Anger, energy, rhythm and momentum flowed from the crowd of perhaps 5,000 people who packed into Rabin Square Saturday evening, as the kick-off for the next round of social protests. There was an unruly, cacophonous spirit – the stage was moved from its traditional, stately position in front of the municipality to an offbeat corner of the open square, putting the demo on a sort of rakish angle. Several people were beating drums, chanters had to be silenced to hear the speakers, speakers shouted unpolished texts into the low-quality sound system. It looked like the rough-edged poor cousins of the huge and heavy summer protests, with their singular chant “the people demand social justice.”

Crowd at Occupy Israel social protest, Tel Aviv, 12 May 2012 (Photo: Dahlia Scheindlin)

Occupy Israel social protest, Tel Aviv, 12 May, 2012 (Photo: Dahlia Scheindlin)

As a result, it felt a lot more genuine.

Although summer, the unofficial protest season, hasn’t quite begun, and the reason for the protest was the international occupy day rather than any fresh public injury – still people turned out in far greater numbers than they had for any other recent protests. Last week’s demonstration against the new coalition deal, the one a few weeks earlier (a sort of message-free general protest march) and the demo against an attack on Iran before that – all seemed to draw more cops and bloggers than demonstrators, who numbered barely a few hundred each. Last night it felt like a storm cloud had exploded without waiting for the thunderbolt at the starting line.

Over last summer, I wrote of my frustration with what I observed to be a shallow, catch-all message – “social justice,” which meant something different to everyone and was too easily diluted. The maddening insistence on being non-political felt absurd, and the refusal to address the connection of social issues with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was deeply alienating to me personally.

Mostly, I was annoyed by the public tone of begging the government in a sort of self-infantilizing cry for help, rather than demanding its head.

Last night, for the first time, many people replaced “the people demand social justice,” with “the people demand a civil rebellion!”  Just as I entered the throng, a wave of “Bibi go home!” was rippling through the square. Signs taunted the leaders.

Occupy Israel social protest, Tel Aviv, 12 May, 2012 (Photo: Dahlia Scheindlin)

To be sure, there were no sudden calls for an end to the occupation. But the fact that signs talked of human rights and diversity is something I do not recall from the first wave of demonstrations. The very term “human rights” in this country has been so tainted as a left-wing conspiracy that this is the first indication of a shifting role for the concept – which could ultimately be understood for its universal meaning.

Occupy Israel social protest, Tel Aviv, 12 May, 2012 (Photo: Dahlia Scheindlin)

The fact that the speakers were unknown, and looked nothing like the slick Tel Aviv hipsters of last summer, was moving – I find Gideon Levy’s critique of this to be, frankly, elitist. I too saw Daphni Leef milling around in the crowd, while a different crop of citizens beamed at the audience and told their stories. I took that as a good sign.

Occupy Israel social protest, Tel Aviv, 12 May 2012 (Photo: Dahlia Scheindlin)

These folks got great audience support when they boasted of having no party backing or affiliation, and no financial support from anyone. They asked for contributions in bottles being passed around, to cover the evening’s costs. That’s a reminder that beyond all the righteous commentary about the masterful-or-machiavellian coalition deal, the public mainly feels left out. Only now instead of begging for attention, the citizens are just leaving the politicians behind. Again, this is a good thing: I’m waiting to see the politicians fall over each other trying to catch up, instead of dreaming up ways to shut them up.

One party did make its presence known: Meretz, the party that might actually be the source of true opposition to the new government. It’s hard to trust Labor, given the stated willingness of its leader to play along with Netanyahu, before she was cut out of the coalition deal. An excellent (curiously not yet translated) interview with under-appreciated Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On in Haaretz this weekend shows some courageous thinking on current issues, such as the Tal Law. With no coalition pressures and little to lose, Meretz could be the party that sets the bar – or pushes the boundaries – for the opposition discourse.

Meretz signs at Occupy Israel social protest, Tel Aviv, 12 May, 2012 (Photo: Dahlia Scheindlin)

In sum, whether it was due to the raw feeling among a diverse crowd of protesters, more explicit anti-government messages that were hard to contain, the incipient presence of a universal human rights language or just the numbers themselves – the protest last night felt different. The giddy bubble of last summer seems to be giving way to something tougher, less controlled and less forgiving.

Occupy Israel social protest, Tel Aviv, 12 May, 2012 (Photo: Dahlia Scheindlin)

Occupy Israel social protest, Tel Aviv, 12 May, 2012 (Photo: Dahlia Scheindlin)

Occupy Israel social protest, Tel Aviv, 12 May, 2012 (Photo: Dahlia Scheindlin)

The morning media conversations obsessed about what a horrible move this was, perhaps anti-democratic, a dirty trick (“nauseating” was a favored description) and, insisted one veteran Knesset television reporter, it tramples the will of the people.

I don’t trust the righteous anger on behalf of the people. The bitter accusations that this is a deal based on “personal interests” smack of bitter personal interests.

There are actually various reasons why this probably a good thing – or at least no worse than the (now counterfactual) potential results of an election.

1. The main towering advantage of postponing the elections until late 2013 is that it ensures only another year and a half of one of the worst governments Israel has ever had – a government that drove hundreds of thousands to the streets in economic desperation, pushed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict past the point of no return, and explicitly set out to mutilate Israel’s democratic process and what remained of its democratic character. If elections were held in four months, all polls bar none showed a resounding Likud victory, the same majority for the right-wing bloc, and ergo – probably a very similar government for another four years. Whatever terrible damage a super-sized coalition majority can do – it’s better to have this for 18 months, than for up to four more years.

