Arriving in Jerusalem yesterday was quite the change coming from first Tel-Aviv and then Eilat. While the purpose is the tech conference starting this week, it was hard not to get distracted and notice that the city is on edge. Last Friday a murderous attack at a bus stop by a Palestinian terrorist killed two children and a young man. This is part of ongoing terror, even today there were two incidents reported as I was writing this. Needless to say, security has been beefed up with police and military present in a lot of places. And then there are the people who are visibly armed, this is the ‘open carry’ thing that they talk about so much in the US. Just regular folks walking around shopping until you see a gun dangling from their jeans. Anyway, if that were not enough, today half the country went on strike for mass protests against the government’s plans to overhaul the judiciary with the focus being a rally in front of the nation’s parliament, the Knesset. We could not resist to take a look and it was indeed a massive gathering of people who were protesting the legal reforms which were hotly debated in parliament at the same time. Yes, click the link it’s fun.
The problem here really is much like what we have witnessed in other places where a politically divisive climate brings out more than just a debate or an evaluation of different points of view. The climate here right now is comparable to that after Trump got into the White House and where the split between the right and left exacerbated to the point where there was no longer room for compromise and all the reasonable people in the middle were shouted down by either side. Same here, those who try to be nuanced invariably get into trouble. Each side further ramps up the rhetoric giving the other side more ammunition to further up the ante. I witnessed some of it while protestors ambled from the train station to the rally today, often being shouted at by the more conservative leaning locals here in Jerusalem. It’s not always pretty and with Palestinian and Antifa flags in the crowd I got the impression that the protests were providing a vehicle for groups that have an agenda that is quite different from being concerned over the actual legal reforms now being tabled.
Democracies are quite strong, much stronger than we think and they can get tested quite a bit. But there is a risk that the divisions created (Trump, Trudeau, Canadian truckers, Brexit, Dutch farmers, you name it) will seed a deep layer of distrust that will eventually undermine societies when real cohesiveness is required. You can see that a bit with support for Ukraine now where internal divisions in western democracies may prevent full support and weapons deliveries, or for instance the way that Covid policies poisoned the political well and divided communities. You wonder what will happen if a real crisis hits again. Can we manage to come together and weather the next storm that will test us, together?
Israel cannot afford to even contemplate that question. Given the threats of war, terror and potential pull back of western support it needs to stand united. And historically it has been great at doing just that, despite the deep rifts between its different constituencies. If we don’t collaborate, we’ll die. It is as simple as that.
It is too early to say where this will end, the government has so far shown very little interest in backing down and moderate its proposals, despite extreme pressure from all sides including in particular the business community. No doubt there will be more news on that during the conference this week. Will keep you posted.