****** I recall having just returned to Toronto from a year in Israel as a student and being a guest at a late-summer garden party. 1982. The First Lebanon War raged. Two months earlier I had been writing final exams for my year at the Hebrew Univer- sity of Jerusalem. One morning in June, we awoke to a campus with no young men. They had been called up for reserve army duty. A few days later a simple chalkboard was set on the floor of the main entrance to the campus on Mt. Scopus. Each day, names were erased and new ones written; our peers who had fallen in Lebanon. This became my generation’s war. In Israel, it’s a thing. Every generation has “its war.” But Lebanon was different, because to this day, many see it as a reckless escapade, undertaken by the bullish General Ariel Sharon who had convinced Prime Minis- ter Menachem Begin, against his better judgement, to go in. All the way to Beirut, if need be. Lebanon is where Israel lost its innocence. There are many Israelis across the political spectrum who see that conflict as a turning point, unlike previous wars, when the young nation initiated a war that was not existen- tial. Begin was gutted by that realization and resigned from public life. There was an enormous human toll—in dead soldiers—as well as national cohesiveness. I returned to Toronto that summer, and the disconnect was jarring. At that Toronto garden party, a group of men held forth with great authority on just how amazing and important the Lebanon War was. I offered an alternate opinion. Even in 1982, politics was not a place for young women, and our opinions were not taken ser- iously. As a society, we were still straddling the mentality of the ‘50s and working on ac- cepting women as intellectual equals—never mind betters. I was told, by the men, that I really did not understand the situation. My gender aside, in those days, dissent on the matter of Israel simply was not an option. Not in the Can- adian Jewish community. We needed Israel to align with our legends and myths, which were increasingly unrelated to the reality. And now, at 75, both sides, exile and Israel, struggle with what they are, separate and together. Seventy-five is an extraordinary achievement. We exist. We have built a beautiful country with a flourishing economy founded on the principles of liberal democracy. David Ben Gurion, on May 14, 1948, managed the
Demonstrators lift flags and placards during a rally to protest the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul bill in Tel Aviv, March 30, 2023.
What’s Really Going On In Israel The discussion regarding Israel’s current instability tends to focus on the “right-left” political paradigm. But, fact is, it has little to do with these more traditional categories and much more to do with the manner in which the state manifests its Jewish identity. This is a long-deferred conflict over the degree to which matters of religion and state should be separate or intertwined. Many of the hundreds of thousands of Is- raelis who have been drawn to the streets to protest the judicial reforms and the impact they will have on liberal democracy are not left-wing anarchists, as Prime Minister Ben- jamin Netanyahu and his colleagues prefer to brand them. Not by a long shot. Among this cohort are former Bank of Israel governor and chairman of JPMorgan Chase International, Jacob Frenkel, all former living heads of Mossad, Shin Bet, Israeli Police, Bank of Israel, CEOs of major banks, technology CEOs, etc. The tsunami of support for this “camp—crossing every imaginable divide—is breathtaking. It is also a major slap in the face for Netanyahu. Opponents of the reforms are heavily secu- lar but include many traditional and some modern Orthodox Jews (in my anecdotal experience from western countries). They see this legislation as undermining, if not obliterating, liberal democracy in Israel. This population tend to serve in the army, work and pay taxes and also do reserve military duty into their 40s and 50s, well beyond the period required by law. They are fierce patri- ots and say that when they took their oath to
impossible. Only he and Golda Meir—among all the pre-state leadership—insisted that there be no compromise. No UN-preferred half-measures. A sovereign, Jewish state must be declared, they said. This boldness was spectacular, embodying the new, strong Jew who would take up arms and self-defend. Never again. Ben Gurion considered that fundamental achievement, after 1,800 years in exile, to be the ultimate goal. “Culture wars,” as he referred to extraneous issues—like disagree- ments about religion and state—could be sorted out by others. But it is the culture wars that have never properly been ad- dressed by the state and which now give rise to the extreme challenges with which Israel contends and which threaten its future as an economically viable, sovereign, Jewish, liberal democratic state. As I spoke with visiting North Americans this past week so many asked questions, privately, with disbelief. They live in another reality, where they are focused on address- ing assimilation, heightened antisemitism and the concerns of major donors, which are a hugely important driver of North American community life. In Israel, we are preoccupied with our future as a liberal democracy. And, what is clear to me, after having spoken with so many North American visitors this week, is that they really do not comprehend how grave things are here. I’ve heard a lot of: “Oh, Israel. There’s always some crisis.” True, we seem to thrive on drama. But this? This is next level.
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