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‘Two Israels’: What’s really behind the judicial reform protests
(JTA) — When Benjamin Netanyahu put his controversial calls for judicial reform on pause two weeks ago, many thought the protesters in Israel and abroad might declare victory and take a break. And yet a week ago Saturday some 200,000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv, and pro-democracy protests continued among Diaspora Jews and Israeli expats, including those who gather each Sunday in New York’s Washington Square Park.
On its face, the weeks of protest have been about proposed legislation that critics said would sap power from the Israeli Supreme Court and give legislators — in this case, led by Netanyahu’s recently elected far-right coalition — unchecked and unprecedented power. Protesters said that, in the absence of an Israeli constitution establishing basic rights and norms, they were fighting for democracy. The government too says the changes are about democracy, claiming under the current system unelected judges too often overrule elected lawmakers and the will of Israel’s diverse electorate.
But the political dynamics in Israel are complex, and the proposals and the backlash are also about deeper cracks in Israeli society. Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, recently said in a podcast that the crisis in Israel represents “six linked but separate stories unfolding at the same time.” Beyond the judicial reform itself, these stories include the Palestinians and the occupation, a resurgent patriotism among the center and the left, chaos within Netanyahu’s camp, a Diaspora emboldened to weigh in on the future of Zionism and the rejection on the part of the public of a reform that failed the “reasonableness test.”
“If these protests are effective in the long run, it will be, I think, because they will have succeeded at reorganizing and mobilizing the Israeli electorate to think and behave differently than before,” said Kurtzer.
I recently asked observers, here and in Israel, what they feel is really mobilizing the electorate, and what kind of Israel will emerge as a result of the showdown. The respondents included organizers of the protests, supporters of their aims and those skeptical of the protesters’ motivations. They discussed a slew of issues just below the surface of the protest, including the simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, divisions over the increasing strength of Israel’s haredi Orthodox sector, and a lingering divide between Ashkenazi Jews with roots in Europe and Mizrahi Jews whose ancestry is Middle Eastern and North African.
Conservatives, meanwhile, insist that Israeli “elites” — the highly educated, the tech sector, the military leadership, for starters — don’t respect the will of the majority who brought Netanyahu and his coalition partners to power.
Here are the emerging themes of weeks of protest:
Defending democracy
Whatever their long-term concerns about Israel’s future, the protests are being held under the banner of “democracy.”
For Alon-Lee Green, one of the organizers of the protests, the issues are equality and fairness. “People in Israel,” said Green, national co-director of Standing Together, a grassroots movement in Israel, “hundreds of thousands of them, are going out to the streets for months now not only because of the judicial reform, but also — and mainly — because of the fundamental question of what is the society we want to live in: Will we keep living in a society that is unequal, unfair and that is moving away from our basic needs and desires, or will it be an equal society for everyone who lives in our land?”
Shany Granot-Lubaton, who has been organizing pro-democracy rallies among Israelis living in New York City, says Netanyahu, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the coalition’s haredi Orthodox parties “are waging a war against democracy and the freedoms of citizens.”
“They seek to exert control over the Knesset and the judicial system, appoint judges in their favor and legalize corruption,” she said. “If this legal coup is allowed to proceed, minorities will be in serious danger, and democracy itself will be threatened.”
Two researchers at the Institute for Liberty and Responsibility at Herzliya’s Reichman University, psychology student Benjamin Amram and research associate Keren L.G. Snider, said Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reform “undermines the integrity of Israel’s democracy by consolidating power.”
“How can citizens trust a government that ultimately has no limitations set upon them?” they asked in a joint email. “At a time when political trust and political representation are at the lowest points, this legislation can only create instability and call into question the intentions of the current ruling party. When one coalition holds all the power, laws and policies can be swiftly overturned, causing instability and volatility.”
A struggle between two Israels
Other commentators said the protests revealed fractures within Israeli society that long predated the conflict over judicial reform. “The split is between those that believe Israel should be a more religious country, with less democracy, and see democracy as only a system of elections and not a set of values, and those who want Israel to remain a Jewish and democratic state,” Tzipi Livni, who served in the cabinets of right-wing prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert before tacking to the center in recent years, recently told Haaretz.
Author and translator David Hazony called this “a struggle between two Israels” — one that sees Israel’s founding vision as a European-style, rights-based democracy, and the other that sees that vision as the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland.
“Those on the first side believe that the judiciary has always been Israel’s protector of rights and therefore of democracy, against the rapaciousness and lawlessness of politicians in general and especially those on the right. Therefore an assault on its supremacy is an assault on democracy itself. They accuse the other side of being barbaric, antidemocratic and violent,” said Hazony, editor of the forthcoming anthology “Jewish Priorities.”
