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Why a liberal Zionist rabbi isn’t taking to the streets over Israel’s judicial reform plan
(JTA) — Israel’s 75th anniversary was supposed to be a blowout birthday party for its supporters, but that was before the country was convulsed by street protests over the right-wing government’s proposal to overhaul its judiciary. Critics call it an unprecedented threat to Israel’s democracy, and supporters of Israel found themselves conflicted. In synagogues across North America, rabbis found themselves giving “yes, but” sermons: Yes, Israel’s existence is a miracle, but its democracy is fragile and in danger.
One of those sermons was given a week ago Saturday by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, expressing his “dismay” over the government’s actions. Hirsch is the former head of ARZA, the Reform movement’s Zionist organization, and the founder of a new organization, Amplify Israel, meant to promote Zionism among Reform Jews. He is often quoted as an example of a mainstream non-Orthodox rabbi who not only criticizes anti-Zionism on the far left but who insists that his liberal colleagues are not doing enough to defend the Jewish state from its critics.
Many on the Jewish left, meanwhile, say Jewish establishment figures, even liberals like Hirsch, have been too reluctant to call out Israel on, for example, its treatment of the Palestinians — thereby enabling the country’s extremists.
In March, however, he warned that the “Israeli government is tearing Israeli society apart and bringing world Jewry along for the dangerous ride.” That is uncharacteristically strong language from a rabbi whose forthcoming book, “The Lilac Tree: A Rabbi’s Reflections on Love, Courage, and History,” includes a number of essays on the limits of criticizing Israel. When does such criticism give “comfort to left-wing hatred of Israel,” as he writes in his book, and when does failure to criticize Israel appear to condone extremism?
Although the book includes essays on God, Torah, history and antisemitism, in a recent interview we focused on the Israel-Diaspora divide, the role of Israel in the lives of Diaspora Jews and why the synagogue remains the “central Jewish institution.”
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: You gave a sermon earlier this month about the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding, which is usually a time of celebration in American synagogues, but you also said you were “dismayed” by the “political extremism” and “religious fundamentalism” of the current government. Was that difficult as a pulpit rabbi?
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch: The approach is more difficult now with the election of the new government than it has been in all the years of the past. Because we can’t sanitize supremacism, elitism, extremism, fundamentalism, and we’re not going to. Israel is in what’s probably the most serious domestic crisis in the 75-year history of the state. And what happens in Israel affects American Jewry directly. It’s Israeli citizens who elect their representatives, but that’s not the end of the discussion neither for Israelis or for American Jews. At the insistence of both parties, both parties say the relationship is fundamental and critical and it not only entitles but requires Israelis and world Jews to be involved in each other’s affairs.
For American Jewry, in its relationship with Israel, our broadest objective is to sustain that relationship, deepen that relationship, and encourage people to be involved in the affairs in Israel and to go to Israel, spend time in Israel and so forth, and that’s a difficult thing to do and at the same time be critical.
American Jews have been demonstrating here in solidarity with the Israelis who have been protesting the recent judicial overhaul proposals in Israel. Is that a place for liberal American Jews to make their voices heard on what happens in Israel?
I would like to believe that if I were living in Israel, I would be at every single one of those demonstrations on Saturday night, but I don’t participate in demonstrations here because the context of our world and how we operate is different from in Israel when an Israeli citizen goes out and marches on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv. It’s presumed that they’re Zionists and they’re speaking to their own government. I’m not critical of other people who reach a different perspective in the United States, but for me, our context is different. Even if we say the identical words in Tel Aviv or on West 68th Street, they’re perceived in a different way and they operate in a different context.
What then is the appropriate way for American Jews to express themselves if they are critical of an action by the Israeli government?
My strongest guidance is don’t disengage, don’t turn your back, double down, be more supportive of those who support your worldview and are fighting for it in Israel. Polls seem to suggest that the large majority of Israelis are opposed to these reforms being proposed. Double down on those who are supportive of our worldview.
You lament in your book that the connections to Israel are weakening among world Jewry, especially among Jewish liberals.
The liberal part of the Jewish world is where I am and where the people I serve are by and large, and where at least 80% of American Jewry resides. It’s a difficult process because we’re operating here in a context of weakening relationship: a rapidly increasing emphasis on universal values, what we sometimes call tikkun olam [social justice], and not as a reflection of Jewish particularism, but often at the expense of Jewish particularism.