2. The elections were designed to usurp another social protest, with the one-year anniversary coming up. I don’t know what kind of showing the public will or won’t make – but now there can be no excuse that the elections are a replacement for protest. Further, the social protesters made colorful headlines but bad politicians. After nearly a year, not a single grassroots party has emerged fully-baked for elections, unless one counts silver-spoon Yair Lapid. Truly new political formations apparently need the extra year and a half to organize.

3. With apologies to all the commentators who see themselves as valiant voices of the public, I didn’t need recent surveys to tell me that the majority (62 percent in a Channel 2 survey just last week – Hebrew) didn’t want elections. The social protesters, to my dismay, were not revolutionaries: they clung to Netanyahu for his full-on go-nowhere status quo approach on the conflict, and just needed him to move over a little to the left on social-economic issues, because in their minds, well-being and the conflict are completely unrelated. It’s hard to see how the deal is anti-democratic, with the two largest parties in the Knesset leading the country (however much I personally dislike them). Kadima’s low poll scores should not be confused with the 2009 election results.

4. Labor now has the chance to show if it’s made of anything – by reviving the phantom opposition. I admit that I’ve been skeptical of new party leader Shelly Yacimovich; while she has branded herself successfully as an active parliamentarian on social/economic themes, I think anyone who doesn’t keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict front and center on the Israeli priorities is doing a historical disservice to the country, its people and the region. Tzipi Livni was a profound disappointment as opposition leader. Not only was she complicit in the government’s ruinous behavior by her silence, but under her leadership, the party initiated some of the worst anti-democratic legislation. For three years, Israel has had no opposition; Labor is now positioned to revive the concept.

5. Iran: Some of my colleagues think that this is a launching platform for a strike on Iran. I don’t agree – Netanyahu had all the platform he needed in Israel before this too, and if anything, Mofaz has been cautious about the Iran strike. (Although why believe anything he says anymore? He also called Netanyahu a flat-out liar and said he would never go into a coalition with him.) The point is, sadly, I don’t think the prospects are changed. Israel will have to come to its senses with or without the kumbaya coalition.

There are alas many dangers and outrages involved in this development too. I’ll bet anything the new government will continue to authorize settlement expansion, and legalize unlawful West Bank neighborhoods slated for evacuation. Further, I loathe the feeling of a male takeover: Livni out, Kadima in, Shelly snuffed out, and not to mention that the whole deal was facilitated by the prime minister’s crony Natan Eshel, who recently left office in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal.

But this government’s days are limited.

Isaiah Berlin’s seminal critique of utopia holds that no matter how noble the idea at hand, the assumption that one truth can be universal and overriding denies the reality of conflicting, but equally vital, human truths. We may believe all humans agree on the right to life and physical security. But we also cherish other human rights and freedoms, and sometimes these are in conflict. Acknowledging and struggling with that tension makes us human; automatically trampling one value for the other results in disaster.

The notion of perfection requires us to suspend other basic human and political values to achieve it. This is Berlin’s point in the famous metaphor: to make the perfect omelet, there is no such thing as too many broken eggs.

Nineteenth century ideologies of both the right and the left based on utopian visions led to Nazism and Communism, which perpetrated grand-scale destruction of human lives and minds.

In 21^st century Israel, a utopian notion of security has evolved, perhaps as a natural outcome of Jewish history.  Utopian security in this vision is the total absence of Arab-on-Jewish violence or even anger. In utopian security, there would never be attacks from rogue cells, unbalanced individuals, or borderline ethno/national-cum-criminal/hooliganism. No non-Jewish adult or child would ever throw a stone at an Israeli, nor at Jews anywhere in the entire world. No scrap of anti-Semitic literature would ever be found in any Palestinian hands. Naturally, this serves the interests of the right and often mainstream centrists, who argue that Israel must not make peace or even negotiate as long as our security is threatened, including psychologically.

On a personal level, I dream of a world where nobody hurts anyone, Jew or non-Jew, for any reason.

But to place utopia at the center of a political project, to predicate political solutions on a fantasy and end all creative debate by pulling out perfect security as a trump card – usually as proof of why the search for peace is in vain – is a grave historic mistake and an injustice to all people in the region. It is shamelessly hypocritical, because Jewish Israeli security in this vision is, of course, unidirectional. The fantasy rests on an absurd denial of human nature the world over.

Expectations have gone overboard as a result. Daily conversations over coffee often end with some version of “how we can negotiate when their textbooks don’t even show Israel on the map?” because that too, is a breach of utopian – psychological – security.

The zero sum complex: Either utopian security or total destruction

In current Israeli Jewish discourse there are only two options: utopian security, or full-on existential destruction. There is nothing in between. A reserve soldier expressed this well in a recent op ed in Ynet (Hebrew), explaining that he was “proud to serve in Judea and Samaria,” because he helped people celebrate the Seder without getting murdered, prevented the stabber or the suicide-bomb-belt [sic] from crossing the Green Line, prevented murder and harm to human life. The entire article was hypothetical, as I understood it – he never told an anecdote or referred to real-life events. Yet he knew that his presence had saved Jews, because there had been massacres in 1929. In his mind, the fact that there had been no attacks while he served was the same as saying he prevented a scenario of certain and total destruction. This despite the sharp decline in terror-related casualties and attacks over the last seven years to the point where the numbers can be measured in dozens, if that. By comparison, road accidents kill between 370-600 Israelis annually. Criminal murders number between 100-200 annually.

