Over 500,000 people took to Israel’s streets on March 11 in opposition to Netanyahu’s judicial coup. It’s the largest demonstration in Israel’s nearly 75 years of existence!
It’s not just the center-left that’s protested 11 the past 11 weeks. Even Dr. Miriam Adelson (widow of Sheldon), propagandist and actor Noa Tishby, former Trump Amb. David Friedman, and a whole slew of other American conservatives oppose the coup.
After all, Netanyahu’s efforts to gut judicial independence would completely destroy what’s left of Israeli democracy*, turning the country into elected autocracy.
Why? So Bibi can stay out of prison.
At a recent event, NIF CEO Daniel Sokatch shared that the Israelis he witnessed in the streets demonstrated a form of “inspired outrage” not seen before. People feel that they have no other choice but to show up. The pro-democracy movement reclaimed the Israeli flag - something long hijacked by Israel’s right wing - and to do so with a fusion of outrage and inspiration.
That inspiration is hope. Israeli friends of mine who typically despair of its politics have a clear-eyed sense of resolute excitement in their weekly protests, like joyful warriors. They have no other country and are fighting to fix it.
Joy and hope are necessary when fighting an aspiring dictator. Bibi’s seeks political control over everything from the bureau of statistics, the national archives, and Israel’s version of the BBC. It’s not just the courts.
Ominously in the face of reports of widespread refusal of reservists to serve if his coup succeeds, Bibi claimed that the military should support the government, not the law.
As Americans, we can’t have our biggest ally in the Middle East become a total autocracy with our tax dollars and political capital. As Jews or allies to the Jewish community, we can’t have Israel turn into an autocracy acting in our name.
Fortunately, there’s lots we can all do at this critical juncture:
Act
Write to Israeli officials and the Israeli embassies and consulates
Attend an Israeli expat-led UnXeptable rally near you.
Donate
New Israel Fund: Their grantees were the first to lead the protests!
Darkenu: You know how the center-left reclaimed the Israeli flag? Darkenu’s the NGO not only getting people in the streets, but getting out the swag! (Donations can be made directly to Darkenu via OneVoice Movement.)
Standing Together: This NGO is unapologetically all about a shared Palestinian/Arab-Jewish partnership that’s also not afraid to talk about the Occupation as part of the protests. I profiled them late last year.
J Street: They’re the ones successfully getting Members of Congress, the White House, and others to speak out in the U.S.
Americans for Peace Now, IRAC, Truah, and A Wider Bridge LGBTQ grantees are fighting for Israeli democracy as well and deserve our support.
Learn
Warning of civil war, Herzog unveils framework for judicial reform; PM rejects it
How did Israeli democracy come under threat? Follow the money
In Bulldozing Israeli Democracy, Benjamin Netanyahu Could Become the BDS Movement’s Greatest Ally
Bank of Israel chief comes out against ‘hasty’ overhaul that could harm judiciary
Hundreds of elite IDF reservists say they will stop showing up beginning Sunday
Israel: A Relationship Defined by Struggle
“Israel” translates in Hebrew to mean, “To struggle with God.”
OMG, am I struggling.
I wish my relationship with Israel - and how my fellow progressives often view it and surely wonder “Why is he so obsessed with a place run by awful people that he doesn’t live in?” -could be like any other “normal” country.
When Adam and I went to Japan and Vietnam earlier this year, no one questioned us going to a highly insular, often very xenophobic country that has barely apologized for WWII. There was zero hesitation about us going to a country run by a communist authoritarian regime where we couldn’t write notes like this one. The social double standard is very present.
Yet Israel’s different in many ways. In addition to the hard-fought state-building by Israelis themselves, Israel wouldn’t exist as it does today without ironclad Diaspora partnership in the form of philanthropy and political support since the beginning. Today we have the miracle of living when the Jewish people have the option of sovereignty after 2,000 years without it, meaning heightened responsibility for the Jewish world in Israel and outside of it.
Israel’s establishment sought to “normalize” Jews, to make the Jewish people like any other western nation after conditions across most of the Diaspora became absolutely untenable. In the years leading up to the Holocaust, the U.S.-led eugenics movement sparked doors being shut to refugee Jews almost everywhere while inspiring Nazi policies.
Yet the crisis today demonstrates its with the failure of its founders to establish a constitution and more checks on power. Throw in over 55 years of Occupation with the settlement enterprise and an ultra-Orthodox rabbinate that doesn’t represent the overwhelming majority of Jews anywhere, Jewish existence in Israel is hardly “normal” in the ways that the country’s founders ever envisioned.
In fact, I have more rights as a gay Reform Jew in America than in Israel, and American Jews existed for 172 years before the term “Israeli Jew” came into the lexicon.
Despite those profound differences, shortcomings, and obvious contradictions Israel’s a place I describe as being “head over heels in love” with. I wouldn’t have gone there eight times in the past 14 years otherwise.
I’ll never forget the liberation I felt walking around Tel Aviv for the first time in 2009. The revival of Hebrew as a living language, a thriving secular culture centered around the Jewish calendar, and having one slice of the planet with a Jewish majority can’t possibly be overstated. It’s an act of extraordinary self-determination and perseverance by an historically oppressed people dispersed by exile and choice alike. Israel’s creation gave Jews additional access to Jewish identity without religion (if they so choose; for many, it’s a mix), which means a whole lot to atheist Jews like me.
Perhaps as a double minority, the freedom that comes with being in a place where one part of me is the “norm” goes a very long way.
Israel’s additionally home to many friends and family. In fact, my cousin lives in the same block where a Hamas-backed terrorist shot unassuming civilians in Tel Aviv.
I think of my Bubby and Papa, who frequently reminded me that Israel’s establishment made it possible for Jews to “stand tall.”
It’s a complicated narrative. Israel’s 1948 establishment coincided with the postwar boom in Jewish life in which Ashkenazi Jews became white enough for the opportunities to ascend the socioeconomic ladder just as civil rights laws also liberated the community from remaining legal discrimination. But given that my grandparents grew up in a Eurocentric, “all Americans are/were immigrants” world in which Jews were legitimized in the eyes of the white majority for finally having a sovereign homeland to have “ties” to (never mind Native Americans and Black descendants of formerly enslaved people).
Despite the terrifying rise of autocracy and the immense suffering and sacrifice among Jews and Palestinians alike during the last 75 years, I shudder to think of what the alternative for Jews would be. Working at a Jewish refugee resettlement agency, I say so authority.
It’s painful seeing a place I love that shaped Jewish peoplehood for generations fail to live up to its promise and descend into chaos. And I have every right and obligation to speak up to do something about it like anyone else.
Just as Israeli and Diaspora Jews share responsibility for Israel’s establishment, we also share responsibility for the ascendance of fascism. It’s a privilege we have in a relationship that can only exist between a Diaspora and a sovereign homeland, something my ancestors could only dream of. That’s why I give a damn and try to do something about it, instead of blind allegiance or willful ignorance.
So while I hope my progressive friends reading this column can perhaps withhold some judgement over having ties to a troubled country - just look in the mirror for where we all live! - I’ll come to terms with the fact that my relationship with Israel may never be “normal” after all.
*I say “what’s left of Israeli democracy” because of the Occupation. The Supreme Court that Israelis are fighting to save was no friend to Palestinians in the West Bank, even though the right wing bizarrely thinks it’s the biggest threat to the settlement enterprise. But I do believe that if we’re ever going to find a just political solution for Israel and Palestine, we have to keep democracy in Israel alive.
Job postings will be featured in my next post.