As for the other side, he said, they see an activist judiciary as an attempt by Ashkenazi elites to force their minority view on the majority. Supporters of the government think it is entirely unreasonable “for judges to think they can choose their successors, strike down constitutional legislation and rule according to ‘that which is reasonable in the eyes of the enlightened community in Israel,’” said Hazony, quoting Aharon Barak, the former president of the Supreme Court of Israel and bane of Israel’s right.
(Naveh Dromi, a right-wing columnist for Yediot Achronot, puts this more bluntly: “The problem,” she writes, “lies in the fact that the left has no faith in its chance to win an election, so it relies on the high court to represent it.”)
Daniel Tauber, an attorney and Likud Central Committee member, agrees that those who voted for Netanyahu and his coalition have their own concerns about a democracy — one dominated by “elites,” which in the Israeli context means old-guard Ashkenazi Jews, powerful labor unions and highly educated secular Jews. “The more this process is subject to veto by non-democratic institutions, whether it be the Court chosen as it is, elite military units, the Histadrut [labor union], or others, the more people will lose faith in democracy,” said Tauber.
Green also said there is “a war waging now between two elites in Israel” — the “old and more established liberal elite, who consist of the financial, high-tech army and industry people,” and the “new emerging elite of the settlers and the political far-right parties.”
Israelis protest against the government’s planned judicial overhaul, outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, March 27, 2023. (Jamal Awad/Flash90)
And yet, he said, “I think we will lose if one of these elites wins. The real victory of this historic political moment in Israel will be if we achieve true equality, both to the people who are not represented by the Jewish supremacists, such as the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and to the people who are not represented by the ‘old Israel,’ such as the haredi and Mizrahi people on the peripheries.”
The crises behind the crisis
Although the protests were ignited by Netanyahu’s calls for judicial reform, they also represented pushback against the most right-wing government in Israeli history — which means at some level the protests were also about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the role of religion in Israeli society. “The unspoken motivation driving the architects and supporters of the [judicial] ‘reform,’ as well as the protest leaders, is umbilically connected to the occupation,” writes Carolina Landsmann, a Haaretz columnist. If Netanyahu has his way, she writes, “There will be no more two-state solution, and there will be no territorial compromises. The new diplomatic horizon will be a single state, with the Palestinians as subjects deprived of citizenship.”
Nimrod Novik, the Israel Fellow at the Israel Policy Forum, said that “once awakened, the simmering resentment of those liberal Israelis about other issues was brought to the surface.” The Palestinian issue, for example, is at an “explosive moment,” said Novik: The Palestinian Authority is weakened and ineffective, Palestinian youth lack hope for a better future, and Israeli settlers feel emboldened by supporters in the ruling coalition. “The Israeli security establishment took this all into account when warning the government to change course before it is too late,” said Novik.
Kurtzer too noted that the Palestinians “also stand to be extremely victimized following the passage of judicial reform, both in Israel and in the West Bank.” And yet, he said, most Israelis aren’t ready to upend the current status quo between Israelis and Palestinians. “It can also be true that the Israeli public can only build the kind of coalition that it’s building right now because it is patently not a referendum on the issue of Palestinian rights,” he said.
Religion and state
Novik spoke about another barely subterranean theme of the protests: the growing power of the haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, parties. Secular Israelis especially resent that the haredim disproportionately seek exemption from military service and that non-haredi Israelis contribute some 90% of all taxes collected. One fear of those opposing the judicial reform legislation is that the religious parties will “forever secure state funding to the haredi Orthodox school system while exempting it from teaching the subjects required for ever joining the workforce. It is to secure for them an exemption from any military or other national service. And it is to expand the imposition of their lifestyle on non-Orthodox Israelis.”
What’s next
Predictions for the future range from warnings of a civil war (by Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, among others) to an eventual compromise on Netanyahu’s part to the emergence of a new center electorate that will reject extremists on both ends of the political spectrum.
David E. Bernstein, a law professor at the George Mason University School of Law who writes frequently about Israel, imagines a future without extremists. “One can definitely easily imagine the business, academic and legal elite using their newfound political voice to insist that future governments not align with extremists, that haredi authority over national life be limited, and, perhaps most important, that Israel create a formal constitution that protects certain basic rights,” he said. “Perhaps there will also be demand to counter such long-festering problems as corruption, disproportionate influence over export markets by a few influential families, burgeoning lawlessness in the Arab sector and a massive shortage of affordable housing.”
