All posts tagged: Israeli society

The Orthodox Exemption Could Break Netanyahu’s Coalition

The Orthodox Exemption Could Break Netanyahu’s Coalition

Published by skeptic

The most controversial Israeli comedy sketch of the current war is just 88 seconds long. Aired in February on Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s equivalent of Saturday Night Live, it opens with two ashen-faced officers knocking on the door of a nondescript apartment, ready to deliver devastating news to the inhabitants. The officers are greeted by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who is similarly stricken when he sees them. “I’ve been terrified of this knock,” he says. “Ever since the war began, I knew it would eventually come for me.” But before the pained officers can continue, he interjects: “Listen, there is no situation in which I will enlist—forget about it.” It turns out that the officers have the wrong address. This is not the home of a fallen soldier, but of one of the many thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews who do not serve in Israel’s army, thanks to a special exemption. As the officers depart to find the right family, the man calls after them, “Tell them that we prayed for him! We did everything we could.” …

Can Netanyahu outlast this war?

Can Netanyahu outlast this war?

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. “It’s hard to remember at this point, but before the Hamas slaughter on October 7, Israel was embroiled in the worst civic unrest since its founding,” my colleague Yair Rosenberg wrote earlier this month. Most Israelis have since shifted their focus from that unrest, which was caused by the government’s attempt to subordinate Israel’s judiciary to its politicians. At the same time, many Israeli citizens remain at odds with the government’s hard-right factions over the country’s future, and Gaza’s—and those tensions are only ramping up as the Israel-Hamas war continues. I talked with Yair about what could be next for the Israeli government, Netanyahu’s profound failure, and how to stay informed about the war while avoiding misinformation. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: A Democracy in Crisis Isabel Fattal: You wrote a few weeks after the …

The Anticlimactic End of Israel’s Democracy Crisis

The Anticlimactic End of Israel’s Democracy Crisis

Published by skeptic

On Monday, Israel’s Supreme Court issued arguably the most momentous ruling in its history: A slim one-vote majority of the justices struck down an attempt by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to curb their power. And yet, the country largely shrugged. After months of mass protest and talk of constitutional crisis, an event that was supposed to be seismic turned out to be a sideshow. External war had eclipsed internal war. It’s hard to remember at this point, but before the Hamas slaughter on October 7, Israel was embroiled in the worst civic unrest since its founding. The cause was the Netanyahu government’s attempt to undermine the country’s judiciary. Many Israelis and outside experts had long considered Israel’s Supreme Court to be overly powerful and in need of reform. But the hard-right legislation proposed by the ruling coalition did not rein in the court so much as neuter it, subordinating the body to politicians and allowing them to overrule its decisions. This audacious attempt to revise Israel’s democratic order, put forward by a hard-right government …

Israel After Netanyahu – The Atlantic

Israel After Netanyahu – The Atlantic

Published by skeptic

It was October 7, and men with guns were hunting Nir Gontarz’s son. Amir, age 23, had been at the music festival that was ambushed by Hamas terrorists from the air. Now he was on the run, sending panicked messages to his father. A professional journalist, Nir tried calling the usual sources for help—politicians, the army, the police. He soon realized that no rescue was coming. Then, scrolling through live updates from the scene of the slaughter on social media, he saw a photograph of someone he thought might be able to help. Yair Golan, a 61-year-old ex-general and former leftist politician, had no business being in the war zone. But there he was, on site, in his old uniform. In desperation, Nir called Golan’s mobile and explained his son’s predicament. The general’s response: “Send me his location and I will bring him to you.” Half an hour later, Nir received another clipped message: “Link-up in one minute. Don’t worry.” Nir’s son was safe. Amir Gontarz wasn’t the only one Golan rescued that day. He …

What’s Next in Gaza – The Atlantic

What’s Next in Gaza – The Atlantic

Published by skeptic

Just as there are stages of grief, there are stages of war. Not yet two weeks after Hamas’s surprise attack, Israel is still in a raw, early stage. My colleague Graeme Wood, who arrived in Jerusalem this week, described it to me this way: “Israel is still reeling from the trauma of the attack on October 7. That manifests in a number of ways. And one is that there’s a certain amount of Israeli policy that is driven right now by wrath.” Israeli officials insist that they are targeting Hamas, not Gazan citizens. But the situation on the ground for Gazan citizens is dire—a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions, according to the United Nations and other agencies. Wood told me that, among many of the Israelis he’s interviewed, the prevailing attitude is a dangerous if understandable combination of anger, fear, and mourning. The atrocities committed against Israeli citizens on October 7 were especially inhumane. And, as one Israeli I talked to put it, this society’s worst nightmare is vulnerability. What happens when a nation makes …

