We have been living in Israel for 23 years, years of joy, fulfillment and meaning – despite the considerable and seemingly irresolvable problems in our neck of the woods which a former prime minister Ehud Barak once referred to as living in a ‘‘modern and prosperous villa in the middle of the jungle.’’
For the first time since I became a committed and lifelong Zionist following the Six Day War when Israel’s very existence was on the line and mass graves were being prepared and especially since our aliyah, I must admit to being concerned for the direction which our beloved country is taking. The fallout from the current attempts to defang the judiciary and to all intents and purposes remove checks and balances that for the most part protect the minorities in Israel, essentially gives the green light to our government to charge ahead and rule by diktat without having to look over its shoulder.
No one is questioning the right of a government, which was democratically elected, to set its own agenda. However, when decisions are made that are so consequential, especially with the protection of human rights being threatened, coupled with the facts that:
- A convicted criminal for economic crimes is sitting in the cabinet who is slated to become finance minister and who wanted to, amongst other things, introduce legislation to eviscerate the rights at the Kotel of those Jews who are not Orthodox.
- There are parties in the government and firebrand ministers who are oblivious to the fact that Israel lives in the real world with all that implies and who it seems to want to return our country to the ghetto.
- Our prime minister, as admirable and noteworthy as his truly outstanding accomplishments are, is currently on trial for corruption and regrettably, one can’t get away from the fact that the optics around radically revolutionizing the judiciary and ramming through earth-shattering changes to the law in one fell swoop, must make all reasonable and fair-minded people question exactly what the motive is behind this new and dramatic legislation.
No one across the political spectrum is denying that the justice system needs reform – drastically. However, on an issue that is so fundamental to the running of a country, to be legislated virtually unilaterally in a matter of weeks instead of months or as in the case in Canada, over a year, without consultation with all the major stakeholders and to include the fact that a mere majority of one vote in the Knesset can overturn the judgment of the Supreme Court is clearly problematic.
Has Israel been brought to the breaking point?
OF COURSE, one should not be so naive to imagine that there aren’t people on both sides of the aisle who have their own extremist agendas, who are unwilling to negotiate and compromise, and who exacerbate and inflame a highly volatile situation – which also gives succor to those who have it in for Israel no matter what we do. For the latter, it’s not a case of what Israel does but what Israel is and the fact that it exists.
The bottom line though is that it feels that our country is at a breaking point, literally coming apart at the seams. Our citizens and politicians are at each other’s throats and the national resilience of our people is at risk.
Couple this together with our truly existential front burner problems with the Palestinians, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran, the ever-widening gaps between the privileged in our society and the alarmingly growing number of our fellow citizens on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, and it all this serves to compound our anxieties at the traumatic turn of events in our fragile country. In the words of the late Ehud Manor, one of Israel’s leading songwriters:
“I have no other land,
even if my land is on fire.
here is my home.
I will do it no wrong.”
Unless cooler heads – and Talmudic wisdom – prevails, the stormy, dark, threatening clouds that are immediately over our heads may become a flood of biblical proportions leaving in its wake a trail of devastation and destruction.
The writer, a former headmaster of Herzlia High School in Cape Town, also headed up Jewish day schools in Toronto and Vancouver. His aliyah professionally has been bookended by working at Yad Vashem in the International Relations Department and at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), where he served for 17 years as the executive director of Overseas Joint Ventures.