Elie Bennett, director of International Strategy at the Israel Democracy Institute, also sees an opportunity in the crisis.
In the aftermath of the disastrous 1973 Yom Kippur war, he said, Israel “rebuilt its military and eventually laid the foundations for today’s ‘startup nation.’ In this current crisis, we do not need a call-up of our reserves forces, or a massive airlift of American weaponry to prevail. What we need is goodwill among fellow Israelis and a commitment to work together to strengthen our society and reach an agreed-upon constitutional framework. If we are able to achieve such an agreement, it will protect our rights, better define the relationships between the branches of government, and result in an Israel that is more stable and prosperous than ever as we celebrate 75 years of independence.”
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The post ‘Two Israels’: What’s really behind the judicial reform protests appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Why Are Jews Called ‘The Chosen People’? Misunderstanding, Misuse, and a Convenient Distortion
A Torah scroll. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
From Ana Kasparian’s claim that Israelis are despised worldwide for “thinking you’re G-d’s chosen people” to Roger Waters’ unhinged assertion that Israelis seek to first take over the Middle East and then rule the world because they see themselves as the “chosen people,” you have likely come across similar screeds on social media.
Few phrases in Judaism have been so persistently misrepresented as “the Chosen People.”
It is routinely weaponized against Jews and Israel, invoked as supposed proof of Jewish supremacism or racial hierarchy.
In this telling, Jewish identity is reduced to a claim of inherent superiority, in direct contradiction to the Bible’s core teaching that all humans are created in God’s image.
This distortion is not accidental. It reflects a broader tendency to force Jewish history and theology into categories that do not fit, particularly a modern racial lens that is both historically and conceptually misplaced.
That lens becomes especially grotesque when applied in the shadow of the Holocaust, which is itself often misappropriated in contemporary discourse. The accusation is inverted: the victims of a racial ideology are recast as its inheritors, with “chosenness” presented as evidence of exclusion, purity, or dominance.
First, this argument ignores a basic reality: Jews are not a race. Jewish communities span continents and cultures, from Ethiopian to Indian to European and Middle Eastern, bound not by racial homogeneity but by shared history, law, and tradition.
More fundamentally, it misunderstands the meaning of the term itself.
So what does it actually mean to be “chosen”?
The concept originates in the Torah, most explicitly in Exodus 19:6, at Mount Sinai, where the Israelites are described as a “holy nation” and enter into covenant with God through the giving of the Ten Commandments. It is reiterated in Deuteronomy 7:6, where they are called a “treasured people.”
But “chosen” in this context does not denote privilege in the modern sense. It denotes obligation.
It is a designation tied to covenant, a binding commitment to a specific set of laws, ethical demands, and responsibilities. Far from elevating Jews above others, it imposes a burden: to live according to a demanding moral and religious framework, and to serve as a model of ethical conduct.
The idea reaches back to Abraham in Genesis and to the emergence of the Israelites. In Jewish tradition, Abraham is the figure who recognizes one God and rejects the pagan world around him. That matters because the ancient Near East was overwhelmingly polytheistic. Egyptians worshiped a vast pantheon of gods with different powers and domains; Mesopotamian religion centered on multiple deities embodied in cult statues housed and served in temples, and the Greeks likewise appealed to different gods for different realms of life and nature.
In Jewish tradition, Abraham is the first great monotheist, the figure who recognizes one God in a world dominated by idol worship. That belief becomes the foundation of Jewish faith and practice, expressed most clearly in the central declaration of God’s oneness that underpins Jewish prayer.
The God Abraham recognizes is not a local or limited deity, but the Creator of everything: heaven and earth, day and night, and all living things. That idea alone marked a radical break from the religious norms of the ancient world.
Abraham is also understood to have paid a price for that belief. He rejected the idols of his time, broke with the society around him, and left his homeland in response to God’s command, entering into a life defined by faith and uncertainty.
And this is the crucial point often missed. The Biblical story is not one of a people passively selected as superior, but of a family, and later a nation, entering into a binding relationship with one God and accepting the obligations that come with it.
That obligation has had consequences far beyond the Jewish people themselves. Two of the world’s largest faiths, Christianity and Islam, emerge from this tradition. Both are rooted in the idea of one God and draw directly on core elements of the Hebrew Bible. The concept of ethical monotheism, first articulated in Jewish tradition, did not remain confined to one people. It reshaped the religious landscape of much of the world.
“Chosenness,” then, is not an abstract or inward-looking idea. Its influence has been global.
In the Bible, the relationship between God and humanity is not static. It is dynamic, and at times contested. God is not presented as distant or arbitrary, but as a being with whom humans can argue, plead, and reason.