The Left Refuses to See Jewish Suffering

The Left Refuses to See Jewish Suffering

Published by skeptic

“Did they really decapitate babies?” my 14-year-old daughter asked me yesterday. She was pointing to a text message on her phone from a friend. “They’re saying they found Jewish babies killed, some burnt, some decapitated.” And I froze. Not because I didn’t know what to say—though in truth I didn’t know what to say—but because for a moment I forgot what century I was in. All of the assumptions I had made as a Jewish father, even one who had grown up, as I did, with the Holocaust just a few decades past, were suddenly no longer relevant. Had I adequately prepared her for the reality of Jewish death, what every shtetl child for centuries would have known intimately? Later in the day, she asked if, for safety’s sake, she should take off the necklace she loves that her grandparents had given her and that has her name written out in Hebrew script. The attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians last Saturday broke something in me. I had always resisted victimhood. It felt abhorrent, self-pitying …

Israel’s Two Reckonings – The Atlantic

Israel’s Two Reckonings – The Atlantic

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On April 22, 1979, four Palestinian terrorists set out from southern Lebanon on a rubber dinghy and landed on the Israeli coast, near the northern town of Nahariya. They proceeded to an apartment building, breaking through the front door of the Haran family. Inside, they seized Danny Haran and his 4-year-old daughter, Einat. Meanwhile Danny’s wife, Smadar, hid in the attic with her 2-year-old daughter, Yael. The terrorists took their two hostages to the beach, where they shot Danny and smashed Einat’s skull against a rock. Back in the attic, Smadar, attempting to quiet Yael, accidentally smothered her to death. Of all the Palestinian terror attacks of the era, none had as great an impact on the generation that came of age around the 1973 Yom Kippur War as the destruction of the Haran family. The fate of the Harans hit so hard in part because the ultimate Israeli nightmare is helplessness. Zionism promised to empower the Jews; the Haran family’s fate belonged to Eastern Europe, not the Jewish state. This week, the Jewish state …

This War Isn’t Like Israel’s Earlier Wars

This War Isn’t Like Israel’s Earlier Wars

Published by skeptic

On Saturday night, I was seated on the first El Al plane to fly from the United States to Israel since Hamas had attacked my country. Many airlines had canceled flights to and from Israel, but El Al had refused to grant the terrorists that victory. Though we took off after midnight, sleep was impossible. My mind writhed thinking of the reports of unbearable Israeli casualties, the images of the captured and the dead, and the prospect of wider war. Alongside those waking nightmares was an agonizing irony. I’d just come from participating in events in New York marking the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Just as in 1973, when Israeli reservists living or vacationing abroad rushed to rejoin their units already in combat, my plane was filled with young men ready to trade the thrills of New York for the horrors of a war under way. Their presence was another reason to reflect on the eerie similarities and stark differences between these two wars, both of which broke out on Jewish holidays—the …

Israel’s Avalanche – The Atlantic

Israel’s Avalanche – The Atlantic

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Israel’s democracy is still intact, but the country has already lost something essential. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Utter Collapse As Israel nears the end of a week of turmoil, its democracy remains intact. On Monday, the country’s Benjamin Netanyahu–led ruling coalition—the most hard-right government in Israel’s history—passed one component of its planned judicial overhaul. The proposed legislation has inspired months of outcry from Israelis, many of whom believe, with good reason, that these changes would swiftly erode the country’s democracy. This past spring, my colleague Yair Rosenberg explained some of the most concerning aspects of the overhaul: The radical wish list produced by Netanyahu’s coalition seeks not to reform the court but to neuter it, and would essentially allow the ruling government to appoint all judges and override their decisions. This plan was composed in the halls of conservative think tanks, with no input from opposition parties and no attempt to broker a national consensus. What’s more, this effort to fundamentally revise Israel’s democratic order came from a government that …