On Israel’s 75th anniversary, are Jewish citizens losing their democracy under Prime Minister Netanyahu?

TEL AVIV, Israel — On Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, last Monday, the lead pilot on an El Al flight to New York made this astonishing announcement on takeoff from Ben Gurion airport: “Things like the Holocaust can potentially occur in a dictatorship, and we’re fighting in Israel to remain a democratic country. Thank you all and have a nice flight.”

In my four decades of visiting Israel I could never have imagined such a statement by an El Al pilot. I don’t recall bereaved families of fallen soldiers demanding (unsuccessfully) that government ministers stay away from annual military memorial ceremonies which take place April 24 and 25.

As Israel approaches the 75th anniversary of the state’s creation on April 25 and 26 (according to the Hebrew calendar) I’ve never seen such deep and visceral divisions over whether Israel will remain a democratic state for its Jewish citizens. Until now.

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have poured into the streets each week for over three months, in cities across the country, to protest plans for a draconian judicial overhaul by the governing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This judicial coup, sprung on the public without previous discussion, would essentially destroy the Supreme Court’s oversight role and give the ruling coalition full control over choosing judges. In the Israeli system, it would virtually eliminate any checks and balances on the parliamentary majority.

It would also pave the way for a ready-to-go raft of legislation limiting civil rights for women, members of the LGBTQ community, and Palestinian citizens of Israel, while enabling gross political corruption.

This government has already cleared the way for one of Netanyahu’s key political allies to receive a cabinet post after the Supreme Court disqualified him because of a conviction for corruption. And a newly passed law makes it impossible for Netanyahu to be declared unfit for office, despite ongoing trials for corruption.

It’s no wonder that the largest banner I saw at the huge protest in Tel Aviv on April 15 proclaimed “Crime Minister,” a slogan also emblazoned on many black t-shirts. Netanyahu’s opponents believe the judicial coup is basically meant to save him from jail.

The crowd of 150,000 people screamed “demokratia” (democracy) in unison. They included Israel’s best and brightest professionals, as well as academics, tech innovators, former generals, military reservists, students, and moms wheeling kids in strollers.

Despite the carnival atmosphere, with horns and drums and mass waving of Israeli flags (to underline that the demonstrators are patriots), the Israelis I spoke with were deadly serious on one point: unless the judicial “coup” is blocked, their democracy may not last.

Demonstrators keep returning week after week because they are truly frightened about their immediate political future and the future of their children.

The posters carried by a group of bereaved families of fallen soldiers at the Tel Aviv protest reflected the depth of their emotions. One woman’s sign asked the most poignant of questions: “My brother died for a democratic Israel. Did he die in vain?”

As I soon learned, however, the current internal Israeli debate over democracy is far more existential than the challenge to the courts.

“Most outsiders don’t realize how deep and wide are the rifts in Israeli society,” I was told by Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, who is one of a group of former senior generals and intelligence directors that supports the demonstrations. “It is not even the legal reforms anymore. We have reached the point where we don’t agree on anything, on what is good or bad, allowed or not, on even what is the meaning of ‘Jewish democracy.’”

With his attacks on the courts, Netanyahu has elevated an ongoing debate to center stage: whether or not Israeli society will retain the liberal, secular values of its founders, or descend into its version of religious and ultra-nationalist populism that is now infecting other democracies, including ours.

“Everything is now on the table,” I was told by the prominent Israeli journalist Lily Galili, who studies Israeli society. We spoke in an outdoor café over a Tel Aviv lunch that seemed far removed from the crisis but truly wasn’t. “All the things we hid under the carpet are now in full view,” she added.

To form his coalition, the prime minister allied with ultra-orthodox Jewish religious parties who believe only in Torah law, and resented the Supreme Court for blocking the exemption of their seminary students from military duty. Netanyahu’s government has already introduced legislation to make such an exemption permanent.

He has also allied with extreme nationalist parties whose leaders — Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — have been accused or convicted of terrorism, and seek to annex the West Bank. They make racist threats against Palestinians and encourage young settlers to violence. Yet Ben-Gvir has been promised his own private militia.

The strains between ultra-orthodox and secular Israelis, and between populists and supporters of liberal democracy are not new. But no government has ever bestowed such power on extremists, who were politically ostracized until the last few years.

I discussed this with Boaz Tamir, one of the demonstration coordinators, a well-known Israeli entrepreneur who has helped develop some of the country’s largest business organizations. An app he founded, My Record, is being used by demonstrators to record and share their experiences in the pro-democracy struggle. He also is one of the founders of Men and Women at Arms, an umbrella group that coordinates units of military reservists who march in the demonstrations.

Two major issues, he told me, have driven reservists from elite units - who report on a voluntary basis and still play key roles in the military - to support the protests.

The first is demographic: elite units such as pilots, cyber warriors and commandos, carry some of the heaviest burdens of defending Israel, while the fast growing ultra-orthodox population shirks its military duty. “The religious parties now have more power now but carry less of the burden,” Tamir said.

The second concern, Tamir said, is that the Netanyahu government is abetting the rise of “ultra-nationalist messianism to power.” Regular army units wind up protecting settlers on the occupied West Bank, while elite units do the heavy lifting of securing Israelis from Iran and its proxies, such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Tamir said the culture of these elite units is democratic and “they say we won’t serve a non-democratic government.”

Nor will coastal innovators who created its “start up nation” tech boom stick around if the country rejects liberal values. Many will leave if the religious-nationalist coalition remains in power and foreign investment shrinks. Moody’s has taken note, downgrading Israel’s credit ranking.

Ayalon also fears that the longer occupation of Palestinian territories continues, the closer Israel gets “to the [supremacist] Judaism of Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir, not the Judaism of the founders. People who prefer the racist type of Judaism are now in government,” he said.

Despite this, organizers of the protests have made a conscious decision to postpone raising the Palestinian issue, and even the question of discrimination against Israel’s Palestinian citizens, in order to expand support on the center-right from those tiring of Netanyahu.

Only a few hundred marchers standing along the demonstration route held signs saying “No democracy with occupation.”

Meantime, the demonstrators wait to see if President Isaac Herzog can negotiate an unlikely compromise on the legal issues between Netanyahu and opposition parties. Some believe the prime minister’s dropping poll numbers, and the Moody’s ranking, may force him to postpone the legislation.

Yet if the talks fail, and the prime minister jams through the so-called reforms, the current Supreme Court will likely rule the laws illegal. This would force Israel’s army, police, intelligence agencies and civil servants to decide whom to follow — the court or the government.

“For the time being, there is not a civil war,” Ayalon said, “but no one can say it won’t happen. If anyone tells you he knows what will happen, it is nonsense. Anything can happen. Anything.”