There is a counter-argument, however, which you describe in your book: “some left-wing Jewish activists contend that alienation from Israel, especially among the younger generations, is a result of the failures of the American Jewish establishment” — that is, by not doing more to express their concerns about the dangers of Jewish settlement in the West Bank, for example, the establishment alienated young liberal Jews. You’re skeptical of that argument. Tell me why.
Fundamentally I believe that identification with Israel is a reflection of identity. If you have a strong Jewish identity, the tendency is to have a strong connection with the state of Israel and to believe that the Jewish state is an important component of your Jewish identity. I think that surveys bear that out. No doubt the Palestinian question will have an impact on the relationship between American Jews in Israel as long as it’s not resolved, it will be an outstanding irritant because it raises moral dilemmas that should disturb every thinking and caring Jew. And I’ve been active in trying to oppose ultra-Orthodox coercion in Israel. But fundamentally, while these certainly are components putting pressure on the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, in particular among the elites of the American Jewish leadership, for the majority of American Jews, the relationship with Israel is a reflection of their relationship with Judaism. And if that relationship is weak and weakening, as day follows night, the relationship with Israel will weaken as well.
But what about the criticism that has come from, let’s say, deep within the tent? I am thinking of the American rabbinical students who in 2021 issued a public letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for the “violent suppression of human rights.” They were certainly engaged Jews, and they might say that they were warning the establishment about the kinds of right-wing tendencies in Israel that you and others in the establishment are criticizing now.
Almost every time I speak about Israel and those who are critical of Israel, I hold that the concept of criticism is central to Jewish tradition. Judaism unfolds through an ongoing process of disputation, disagreement, argumentation, and debate. I’m a pluralist, both politically as well as intellectually.
In response to your question, I would say two things. First of all, I distinguish between those who are Zionist, pro-Israel, active Jews with a strong Jewish identity who criticize this or that policy of the Israeli government, and between those who are anti-Zionists, because anti-Zionism asserts that the Jewish people has no right to a Jewish state, at least in that part of the world. And that inevitably leads to anti-Jewish feelings and very often to antisemitism.
When it came to the students, I didn’t respond at all because I was a student once too, and there are views that I hold today that I didn’t hold when I was a student. Their original article was published in the Forward, if I’m not mistaken, and it generated some debate in all the liberal seminaries. I didn’t respond at all until it became a huge, multi-thousand word piece in The New York Times. Once it left the internal Jewish scene, it seemed to me that I had an obligation to respond. Not that I believe that they’re anti-Zionist — I do not. I didn’t put them in the BDS camp [of those who support the boycott of Israel]. I just simply criticized them.
Hundreds of Jews protest the proposed Israeli court reform outside the Israeli consulate in New York City on Feb. 21, 2023. (Gili Getz)
You signed a letter with other rabbis noting that the students’ petition came during Israel’s war with Hamas that May, writing that “those who aspire to be future leaders of the Jewish people must possess and model empathy for their brothers and sisters in Israel, especially when they are attacked by a terrorist organization whose stated goal is to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State.”
My main point was that the essence of the Jewish condition is that all Jews feel responsible one for the another — Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. And that relationship starts with emotions. It starts with a feeling of belongingness to the Jewish people, and a feeling of concern for our people who are attacked in the Jewish state. My criticism was based, in the middle of a war, on expressing compassion, support for our people who are under indiscriminate and terrorist assault. I uphold that and even especially in retrospect two years later, why anyone would consider that to be offensive in any way is still beyond me.
You were executive director of ARZA, the Reform Zionist organization, and you write in your book that Israel “is the primary source of our people’s collective energy — the engine for the recreation and restoration of the national home and the national spirit of the Jewish people.” A number of your essays put Israel at the center of the present-day Jewish story. You are a rabbi in New York City. So what’s the role or function of the Diaspora?
Our existence in the Diaspora needs no justification. For practically all of the last 2,000 years, Jewish life has existed in the Diaspora. It’s only for the last 75 years and if you count the beginning of the Zionist movement, the last 125 years or so that Jews have begun en masse to live in the land of Israel. Much of the values of what we call now Judaism was developed in the Diaspora. Moreover, the American Jewish community is the strongest, most influential, most glorious of all the Jewish Diasporas in Jewish history.