We see this most clearly in the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, where Abraham challenges God’s initial judgment, pressing the case that the innocent should not be destroyed alongside the guilty. The episode is striking not because Abraham “wins,” by reducing the threshold to ten righteous individuals, but because he argues at all. It establishes a model of moral engagement, not passive submission.
Elsewhere, the Bible repeatedly shows that covenant comes with conditions. The Israelites are not portrayed as unconditionally elevated, but as accountable. In the story of the spies, their lack of faith leads to a generation being barred from entering the Promised Land. Even Moses is not exempt from consequence.
The message is consistent. “Chosen” does not mean guaranteed. It means bound by responsibilities. In a modern context, that responsibility includes building a just society, resisting oppression, and protecting the vulnerable; to honor human dignity in law, economics, and war; to safeguard creation rather than exploit it; and to pursue truth and integrity in public life, even when it is costly.
Nor is this covenant entirely closed. The Hebrew Bible recognizes righteous individuals outside the Jewish people, and Jewish law has long held that converts are fully part of the nation, with no lesser status. Entry into the covenant is not racial, but defined by commitment.
The phrase “Chosen People” has become a rhetorical weapon, deployed to accuse Jews of the very worldview their tradition rejects.
A covenant of obligation is recast as a claim of superiority. A system built on law, restraint, and accountability is twisted into something racial and exclusionary.
But the distortion does not hold. “Chosen” in Judaism does not mean elevated. It means obligated.
And the refusal to understand that is not an intellectual failure. It is a choice.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Flyers for ‘IsraelFest’ at New York high school ended up in a urinal. Now the school board president is facing calls to resign.
(JTA) — The school board president in a heavily Jewish suburb of New York City is facing calls to resign after flyers promoting a student-led Israeli culture club event were torn down and later found in a boys’ bathroom urinal last week.
The flyers advertised an “IsraelFest” event to celebrate Israel’s 78th Independence Day this week at Scarsdale High School. Among those posting photographs of the vandalism was the daughter of the board president, James Dugan. She added a caption: “Keep up the good work.”
The incident quickly drew condemnation from leaders within the school district of the heavily Jewish New York City suburb, including Superintendent Drew Patrick, who wrote in a letter to the community that the vandalism “places our collective sense of community in jeopardy.”
“We live in a time of rising antisemitism, political polarization, and a degraded civil discourse,” Patrick wrote. “I want the community to know that we take these complex challenges seriously and work to confront them every single day.”
Patrick said the district had already been developing a “clear, written set of guidelines regarding student speech and dress at school sponsored student activities,” which will be introduced at a Board of Education meeting on May 11.
Scarsdale High School Principal Kenneth Bonamo also decried the incident in a letter to the community on Friday, adding that the student government’s Instagram post advertising the event received “two replies criticizing the event using vulgar language.”
Bonamo said the school’s investigation into the incident was “active and ongoing,” and that officials were “currently interviewing students and reviewing camera footage to identify those involved.”
“The Israeli Culture Club was well within its right to plan this type of an event, for which they sought and received administrative approval,’ Bonamo wrote. “Denigrating the club’s efforts in this way is wholly inconsistent with our values, both as a matter of basic fairness to support appropriate and approved student activities and because these actions constitute antisemitism.”
The event promised “Israeli food (and pizza), drinks and desserts alongside Israeli music and games,” suggesting no focus on current events or geopolitics.
The incident comes as younger Americans increasingly adopt anti-Israel stances, setting up clashes in places like Scarsdale, where many Jewish families have connections to the country and to Jewish communities. In 2024, two stores in a Scarsdale shopping plaza, one of which had a sign reading “We stand with Israel” in its window, were targeted with anti-Israel graffiti.
In his letter, Bonamo added that the school had received “concerns that the unlabeled map in the flyer seems to include disputed territories as part of the State of Israel.” The map did not delineate the West Bank and Gaza.
“This is a core conflict in this debate, one that is worthy of exploration in civil discourse, but responding in this way is still not appropriate,” Bonamo wrote of the map.
An online petition calling for the students responsible for the vandalism to face “meaningful disciplinary action” as well as for Dugan’s ouster nearly 1,000 signatures by Tuesday morning.
“When a Board member’s immediate family is directly connected to the approval, encouragement, or defense of antisemitic behavior, it undermines public confidence in the Board’s ability to lead fairly and credibly during moments of crisis,” the petition read. “For that reason, we call for the resignation of any Board of Education member whose household is implicated in supporting these acts.”
A separate petition calling for the school board to reject calls for Dugan’s resignation drew over 100 signatures.
