, “just begging.”

Often, it feels like the book is doing the same thing. The change from the Dunham of Girls is less in the actor than it is in the audience. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can finally empathize with her.

The post Lena Dunham’s new memoir is the most millennial thing ever appeared first on The Forward.

Police officers stand outside a Jewish school following an explosion that caused minor damages, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, March 14, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw

Europe must take greater responsibility for its own security, the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD said on Tuesday, citing pressure on long-standing Western alliances and China’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The comment by MIVD Director Peter Reesink accompanied the release of its annual report for 2025.

“The international system we have relied on for decades – with institutions acting as guardians of rules and agreements – is under pressure,” Reesink said in a statement. “It is precisely in this space, where rules blur and power becomes more decisive, that threats grow. Europe must increasingly take responsibility for its own security.”

Spillover from other conflicts including the US-Venezuelan conflict and tensions in the Middle East posed threats to the Netherlands and its interests, the MIVD said in a report published on Tuesday. It also warned about the growing risks of Chinese cybersecurity attacks, which the agency expects to increase this year.

The report comes amidst heightened tensions between NATO and US President Donald Trump, who has threatened to leave the alliance due to its reluctance to join the US-Israeli war with Iran.

Reesink told journalists in The Hague that the Netherlands still has a strong relationship with the United States. At the same time, he said there is an increased push by European agencies to strengthen cooperation and rely less on what the Dutch intelligence agency called “unpredictable” politics in Washington.

“Europe needs to stand on its own two feet. That applies for the defence sector … and also for the intelligence community,” he said.

The greatest security threat to the Netherlands remains the conflict in Ukraine – Europe‘s largest since World War Two – he said, citing military cooperation between North Korea, China, Iran, and Russia.