And yet, the only place in the Jewish world where the Jewish community is growing is in Israel. More Jewish children now live in Israel than all the other places in the world combined. The central value that powers the sustainability, viability and continuity of the Jewish people is peoplehood. It’s not the values that have sustained the Jewish people in the Diaspora and over the last 2,000 years, which was Torah or God, what we would call religion. I’m a rabbi. I believe in the centrality of God, Torah and religion to sustain Jewish identity. But in the 21st century, Israel is the most eloquent concept of the value of Jewish peoplehood. And therefore, I do not believe that there is enough energy, enough power, enough sustainability in the classical concept of Judaism to sustain continuity in the Diaspora. The concept of Jewish peoplehood is the most powerful way that we can sustain Jewish continuity in the 21st century.
But doesn’t that negate the importance of American Jewry?
In my view, it augments the sustainability of American Jewry. If American Jews disengage from Israel, and from the concept of Jewish peoplehood, and also don’t consider religion to be at the center of their existence, then what’s left? Now there’s a lot of activity, for example, on tikkun olam, which is a part of Jewish tradition. But tikkun olam in Judaism always was a blend between Jewish particularism and universalism — concern for humanity at large but rooted in the concept of Jewish peoplehood. But very often now, tikkun olam in the Diaspora is practiced not as a part of the concept of Jewish particularism but, as I said before, at the expense of Jewish particularism. That will not be enough to sustain Jewish communities going into the 21st century.
I want to ask about the health of the American synagogue as an institution. Considering your concern about the waning centrality of Torah and God in people’s lives — especially among the non-Orthodox — do you feel optimistic about it as an institution? Does it have to change?
I’ve believed since the beginning of my career that there’s no substitute in the Diaspora for the synagogue as the central Jewish institution. We harm ourselves when we underemphasize the central role of the synagogue. Any issue that is being done by one of the hundreds of Jewish agencies that we’ve created rests on our ability as a community to produce Jews into the next generation. And what are those institutions that produce that are most responsible for the production of Jewish continuity? Synagogues, day schools and summer camps, and of the three synagogues are by far the most important for the following reasons: First, we’re the only institution that defines ourselves as and whose purpose is what we call cradle to grave. Second, for most American Jews, if they end up in any institution at all it will be a synagogue. Far fewer American Jews will receive a day school education and or go to Jewish summer camps. That should have ramifications across the board for American Jewish policy, including how we budget Jewish institutions. We should be focusing many, many more resources on these three institutions, and at the core of that is the institution of the synagogue.
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Israel’s election deadlock: 3 scenarios for what comes next
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – As election results from Israel’s parliamentary vote on Tuesday continue to trickle in, what seems clearest is that no side in this political race will have enough votes to form a majority government, meaning the question of who Israel’s next prime minister will be remains uncertain.
According to the vote count so far, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party could have as many as 28 seats, yet his bloc of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties will fall short of the 61 seats needed to form a majority government.
Yashar, the party led by Netanyahu’s main rival, former Israeli army chief Gadi Eisenkot, looks set to be the second-largest party, with around 22 seats. The so-called “change” bloc that Eisenkot leads will likely have around 47 seats, also far short of what is needed to form a government on its own.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Arab parties, which both blocs have said they wouldn’t include in a coalition, are on pace to get at least 17 seats collectively and could become key to helping the opposition oust Netanyahu.
The formal process whereby each party holds consultations with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog to recommend a candidate for prime minister will likely begin next week. Political analysts are already speculating on possible scenarios.
Their tentative takeaway: Reality may force political leaders to break their solemn promises to not work with certain other parties.
So what are the possible scenarios if the final results leave the political arena so starkly divided? Here are the three most likely outcomes.
1. The “change” bloc plus the Arab parties
All the parties in the change bloc bar the Democrats, led by Yair Golan, stated throughout their campaigns that they would not form a government with either of the Arab parties, even though Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am, an Islamist faction, joined a centrist coalition from 2021-2022, breaking what had once been a taboo. Abbas is again offering to join forces with the change bloc.
“Clearly this is emerging as an option mathematically and politically,” Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Wednesday. But he added, “It’s obviously not only a violation of campaign promises, but I think the Israeli public opinion is deeply unprepared for such an option.” Tolerance for working with an Islamist party has diminished since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led raids.