Dugan appeared to address his daughter’s post in a letter to the school community on Friday, writing, “Recent events have provided a profound teaching moment for me as a parent and have impacted me and my family.”
He added, “As a parent, I will focus on healing my family. But as a school board member, my focus will continue to be on our students, our schools, and our educational program.”
The incident follows others at high schools in the region that have unsettled Jewish students and watchdogs. In February, a New York City high schooler was arrested for allegedly sending an email threatening to “kill all the Jews in this school,” and earlier this month, students at a Connecticut Catholic school were punished for making antisemitic posts about a rival hockey team.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Flyers for ‘IsraelFest’ at New York high school ended up in a urinal. Now the school board president is facing calls to resign. appeared first on The Forward.
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Isaac Accords, Wave of IRGC Terror Designations Signal Deepening Israel–Latin America Ties
Argentina’s President Javier Milei receives Presidential Medal of Honor from Israel’s President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem, April 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
As Israel deepens its diplomatic outreach across Latin America, a quiet but notable convergence is taking shape, with regional governments tightening security cooperation and increasingly aligning efforts to counter Iranian-linked terrorism and illicit networks operating across the hemisphere.
During a state visit to Israel on Sunday, Argentine President Javier Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally signed the Isaac Accords, a new framework aimed at deepening ties between Israel and Latin American governments while jointly addressing antisemitism and terrorism.
According to Toby Dershowitz, senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC–based think tank, this initiative builds on rising regional momentum for closer cooperation with the Jewish state and sets in place a framework for intelligence-sharing and coordinated law enforcement efforts aimed at countering Iranian proxy networks operating across the hemisphere.
Latin America has long been regarded as a hub for Iran-backed Hezbollah’s illicit drug trafficking and other criminal activities, which have been used to finance its broader terrorist operations worldwide.
“While just formally signed in recent days, there is already momentum behind some of the Isaac Accords’ goals,” Dershowitz told The Algemeiner. “Several countries have taken steps – including terrorism designations – to counter the Islamic Republic’s threat.”
“The Western Hemisphere has been plagued by Iran-backed terrorism for decades and countries are increasingly leveraging support from allies in the region to address the threat,” she continued.
Modeled after the Abraham Accords — a series of historic, US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries — this new initiative aims to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
During the signing ceremony, Milei described the launch of the accords as “a historic moment for our nations,” saying they are intended to advance peace through efforts to strengthen long-term regional stability, security, and economic prosperity.
The Isaac Accords “will not only strengthen the relationship between Argentina and Israel, united by shared values, but also mark a step toward a freer and more prosperous hemisphere,” the Argentine leader said.
According to a joint statement between the two leaders, the new initiative will focus on technology, security, and economic development, with an emphasis on deepening cooperation in innovation, commerce, and cultural exchange.
It will also seek to encourage partner countries to relocate their embassies to Jerusalem, formally designate Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and shift longstanding voting patterns on Israel at the United Nations.
Dershowitz explained that the push to formally designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its proxy groups as terrorist organizations — an approach already adopted by several Latin American countries — is central to strengthening states’ ability to investigate and prosecute terrorism networks.
She also noted that such designations facilitate cooperation with global financial intelligence units, expanding the legal tools available to track and disrupt illicit financing.
“Iran has a concerning footprint in Latin America. Some countries in the region face major Hezbollah-linked drug trafficking challenges and, as a result, exposure to illicit financial flows,” Dershowitz said. “It is no doubt part of the calculus that led to these designations.”
Since the start of the war in Gaza, and even more so amid the broader confrontation with Iran, Latin American countries have increasingly sought to align their domestic legislation with international sanctions frameworks targeting Hezbollah, Hamas, and the IRGC — all of which are designated by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.
Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Paraguay are among some of the countries that have designated Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC as terrorist organizations.
More recently, Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago have also followed suit, proscribing all three Iranian and Iran-backed entities.
Once a formal designation is in place, authorities can immediately freeze a wide range of assets belonging to designated entities without the need for a prior criminal conviction.
The designation also makes it a criminal offense to provide such entities with material support — such as funding, transportation, housing, or false documentation — while giving authorities additional tools to track and map a group’s logistical and financial networks.
Last month, Argentina also designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization, after previously designating the Palestinian group Hamas in 2024 and the Lebanese group Hezbollah in 2019.
After Iran accused Buenos Aires of “siding with the aggressors” and violating international law with its latest designation, the Argentine government declared Iranian chargé d’affaires Mohsen Tehrani “persona non grata” and gave him 48 hours to leave the country.