Yes, there are very real security violations from external enemies. But these are not an existential threat. Yes, there is an Iranian nuclear threat – just like the one I grew up with under the shadow of the USSR, which actually had the bomb. When I was in third grade, after a particularly impressive social studies class, my friends and I discussed somberly in the school lunchroom that we probably wouldn’t live to see the turn of the millennium; we were told there were enough nuclear weapons to blow the whole world up 10 times over. There were nuclear fallout shelter signs everywhere.

I lived with it then, and I can live with it now. This is unrelated to the increasingly desperate need to reach a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It’s ironic therefore that the right has succeeded in branding the left as naïve. What’s truly dismaying is that the left has fallen for it.

It’s time to inject some unapologetic realism into the debate.

Sacrifices at the altar of utopia

When security for Israel became utopia, there were two profound ramifications: the paralysis of the peace process and the simultaneous de-legitimization of the broad left camp (inside Israel and in the diaspora), particularly over the last decade – with the left’s stuttering acquiescence.

Peace process sacrificed to security. Since the outbreak of the Second Intifada (and in truth, beginning in the Oslo years of the mid-1990s), Israelis have come to believe that peace – an umbrella term that they frequently confuse with the process (the Oslo Accords, Camp David negotiations) –  actually harms security. The notion was injected by the hard right, those responsible for the infamous “Bring Oslo criminals to justice!” narrative. The notion that peace-related policy causes terror caught on in the mainstream, and then stuck.

In the 2000s, the players changed slightly but the paradigm remained. The 1990s notion of ‘peace’ was replaced in Israeli minds by unilateral Israeli withdrawals. The 2000 IDF withdrawal from Lebanon was viewed as the cause of rocket fire in the north (as if Israel didn’t suffer casualties and rockets for 18 years before that). Dismantling settlements from Gaza became the reason for the electoral victory of the Hamas, rocket fire from Gaza, and the capture of Gilad Shalit – all violations of non-existent, utopian security and the basis for the policy that Israel does not talk while under fire.

Before he was murdered, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin coined a pithy notion of advancing the peace process as if there is no terrorism and fighting terrorism as if there is no peace process. But the concept died with him.  What seemed so logical to Rabin – rejecting the interdependence of peace and security – seems impossible for Israelis to comprehend 17 years later.

The left assists its own de-legitimization. The left has completely failed to mount an effective argument on the question of security; the typical answers have probably done more damage than good. Intellectual, moral, legal, political, pragmatic or rational angles are smashed apart in daily conversations, by the inevitable silver bullet: how can we make peace when they conduct terror?

That was the question that defined the decade. The left failed to dispel the utopian paradigm, and instead became defensive. Failing to provide an adequate answer to the demand for perfect security, the left lost political relevance in Israel.

Instead, typical left-wing responses were reactive, never proactive – envision a whole figurative political camp trembling whenever the issue is raised, which is all the time.

When backed into a corner, the left usually proffers one of three main arguments: first, the occupation is the source of anger, hatred, poverty and hopelessness, which create the conditions for terror; second, that peace will advance security; and third, the rare argument, coming mainly from small pockets of the more radical left, that Israel has no right to expect security when it is the aggressor in an asymmetrical conflict.

When the right is right 

Shooting these arguments down has been child’s play for the right. After years of lamenting that there’s no left left, it’s time to admit when the right is right: terror and violence against Israeli Jews (and other Jews) existed before the occupation, continued through the earliest advances and concessions for a peace process and continue today (as did Israeli violence against Palestinians). The first argument fails.

The notion that peace advances security is no match for the deeply entrenched interpretation of events described earlier. Worse, the hope that peace will bring security does nothing to dispel the utopian aspect and thus strengthens it; every lull that ends with a stone or a rocket is a victory for the utopists.

Left-wing groups have wracked their brains considering how to convince Israelis that the peace-causes-terror interpretation is wrong, one-sided, ignores the Palestinian reality, is biased by our media or missing critical facts. But of course: all human beings see their reality first. It’s natural. Trying to enlighten Israelis about the truth may be a worthy cause in itself, but it is hopeless to imagine that left-wing truths will cause people to give peace another chance or bring perfect security. The irresponsible, quixotic crusade to get Israelis to see the light, or put someone else’s narrative first has earned only accusations of arrogance or betrayal.

The notion that Israel as the aggressor cannot expect security is plainly immoral in my mind, because civilians always deserve security, Palestinians and Israelis. This line exposes the genuine hypocrisy of some within the camp that I call my own, which is personally painful for me. Perhaps the height of this argument was reached with the demented apologia for the horrific killing of a whole family, including tiny children, in the settlement of Itamar. Aside from being simply wrong, such commentary again advances the fatal notion: if we stop killing them, we can expect perfect security.