Another variation on this option is for the change bloc — Eisenkot’s Yashar party, B’Yachad, led by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, as well as the Democrats — to form a minority government.
While 61 seats are needed to form a majority government, there is nothing to prevent a government with fewer than 61 seats from being formed if it can gain support on key legislative decisions.
This could happen if Arab factions support the change bloc on key votes but otherwise don’t play a role in the government. This would give the change bloc up to 65 seats when Arab parties’ support from the sidelines is added in.
Even this step has been rejected by Lieberman, yet Professor Jonathan Rynhold, of the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University, said it was possible that Eisenkot could put pressure on him to accept.
“Even though Lieberman has said no to such an option, he might say yes if he’s the prime minister,” Rynhold said.
On the other hand, the Arab parties, especially the Joint List, might demand concessions for such an agreement that Eisenkot himself finds hard to stomach.
2. Formation of a unity government
A quick look at the political map following Tuesday’s vote shows that center-right parties ranging from Eisenkot’s Yashar party to Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, with Likud and B’Yachad in between, gained a substantial share of the seats. One possible scenario is that some of these parties, even though they are avowed political foes, could join forces.
“I think it is perhaps more likely that there will be serious negotiations around a unity government,” Plesner said. “I would imagine that Netanyahu would prefer unity based on him forming a coalition with all of his bloc members, and then luring one of the ‘change bloc’ parties to his government.” That would mean including ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism and far-right parties led by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
However, Plesner said the change bloc parties would most likely push for a “real unity government,” whereby Netanyahu “gives up on one of the far-right parties that has caused a lot of challenges for Israel’s international image, or perhaps an ultra-Orthodox party that has refused to pass a military draft bill.” He was referring to a law that would force more haredi men to serve in the military, from which they’ve traditionally been exempted. This, he said, would create a “Zionist, more centrist-leaning option.”
“I think this is something that Israeli public opinion would be able to live with and perhaps even prefer, but I can’t say anything about the political viability of it,” Plesner said.
The change bloc ran on replacing Netanyahu, and no doubt many of its voters would feel betrayed by such an outcome.
3. Another round of elections
In his election night speech, Eisenkot declared that “after an election with such high voter turnout, it would be a mistake to hold another election.” Some 77.7% of voters cast ballots, the highest since 1999, according to election officials.
However, with no bloc reaching a majority and serious ideological disagreements among the parties, another round of elections might be the most likely possibility. For Netanyahu in particular, allowing the process to play out while he retains his position as interim prime minister until another election is held could well be the most favorable outcome for the long-serving leader, according to Plesner.
A similar scenario played out beginning in 2019, when Netanyahu’s bloc of supporters failed to achieve a majority. Israel then held a series of elections, culminating in the March 2021 vote, when Netanyahu’s bloc was ousted by a center-left alliance led by Bennett and Lapid. The November 2022 election returned Netanyahu to power.
“I don’t really know what the path forward is now,” said Gideon Rahat, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“If we were talking 10 years ago, I would say that something else might happen – a unity government or a different solution perhaps,” he said. But given the entrenched political camps at this point, another round of elections might be where the country is headed.
On the other hand, given the unpredictable nature of Israel’s political scene, Plesner noted that it could be a “time for politicians to get creative.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if all sorts of ideas that we haven’t thought of before come up in the upcoming few weeks,” he said, adding that he believed that, with so much uncertainty, it could “take weeks and perhaps months” before the next prime minister is determined.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel’s election deadlock: 3 scenarios for what comes next appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu may have won Israel. He’s losing America.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have just won over Israelis. Now comes something harder: winning Americans.
Israel’s election results aren’t final, and there is still a long way to go before a government is formed, but Netanyahu outperformed the expectations of almost all the polls and pundits.
I get why. Security is Israelis’ primary concern, and under Netanyahu, the IDF has set back Iran’s nuclear program, quieted rockets from Hezbollah in the north and devastated, if not fully defeated, Hamas in the south.
Israeli voters overlooked or dismissed Netanyahu’s accountability for Oct. 7, focusing instead on the country’s strong economy, the Abraham Accords, or his willingness to accommodate the demands of the religious parties.
But what is working at home for Netanyahu is not working abroad. Specifically, in America, support for Israel under Netanyahu has cratered, and yesterday’s election is unlikely to boost it back up.
The percentage of Americans holding an unfavorable view of Israel has gone from 42% in 2022 to 60% in 2026, according to Pew research.
