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JERUSALEM, April 23 (AP) Orit Pinhasov strongly opposes the Israeli government’s proposed judicial reforms, but you won’t find her near mass protests against the plan. She said her marriage depended on it.
Pinhasov’s husband, who stands on opposite sides of Israel’s political divide, joined the protests only deepening what she said were already palpable tensions in the family.
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“I don’t go to demonstrations because I don’t trust them,” she said. “I’m not going to protect my home. I feel like I’m fighting for my home.”
Israel turns 75 on Wednesday and has a lot to celebrate. But instead of celebrating its achievements as a regional military and economic power, the nation rising from the ashes of the Holocaust faces what may be its most serious existential threat yet — not from foreign enemies but from internal divisions.
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For more than three months, tens of thousands have rallied in the streets against what they see as an ultra-nationalist, religious government that threatens a national identity rooted in liberal traditions.
Fighter pilots threatened to stop reporting for duty. The country’s leaders have publicly warned against the civil war, and families of fallen soldiers have called on politicians to stay away from the ceremonies. Many Israelis wonder whether this deep division can be healed.
Miri Regev, the government minister in charge of the main celebrations on Tuesday night, threatened to drive away anyone who disturbed it.
The event, held in a square next to the Israel National Cemetery in Jerusalem, saw the country’s sudden transition from the solemnity of Remembrance Day to the joy of Independence Day, with a symbolic torchlighting ceremony, military marches and music and dance performances.
Opposition Leader Yar Lapid boycotted the ceremony. “You have torn apart Israeli society and no amount of fake fireworks can cover that up,” he said.
The divide is so wide that Israel’s longest-running and perhaps most pressing issue — its indefinite military rule over the Palestinians — is barely mentioned, despite a recent spike in violence.
Even before the protests erupted, public discussion was largely limited to how the military handled the conflict, rather than the future of territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, where Palestinians sought to establish their state.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a polarizing leader revered by his supporters and reviled by his opponents, has played a key role in the crisis. The rift intensified as he was indicted on corruption charges in 2019.
Israel has gone through five rounds of elections in less than four years – all of which have focused on Netanyahu’s fitness to govern.
At the end of last year, Netanyahu finally emerged victorious – forming the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. Within days, it set out to overhaul the judiciary and give Netanyahu allies the power to overturn court decisions and appoint judges.
The plan, seen by critics as a transparent power grab, sparked unprecedented protests that eventually forced Netanyahu to freeze the plan. The growing protests, fueled by deep mistrust, have exposed decades-old deeper fault lines in Israeli society.
On Netanyahu’s side is a religious and socially conservative coalition that includes a politically powerful ultra-Orthodox minority, religious nationalist communities, including West Bank settlers, and people of Middle Eastern descent who live in remote working-class towns of Jews.
Those who protested against him were mainly secular middle-class professionals who supported Israel’s modern economy. They include high-tech workers, teachers, lawyers and current and former commanders of the Israeli security forces.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Palestinian minority has largely stayed out of the protests, saying they never felt part of the country in the first place.
These differences have spilled over into the workplace, friendships, and families.
Despite the political differences, Pinhasov, 49, said she and her husband had lived “in peace” for 30 years. Every few years there are differences at election time, she said, but those differences are fleeting and insignificant.
That began to change during the coronavirus pandemic, when Pinhasov said the tone of the public debate on issues such as lockdowns and vaccines became sharper. Then, tensions began to be felt at home as Israel jumped from election to election.
Pinhasov said her husband would tell her she had been “brainwashed” and complain about the “leftist” media. When she disagreed, he would say, “You don’t understand.” They could no longer watch the news together or watch the hit political satire show “A Wonderful Country.”
Their four children, including a 21-year-old son who shares his father’s views, love and respect each other and their parents, she said. But it’s complicated, like “walking on thin ice”.
While Israel is usually united in times of war, the seeds of mistrust were planted decades ago.
From the country’s earliest days, the Jewish majority has been plagued by questions over whether to accept reparations from postwar West Germany, violent protests by poorer Jews in the Middle East in the early 1970s, and bitter internal divisions over the military defeat during the Middle East war in 1973. Beset by war and later in Lebanon.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995 after a Jewish ultranationalist opposed his peace efforts with the Palestinians. Massive protests erupted in 2005 when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip.
“Israel has always been a deeply divided society, but somehow it is held together,” said Tom Segev, an Israeli author, historian and journalist. “The difference now is that we’re really talking about the fundamental values of this society.”
He said the protests against Netanyahu’s government showed that many people had “genuine fear” about the country’s future.
Dan Ben-David, an economist at Tel Aviv University and director of the Shoresh Institute for Sociology and Economics, points to two major events in Israel’s history—the Middle East wars of 1967 and 1973.
The 1967 war, in which Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, spawned a Jewish settler movement that has become a powerful political force representing some 700,000 people.
Meanwhile, the 1973 war started a process that brought the right-wing Likud party to power four years later. Likud has ruled for most of the time since, often in partnership with ultra-Orthodox parties.
These religious parties have used their political power to win generous subsidies and controversial exemptions from military service — outraged a wider secular public.
Ultra-Orthodox communities, and to a lesser extent religious nationalist communities, run separate school systems that offer low-quality education and little respect for democratic values such as minority rights, Ben-David said.
Because of the high birth rates in these communities, the country needs to return to a “melting pot” model that includes a core curriculum that promotes universal values, he said. “If we are a nation, then we need to teach our children what brings us together.”
Danny Danon, a former ambassador to the United Nations and a top figure in Netanyahu’s Likud party, said the anniversary is a time for everyone to reflect and reflect on what they have in common.
“In five years at the United Nations, I realized that our enemies do not distinguish between left and right, secular and orthodox,” he said. “That’s why we have to realize we have to stick together.”
Still, many see the 75th anniversary celebration as a moment of joy.
Pinhasov said she was throwing a party at her home in central Israel for about 100 people, many of whom were her husband’s family.
“This is our Independence Day,” she said. “Today is still a day to celebrate.” (AP)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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