****

I am not writing this in order to conjure a brilliant strategic message, provide talking points, copywriting or slogans.  This is my experience of a tragic reality. This is my analysis of why many mainstream, centrist and even some right-wing Israelis whom I am privileged to interview through my public opinion research – or whom I know as friends and family – actually seem as pained as I am: they genuinely want to reach a solution, but nobody is helping them cope with the security problem. This was the left’s job, and we have failed them.

Here’s how I view reality: there is no perfect world. Everyone lives with a security threat, even on remote islands in Norway, the state that symbolizes peace.

If there’s one thing I trust the military and intelligence establishment of Israel to do, it’s their job. The occupation is not their job. Keeping me as safe as possible under an imperfect, non-utopian political reality, under the best possible political compromise the Israeli and Palestinian people can reach, is. That’s what I call defense.

It is time to expose the fact that our prevailing notion of security is a dangerous fantastical nightmare perpetuating the conflict forever, by demanding that unacceptable deeds be committed in its name. But the right can hardly be expected to give up a vision that serves its political interests. Instead, the current leadership abuses that vision for rapacious gain, sacrificing the well-being of Israel as a country in the process.

The left must show people that they are being exploited and misled to dream of an unattainable myth. The left must admit that there is a permanent security threat instead of ignoring it. The left must make the case that an immediate political resolution to the conflict is not a formula for an impossible, flawless level of security, but for a better Israel – something we’ll be proud to protect.

A review of public surveys on the Iran issue shows that even prior to the damning critique on Friday by Yuval Diskin, former head of the Internal Security Agency, the public already diverged sharply from the leadership’s policy: Survey after survey, as I wrote in March, showed that only a minority – somewhere between 19 percent and 31 percent – favors a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran. The majority – at least half (here’s a similar survey in Hebrew), and up to nearly two-thirds (Hebrew) – is against a unilateral attack.

There are a few reasons why Diskin’s words could open a crack in the myth among the public that Netanyahu is good for security: First, Diskin voices the public’s basic divergence with government policy, as stated above. Second, Diskin joins a growing list of senior security figures who have expressed reservations about an attack, and that’s hard for the public to ignore. Third, commentary and speculation from some of the most influential (and most importantly, non-left wing) opinion-forming columnists in the Hebrew press have largely defended Diskin’s integrity.

At the very least, Diskin’s words and their reverberations could raise reasonable doubt in the public mind about Netanyahu’s competence on security. If so, citizens may then re-visit their own positions, instead of placing unqualified trust in the government. And if the public looks at itself, here’s what it will see (this revisits the polls I wrote about in March):

• Just one-fifth of all Israelis (22 percent) – and only 19 percent of Jews – believe that a strike would delay the nuclear program by five years or more. All the rest believe it would delay it only by one to five years (31 percent). Some think it would actually accelerate the program (11 percent) and one-fifth (19 percent) say it would have no effect at all. (Telhami)
• Three-quarters of Israelis believe that if Israel strikes, a major war would erupt in the Middle East. (Truman)
• Half the population believes that the ensuing conflict would last months or years; nearly half believes it could strengthen the Iranian government; and almost 70 percent (actually, a full three-quarters among Jewish respondents) believe that Hezbollah would join a retaliatory effort by Iran. (Telhami)

One newer survey showed quite different results – and it’s one of the more biased reports I’ve seen, by the usually-respectable Camil Fuchs (who polls for Haaretz). The survey was conducted on behalf of the right-wing Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, an outfit which helped found NGO Monitor, is headed by Dore Gold and has Gerald Steinberg (the head of NGO Monitor) on its list of fellows. The respondents are Jews only; remarkably, the sample contains a disproportionate number of ultra-Orthodox (see the survey information notes, below). The survey stated hawkish positions and asked people to agree or disagree, rather than presenting two opposing views and asking them to state a preference. According to the data:

• When told that “The only way to stop Iran from becoming nuclear is through a military strike,” 60 percent agreed (37 percent disagreed).
• When told that “Israel will pay a higher price for living under the shadow of an Iranian bomb than it will for attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities,” 65 percent agreed (the question did not clarify whether the attack would be unilateral or in concert with any other actor).
• But when asked to compare American versus Israeli military capacity to substantially harm Iran’s nuclear program, the gap becomes apparent even here: 87 percent agreed that America has this capacity, compared to 66 percent who agreed with relation to Israel.

Close monitoring is needed, but the public has spoken clearly against an Israeli unilateral strike and knows categorically that it will cause a major, protracted war. Personally I’d be happier if the numbers showed more doubts about a military strike in general.

But when surveys prior to Diskin’s critique repeatedly show Netanyahu and Likud running high, affirmed again by a survey published today in the pro-Netanyahu daily paper Israel Hayom (a classic case of shoddy poll reporting, free of sample size, description and dates), and the New York Times called Netanyahu’s popularity “all but impenetrable,” it’s clear that the venting of economic frustrations last summer never touched the current government. A crack in the armor of Netanyahu/Barak’s security defense (of themselves, that is) is probably the only thing that stands to chip away at their support.