For the first time since 2001, according to Gallup, more Americans sympathize with Palestinians (41%) than Israelis (36%).
Among Democrats, 8 in 10 have an unfavorable view of Israel — up from 69% last year. Among Republicans, the future looks the same: 57% of Republicans 18 to 49 now have an unfavorable opinion of Israel, up from 50% last year.
Tucker Carlson and Vice President JD Vance, both of whom have accused Israel of dragging America into war with Iran, are more likely the party’s future than its past.
American Jews used to boast of a bipartisan consensus in favor of Israel. They worked for decades to help forge it. Now that bipartisan consensus is moving in the opposite direction.
Under these circumstances, any new Israeli prime minister would be facing the world’s shortest honeymoon with Israel’s strongest partner.
Netanyahu’s will be even shorter if he prevails. Israelis may not be tired of Netanyahu, but Americans are. A Pew survey this year found 59% of Americans had little or no confidence in him. Among American Jews it was 56%.
Those numbers should frighten anyone who cares about Israel. The American-Israel relationship is not about popularity. It’s about survival.
No matter who was elected, America’s foreign aid allocation to Israel, a political liability, should phase out, something Netanyahu himself proposed when the current aid bill expires in 2028.
But Israel will still need to buy weapons from somewhere when its stockpiles run low during a war. It will need to share and coordinate intelligence, or join forces to eliminate nuclear or other common threats. America is still the best address for that.
A strong bilateral relationship — “even close to the strength that we’ve known it for the past couple of decades” — will depend on a new government’s behavior, Rachel Brandenburg, a senior policy analyst at the Israel Policy Forum, said in a call with journalists before the election.
‘Repairing a relationship’
That begs the question: Can Netanyahu change?
After almost two decades in power, is it at all possible that he will recognize the cost to Israel’s standing in America if he continues down the same path his current government has followed?
If he wants a reset with Democrats and Republicans, will he actually reach out to Democrats? Will he rein in the Jewish terrorists on the West Bank who have wreaked havoc on Palestinians, including American citizens? Will he exclude these terrorists’ supporters from his cabinet? Will he include Arab parliamentarians in his government, and address Arab concerns, after their historic showing in this election?
Finally, will he open up a diplomatic horizon with the Palestinians that will, in the end, be the only way to consolidate the military and diplomatic gains he has made?
These steps would go a long way to repairing a relationship whose rupture would be devastating, but not symmetrical.
“Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone,” President Lyndon Johnson warned the Israeli prime minister on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War.
It’s a warning I pray the next Israeli prime minister abides.
The post Netanyahu may have won Israel. He’s losing America. appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s opposition has the numbers to defeat Netanyahu. Will it let him survive anyway?
According to exit polls, Israel’s opposition appears to have achieved something remarkable: a parliamentary majority of up to 70 seats, including the Arab parties, over Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies. In almost any other parliamentary democracy, such a result would be understood as a decisive victory for the forces seeking a change of government. Yet Israel may be heading toward the extraordinary spectacle of an opposition that wins a commanding majority and nevertheless allows the incumbent to remain in power.
The reason is a political taboo: several opposition leaders have promised not to form a government dependent on the support of Arab parties, even though virtually every plausible path to replacing Netanyahu requires precisely that.
And if the exit polls are right, those Arab parties have almost doubled their Knesset representation, to perhaps 18 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. This happened because of a huge increase in voter turnout among the 20 percent of Israelis who are Arabs.
In past elections, almost half the Arabs stayed home on election day, compared to participation levels of around 80 percent among Jews. The surge appears to have been driven by despair over the perceived hostility of the Netanyahu government, and anger over ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has displayed inaction and indifference about the lawlessness that bedevils the Arab sector.
The two Arab parties – Ra’am and the United Arab List – have already offered to back Gadi Eisenkot, the former military chief who heads the largest opposition party, Yashar.
This landscape presents the wider opposition with a real dilemma. Its leaders may end up breaking their most important promise to voters — to remove Netanyahu from office — in order to honor a secondary promise not to form a governing coalition with Arab parties and depend on the safety net they offer. That promise should have been no more than a white lie to reassure wavering Jewish voters who in the past supported the right. Sticking to it would be a spectacular case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
In his speech to supporters after polls closed Tuesday, Eisenkot promised to use the results to set up a government. “The Israeli public voted to end Netanyahu’s rule as the prime minister of Israel,” he said. “It’s my personal duty to do everything to bring about the will of the people.”
