JERUSALEM: Israel is celebrating its 75th anniversary this week in a fractious and uncertain mood, outshined by a clash over the judiciary that has opened up some of the deepest social detachments since its foundation in 1948.
Memorial Day on Tuesday, honouring the country’s military dead, and Independence Day a day later had traditionally served as a form of unity in a nation that has fought repeated wars with neighbours since its creation.
President Isaac Herzog told the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Tel Aviv earlier that he was convinced that there was no more significant existential threat to their people than the one from within: their own polarization and alienation from one another.
Hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens have taken to the streets since the start of the year to protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to clip powers of the judiciary they saw as an existential threat to the country’s democracy, according to Reuters.
The Israeli government and its supporters say reforms were needed to rein in judges who they claim have intruded aggressively into the domain of parliament and the executive. The protesters agreed last month to pause the plans to allow for more talks.
For several Israelis, the standoff has opened up serious questions about their tiny country that go beyond the Supreme Court’s makeup and the executive’s power to override its decisions.
Entrepreneur from Tel Aviv Uzy Zwebner, who creates high-tech business parks, called himself a patriot from a Zionist family that came to what was now Israel in the 19th century.
A veteran of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, who was injured in action a day after one of his brothers was killed fighting the Egyptians in the Sinai, he represented a section of society that the nationalist-right wing government had deeply alienated.
He asked what kind of country were they going to be?. Are they going to be a democracy, a modern country? (One where) everyone serves in the army? Or were they going to be like other countries around them?”
Behind his anxiety lied a fear of a strident deepening of divisions that had always existed in Israel between European Ashkenazis and Middle Eastern Mizrahi, between religious Jerusalem and laid-back Tel Aviv and between right-wing occupiers (settlers) and urban liberals.
Israel’s Arab citizens, who comprise a fifth of the population, had largely stayed out of the debate, that many Palestinians say ignores their apprehension and the decades-long illegal occupation of areas they want as the core of a future state.
But the growing say of the religious parties that helped Netanyahu to power last year has alarmed many moderate Israelis, who often bemoan the special status that enable many Orthodox men to escape military service and study in Israel’s Torah schools rather than take paid employment.
The nationalist right in turn, accuses its detractors of failing to respect democracy and an increasingly vitriolic political climate has fed on the anger between “populists” and the “liberal elite” seen across the Western world.
According to a recnt survey carried out by Channel 12 News last week, around 51 per cent of Israelis were pessimistic about the country’s future, which had grown from a poor, largely agricultural territory to a high-tech powerhouse in the space of a lifetime.
Elisheva Blum, a resident of Eli in the occupied West Bank, said there was much fear in the air that gave way to hatred sometimes. Born in the United States, Blum came with her religious family to Israel in 1988 and said there was no reason for Israelis to hate each other.
But Blum said signs alienated her from the protesters who filled central Tel Aviv every week since January, mentioning lines from Israel’s national anthem such as: “To be a free people in our land.”
She said it bothered her because one has nothing to do with the other, that was how she saw it. She said that the slogans were very close to home. They can all agree they want to be a free people in their land. But what did that mean?”