 Survey Information:

• Telhami: Survey authored by Professor Shibley Telhami at University of Maryland. Dates: February 22-26, 2012. Sample: 500 adult Israelis, national representation (Jews and Arabs); error: +/- 4.5%
• Truman: Survey authored by Professor Yaacov Shamir as part of the Israel-Palestine poll project at the Truman Institute at Hebrew University. Dates: March 11-15, 2012. Sample: 600 adult Israelis, national representation (Jews and Arabs), interviewed in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian; error: +/- 4.5%
• Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: Authored by Camil Fuchs, March 2011 (no precise dates given). Sample: 505 Jews, no margin of error given. Sample critique: the demographics show that 15% of the sample self-defined as Haredi (ultra-orthodox), the most right-leaning group in Israel – and the group with the highest support for an attack. I have never seen statistics from the Central Bureau of Statistics or in any survey I’ve conducted that shows their number higher than nine percent. The report says the numbers in the analysis are weighted according to CBS data; but since Haredim invariably under-respond to surveys, the sample is quite hard to explain.

Correction appended: Nearly half the Israeli public believes a strike on Iran would strengthen the Iranian government, not the Israeli government as originally written.

In 2008, human rights organization Yesh Din petitioned to have the neighborhood dismantled on behalf of its Palestinian owners; in September 2011, the Court found that Givat Ha’ulpana was indeed built on privately-owned Palestinian lands – in simple terms, this is property theft. The state agreed to demolish the neighborhood (Hebrew) then, and the Court ruling set a deadline of April 2012 – or up to the first of May.

Now eight ministers are seeking any possible means to reverse that ruling: they have asked the State Prosecutor’s office to find a way to delay the evacuation, and the delay will be used to explore all possible means of ensuring that the neighborhood remain in place. Likud Knesset Member Danny Danon posted his party’s explicit support for the settlement on his Facebook page, writing that “the evacuation of Ulpana crosses the line for Likud.”  The government thus hopes to openly circumvent the original Supreme Court ruling and actually wants no less than to force the legal system to become the body that justifies and regularizes settlement expansion.

The government now seems passionate and creative in its commitment to saving the 30 families of the five-building neighborhood in Beit El: Defense Minister Barak has proposed that they be moved – to other buildings inside Beit El, and only if his preferred option of legalizing it fails completely. Today, Maariv reports (Hebrew) that the government is considering two further options: To ask retired Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levi to lead a committee that will provide a legal arrangement for the illegal settlements (there are others awaiting permanent government approval) or else to establish a new committee to re-consider how this specific neighborhood can be legalized.

With the original ruling against Givat Ha’ulpana one year ago, the Prime Minister agreed that the neighborhood must indeed go. His current position is that “the public cannot tolerate” the evacuation of the settlers, a total reversal – apparently in light of impending danger that the policy might actually be implemented.

Each development highlights the bizarre and dangerous operating rules of this government.

Netanyahu’s statement about the public is insulting, but typical: the vast majority have never heard of Givat Ha’ulpana and has no clue where it is. The statement is quite obviously intended to make the public think that this is what it thinks. Maybe that way, herds of citizens will dutifully think of those 30 families instead of their own, forget about gasoline prices, rising electricity and water bills, low salaries, high rents, consumer abuse. Netanyahu’s statement also seems calculated to convince the world that the Israeli public is consumed with these five buildings and may dissolve into a civil war if they are moved.

Barak’s position is indefensible for someone who still maintains a lame show of support for a two-state solution. Moving the families back to “Beit El proper” is a compromise? Beit El lies north of Ramallah, well beyond the separation wall, which is fast losing relevance as a de facto border. No one even seems to remember the former-former de facto border of the Green Line.

The developments surrounding Givat Ha’ulpana showcase of the government’s prized policy: expand settlements at all costs, in all regions, in all ways; circumvent the Supreme Court; overturn the leadership’s own policies at will; push the bar of settlement acceptability in public discourse as far beyond the separation wall as possible, by making claims so wild that retreating to completely illegitimate starting points is seen as moderation and restraint. And finally, the real goal: strengthen the existing reality of one sovereign ruler over the territory from the Jordan to the sea.

One intelligent critique of the opposition to the bill was written in Haaretz by Yuval Elbashan, whose views I greatly respect for their nuance and depth, especially on matters of law and social justice. His accusation that the left unleashed a shallow, knee-jerk condemnation of the bill gave me pause, forcing me to reconsider whether my own reaction had been too reflexive:

…Even after four days of debate, the discussion is stuck in the same shallow water, with the same fear-mongering, end-of-days terminology, or, as one opinion maker told a radio interviewer, “If this bad law passes, we can shut down the rule of law.” Such a situation is not just ridiculous, it’s dangerous.

It’s dangerous because this bill is critically important, precisely for those who want to fortify Israeli democracy and the power of the Supreme Court. It’s dangerous because if this law is rejected, the delegitimization of the Supreme Court will continue…

But Elbashan’s subsequent description of the history of judicial activism makes the Court look like a rapacious Promethean figure who crudely grabbed the power of judicial review and has thus earned its punishment. Elbashan agreed that the 65 MKs needed to revive a law should be adjusted, but called this a “secondary discussion.”

I do agree with the logic of regularizing relations between the branches of power, which I also mentioned briefly in my first post – and Elbashan convinced me of the growing urgency to check the increasing public delegitimization of the Court. Zvi Bar’el of Haaretz agrees with that general point too. But Bar’el’s piece exposed the deeper principle of judicial review, and examined the signal that Neeman’s Basic Law would send to citizens and government authorities alike:

[Judicial review is a] defensive “safety belt”… based on an enlightened lawmaker’s understanding that he is capable of erring, of aspiring to tyranny or of abusing citizens. Therefore, it is best to have a policeman with a great deal of authority facing him; one who is able to stop him. Now, Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman is proposing to eliminate this safety device…in a country where many Knesset members view the High Court as an enemy, minorities as a fifth column, the left as homegrown terrorists and religion as the basis of patriotism [and a country that lacks a constitution, I might add – ds], it is not the legislature that needs strengthening but rather the court, which remains the last refuge of anyone who does not belong to the “mainstream.”