If Eisenkot and the rest of the opposition now show resolve, a minority government supported from outside by Arab lawmakers is one possibility. A coalition that includes at least Ra’am, the pragmatic Islamist party that participated in Israel’s 2021 governing coalition, is another. Defections from the right could also help assemble a government. These also should be considered, as long as those joining it are not given the power to block essential reforms or perpetuate the policies that voters sought to reject.
None of the options are clean and simple. But the notion that Arab parliamentary support renders a government illegitimate is neither a democratic principle nor a reflection of Israel’s political history.
Indeed, a look at that history reveals something that Netanyahu’s long dominance has helped obscure. Since the political upheaval of 1977, Likud victories have generally depended on ultra-Orthodox support, while victories by the non-Likud camp have repeatedly depended on Arab votes.
In 1984, Shimon Peres managed to force a parliamentary tie with the help of six seats held by Arab parties. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin’s victory yielded a majority of 61 seats only when five Arab lawmakers were counted. In 1999, Ehud Barak won a landslide in the direct election for prime minister, but his reliable parliamentary bloc numbered only 60 seats, including 10 Arab lawmakers. The addition of right wing parties enabled him to govern.
The pattern continued in 2006, when Kadima’s victory was widely perceived as decisive, even though its assured parliamentary bloc numbered just 60 seats without additional Arab support. And in 2021, Yair Lapid’s success in assembling a government that ended Netanyahu’s 12 consecutive years in power depended on a parliamentary alignment of 61 lawmakers opposed to Netanyahu, including 10 Arab representatives.
With the notable exception of Ra’am in 2021, Arab parties generally did not become formal coalition partners. Peres formed a national unity government with Likud – and Rabin, his majority secured via the Arab parties, formally brought in the religious party Shas. In all these cases the Arabs’ parliamentary support for the opposition helped prevent Likud from forming a government and made alternative coalitions possible. In some cases, Arab lawmakers then supported the government from outside, while politicians from the traditional right-wing camp eventually crossed political lines to join the governing arrangement.
Against that historical background, the 2026 result should be understood as an extraordinary opportunity for Israel’s liberal and anti-Netanyahu forces. The central question is whether their leaders will recognize it or miss the opportunity.
Netanyahu remains the prime minister under whose watch the catastrophe of Oct. 7 occurred. His government has resisted the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the attack. His coalition has advanced measures widely criticized as threats to democratic institutions, while presiding over an increasingly polarized society.
Another term for Netanyahu and his present allies could deepen Israel’s institutional deterioration, social divisions and strategic vulnerability. For critics who believe the country is already approaching a dangerous democratic and societal crossroads, the stakes are difficult to overstate.
There is also a striking inconsistency in the argument that relying on Arab support is somehow beyond the bounds of legitimate politics.
Netanyahu himself explored the possibility of forming a government with the support of Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am, in 2021. That possibility collapsed largely because Bezalel Smotrich, now one of Netanyahu’s most prominent far-right partners, refused to accept it.
The time has come for Israel to show some appreciation for its Arab citizens, who constitute roughly one-fifth of Israel’s population. They work, study, pay taxes and participate in the country’s civic and economic life. They vote in national elections and elect representatives to the Knesset. There is no coherent democratic justification for treating those representatives’ mandates as inherently less legitimate than those of Jewish lawmakers.
To be sure, Arab political parties hold positions, particularly on the Palestinian question, that many Jewish Israelis find deeply objectionable. Some of those disagreements are profound, and coalition negotiations involving Arab parties inevitably raise difficult questions about national identity, security and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But ultra-Orthodox parties also hold positions that many secular Israelis regard as fundamentally incompatible with their vision of the country, including on religious authority, military service and civil liberties. Far-right parties in Netanyahu’s coalition have promoted policies that critics see as far more damaging to democratic norms than anything the Arabs might do.
There will undoubtedly be pressure for a national unity government, possibly from Washington. President Donald Trump, who endorsed Netanyahu, seems likely to pressure Eisenkot to agree. The machinations might include restarting the war with Iran. Eisenkot should resist it all.
Israel’s declaration of independence promised equality. Israel’s opposition has a golden opportunity to keep that promise.
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