Bar’el also raises the troubling context that belies Neeman’s putatively earnest attempt to stabilize the functioning of democracy.

He points out that the Knesset was recently “insulted” when the Tal Law allowing the deferral of Haredi citizens from IDF service was revoked by the Court. And just a few weeks ago, the Court ruled against a deal that would allow the West Bank settlement of Migron (accused of being built on private land) to remain in place. The split-second response of right-wing MKs to the Migron ruling was to produce bills tailored exquisitely to the settlements they want to legalize. For months leading up to the Court ruling, these lawmakers had been practicing the refrain that the Court is trying to rule the country and take over the government. The bill for the “Basic Law: Legislation” miraculously appeared just a few weeks later.

But Bar’el’s strongest argument in my mind is that the Knesset already has the power, de facto, to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that a law contradicts the Basic Laws (the equivalent of ‘unconstitutional’ in Israel) – by voting out the Basic Law. This is the final evidence to me that the Justice Minister’s bill is a ruse. The clause is not actually needed – rather it is intended to slap down the Court and tell society that the legislature alone is the sovereign. It is intended to cement a self-destructive agenda of one government, by permanently weakening our system.

I am heartened that the new chief justice spoke out against the bill. His explicit critique was about the justice minister’s failure to consult with the Court, and the size of the Knesset majority that can overturn a Court ruling of unconstitutionality. But the message that this institution will not be bullied by the Knesset, nor enslaved to the political agenda of this coalition, and that its leader is independent-minded, is at least as important.

“The Knesset and the Supreme Court have been on a chronic collision course for 20 years, when the Knesset spilled into the judicial system in response to judicial activism…We must agree today, twenty years too late, on wording that will clearly define the boundaries of each entity. It is a mutual interest,” said Rivlin.

Even if his logic is legitimate, Rivlin’s conclusion is terribly dangerous and reveals that he ultimately views judicial activism as the true culprit. The debate over the bill will also be a test for the new Chief Justice Asher Grunis, who is considered a conservative opposed to judicial activism, but has also voted against some right-wing initiatives.

Merav Michaeli provides an excellent voice of reason (she always does), citing all the right facts to help de-fang the twisted image of a Supreme Court bogeyman that is being constantly cultivated in Israel. I highly recommend reading the entire piece.

An unconstitutional law is a law that violates the constitution. Israel does not yet have an actual constitution. It has Basic Laws – two of which protect the partial civil rights of its citizens – and a Supreme Court that regards the protection of civil rights as important. The court has struck down 10 laws as unconstitutional – not hundreds, as enemies of the court would like us to believe – and nine of them had to do with the basic rights of Israel’s predominantly Jewish citizens. Most of the decisions were made to protect citizens from the tyranny of the government.

That’s democracy – protecting citizens from the government, and protecting the minority from the majority. No majority – even one of 120 MKs – can make a ruling democratic if it is undemocratic. An undemocratic ruling is a ruling that unnecessarily violates human rights, whether of a minority group or of an individual. It is not for naught that Supreme Court President Asher Grunis, despite his reputation as a conservative right-winger, supported the abrogation of five out of the six laws discussed by benches on which he sat.

 

Whether or not this latest insult to democracy gains traction, it sends a frightening message on various levels, and should scare every single citizen.

Avoiding Jerusalem

At the heart of the Zionist project lies Jerusalem. It is the wistful final note of Israel’s national anthem and the axis mundi for the Jewish people. It also happens to be an axis mundi for Christianity and Islam, and a blood-stained battleground of history, where political violence continues daily.

Which Jerusalem do Israelis see when they look towards their disputed, beloved capital? Our Jerusalem Report survey shows figures as deeply divided as the city itself. When asked how often they visit the capital, from a representative sample of Jewish poll respondents, fully 46 percent of non-Jerusalem residents say they don’t even visit the city as much as once per year.

Another 43 percent report that they visit infrequently, between one and five times per year. 11 percent of the Jewish public say they visit once a month or more. Combined, 54 percent visit at least once a year.

Mayor Nir Barkat has made the economic and tourist revival of Jerusalem into the centerpiece of his leadership. But why did the object of two millennia of longing need reviving?

Challenge

Our poll shows that the city’s leaders face a challenge in changing the image of Jerusalem, which remains rooted in the troubled, politicized, intractable image of the city.

For many Israelis, Jerusalem is associated with dark forces. While committed Jerusalemites cherish the city’s beauty and mood, in the rest of the country it can be hard to find a good word. Israelis routinely complain of the pressure-cooker tension in a city filled with the most extreme elements of local life, not to mention the most explosive parts of the conflict. During the second Intifada, there were no less than 30 suicide bombings in Jerusalem, and more than 600 terror attacks in total.

On a more mundane level, the high concentration of ultra-orthodox residents (about one-third of Jerusalem’s population) and the proximity of the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem (another one-third of the population) – has driven many residents to leave. Many have migrated to other parts of the country, seeking less “intensity,” they will often say, and more normalcy. The city has seen a negative migration balance fairly consistently since the mid-1980s, including a 10 percent drop in the secular population since 2003, according to the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. In 2001, Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) data showed that only eight percent of Israelis went there as a tourist destination – ranking it fourth out of seven regions for internal tourism.

East and West

The political problems don’t help. In a 2008 survey for the Israeli NGO Ir Amim, which tracks political developments in Jerusalem, I found that nearly 80 percent of Israeli Jews believed that the city is, de facto, already divided between East and West – four decades after the emotional reunification in the 1967 Six Day War.

The CBS data about tourism shows total numbers, but is also divided between East and West Jerusalem. For a country whose Jewish population consistently shows a majority in polls that resists dividing the city in a peace agreement, it doesn’t seem that Israelis view unified Jerusalem as much of a meaningful reality.

Ask anyone close to the municipality – the Jerusalem Development Authority, the Mayor’s advisors – and the situation is reversible. Vast efforts are being made to power the city’s reputation as an international tourist destination and crank up the numbers of foreign visitors, including the now-annual Jerusalem Marathon; beer, wine, food, book, film, opera and music festivals; and new night-time attractions in the Old City. Barak Cohen, a media advisor to the Mayor, says these efforts are clearly directed at the domestic audience as well: “If the regular tourist options aren’t appealing, like the pilgrimage role that Jerusalem plays for most of the world, this is a way to attract them – so it’s not just a place for them to visit the Kotel and the City of David, but to become reintroduced through culture and sports.”

A Jerusalem Development Authority spokesperson says the new focus on sports, culture, and nightlife, are all intended to generate “massively modern and new images of Jerusalem.” When Israelis think about their cultural options, “Jerusalem is now in that mix.”

Figurative Athens

With so much focus on all the new aspects, there’s a strong feeling that the ancient holiness of Jerusalem isn’t particularly attractive right now to Israeli Jews. Clearly, the municipality feels that re-connecting Israelis with their eternal, indivisible, already-divided, dangerous and tense city means shifting the focus much more to the figurative Athens than Jerusalem. Is it working?

The number of foreign visitors has indeed rebounded since the crisis years of the Intifada, but it has mainly stabilized over the last five years, according to hotel stays measured by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). The number of Israelis who stay in Jerusalem hotels has been remarkably consistent over the last decade at 300,000-400,000, except for a sharp rise in 2006 to 413,000. Pnina Ben David of the Israel Hotel Association – whose figures of overnight stays were significantly higher than the CBS – explained that the sharp rise that year was due to the Second Lebanon War, when large numbers of Israelis came from the north, fleeing rocket fire.

Hotel stays may hide the numbers of those coming in for day trips. But our Jerusalem Report survey shows some analysis of which Jewish Israelis are visiting. Among the small Haredi and religious sample of respondents, 82 percent and 67 percent, respectively, visit once per year or more, compared to just half of the traditional and secular respondents.

Sixty-two percent of young (18-34) people visit frequently, compared to 52 percent of those in the 34-55 age range, and just 48 percent of those above 55. Past surveys have shown that young people in Israel are disproportionately religious and associated with more right-leaning views. It seems that religion and politics remain a compelling force.

In Jerusalem, roots tend to run deep.

The Palestinians appealed to the Court over three years ago, immediately following the war, based on a provision that even states that are not members of the ICC can petition. But as noted in an informative Foreign Policy article, the ICC was stuck for over three years about what to do.

Now, following the practically-defunct Palestinian unilateral statehood bid, the Court has ruled that it does not have jurisdiction – and its reasoning hinged on whether Palestine could be considered a state at all.

“The issue that arises,” the document reads, “is who defines what is a ‘State’ for the purpose of article 12 of the Statute?”

Who indeed? The general international criteria for statehood, such as the 1933 Montevideo convention, is one guide: a permanent territory, a defined population, a government and the ability to enter into relations with other states. Palestine has all of these, although the first one is compromised by Israeli land grabs and the occupation in general. However, the Palestinian government can’t really claim the traditional monopoly on the legitimate use of force, given highly unstable Hamas-Fatah relations even despite the attempts at reconciliation. So international norms don’t provide a clear answer.

What about outside actors? The ICC acknowledged the recognition of international actors: “The Office has been informed that Palestine has been recognised as a State in bilateral relations by more than 130 governments and by certain international organizations, including United Nations bodies.” But the Court chose to decide based on the General Assembly’s definition of Palestine as an “observer,” instead, rather than a state and thus waived jurisdiction.

Given these uncertainties, I have argued that even without UN admission, the unilateral bid could have triggered a process of the international community – and the Palestinians – de facto treating Palestine like a state.

A spate of international recognitions prior to September, then Palestine’s acceptance into UNESCO in October 2011 sent just such a signal: that if the normal route to statehood was blocked by politics, history would still take its course.

Then the momentum died. Now the centrality of the Palestinian state is wavering even among Palestinians; instead of being an overriding, unifying national goal, the state concept is increasingly seen as another policy option among others, associated with a specific political leadership about whom the population has grave complaints already.

In this environment, a favorable decision by the ICC could have had been a meaningful statement of legitimacy for the faltering State of Palestine.

There is a precedent. Even when international norms are stacked against a disputed state entity, an international court can rule in its favor when the zeitgeist is right.

When Kosovo seceded from Serbia in 2008, though secession is generally seen as a violation of international norms, hardly anyone could blame the battered province. Still, leveraging the power of states, Serbia initiated a request for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on the legality of Kosovo’s secession, through the UN, where Kosovo was not (and still isn’t) a member. The initiative was overwhelmingly supported by UN member states. Yet historic sensibilities favored Kosovo. The ICJ ruled that the declaration of independence did not violate international law (stopping short of ruling on the concept of secession).  The ICJ’s decision gave Kosovo a boost of international legitimacy that has solidified its position.

De facto Palestinian statehood, as I’ve repeatedly argued, would have its benefits. It would have helped portray Palestinian statehood is an historic inevitability. That would make it harder to roll back the two-state solution, and the two-state solution in turn could hold off the prospect of a one-state apartheid, or a new Palestinian strategy of demanding one-person, one-vote in Israel.

While it would be terribly painful for me personally to see Israel face an international tribunal, it’s worth considering that accepting the petition could also have left the Palestinians open to investigations of war crimes for firing rockets at civilians, putting both sides under scrutiny. Further, it might have been a small victory for the Fatah’s policy of non-military strategies to oppose the occupation, in terms of internal politics.

Instead, the ICC’s decision is a stance against the logical historic progress towards Palestinian statehood. Israel used the opportunity to showcase its pick-and-choose approach to international authority by accepting the decision, with “reservations.”

One small (albeit symbolic) step against two states is becoming one large step towards a totally different paradigm.

With all due respect to the feminist world in which we live, the truth of the matter is that in the days before Passover, when it comes to most women, their world is divided into two: one includes the women whose homes have been spotless and ready for Passover for two weeks, their counters already protected by layers of aluminum foil, and the other world with women who can’t stop envying and talking about the women in the former.

What an edgy and irreverent barb at feminism – but if society is so “feminist,” why aren’t these women also talking about changing the world? The bold writer was oh-so clever to frame only two options for what “most” women do at this time: either to change the dishes for Passover on time, or at the last minute. Here’s how the ideal types talk:

The stringent ones make sure to conclude every session of girl talk with their take on the laws of Passover. For example: “Of course I finished. I only have to iron the napkin for the matzoh and prepare salt water for the eggs,” … These statements are heard in almost every Jewish home on Passover Eve.”

Who are these “most women,” and “every Jewish home,” filled with Betty Crocker-tinged tupperware parties? Where are the huge swaths of Israeli and Jewish society that I live in? One-fifth of Israel’s women are Arab/Palestinian and have nothing to do with Passover. And among Jewish Israelis, according to the mammoth study on religion in Israel by the Avi Chai Foundation and Guttman Institute, 46 percent define themselves as secular, which means they probably have their own personalized meaning for Passover, but have nothing to do with this specific experience she attributes to “most women.” One-third of Jews don’t keep Passover dietary rules at all according to the study, and probably only a fraction of those who do, change the household dishes.

She’s also left out every feminist woman and man who cannot fathom such antiquated role divisions that previous generations of feminists struggled hard to cast off. In my family, Passover transformation was an all-family task, one of the few, and it was exciting for that reason.

The wholesale dismissal of such huge portions of her country as if they just don’t exist, highlights one of the saddest problems in Israel: citizens pretending that the person right next to them is a non-entity, not worthy of consideration or inclusion in any form of national community unless that person becomes just like…Rivi Gutgold.

While I cherish my heartfelt Conservative Jewish upbringing, Gutgold’s text pushed me one degree further away from my heritage. It undoes decades of feminist Judaism and feminism in general that I embrace in order to adapt my heritage to my humanity. A feminist approach in my reading celebrates the souls of women in all their depth, complexity, contradictions and imperfections.

I cannot recognize either myself or Judaism in Gutgold’s women – who sounds to me like a male fantasy of selfless earth-mothers of flawless giving to their children and girly-friends – with a monopoly on the fine art of house cleaning!

Passover is therefore an excellent opportunity to appreciate the greatness and uniqueness of the woman in the Jewish home…The woman who provides her children, her friends and all people with exactly what they need on every level. The woman who knows that with all due respect to the feminist men who help in the house cleaning, no one can do what she does.

Of course, I don’t have to find my Judaism in her experience. I can respect Gutgold’s personal view and I would be happy to read this in a synagogue sisterhood newsletter. But writing in a national paper, with the hubris to speak about “most” women in Israel is inconceivable – it means that anyone who is not just like her, just doesn’t exist.

Let me humor Ms. Gutgold with a kitchen metaphor: The Judaism (and Israel) she describes here is like a tiny piece of dough that hardly covers a small corner of the pie pan. She’s trying to stretch it by force over the whole thing, but it just doesn’t work. So she rolls it with a rolling pin, pulling and pressing it thinner and thinner until it’s transparent and empty, and finally in her desperation she tears it apart entirely.

That’s when she reduces a woman’s Passover experience to the ritual chores, absent the profound meaning of liberation:

Because in every generation, every woman must look upon herself as if she personally had come out of Egypt… so too does she carry the primary burden of the holiday preparations.

Thanks Rivi, but I did not come out of Egypt in order to discover the beauty of my cleaning skills. I was liberated in order to free all those after me, if my solidarity and support for their struggle can make a difference – this is what I try to remember on Passover.