The wounded Jewish psyche and the divided Israeli soul

Demonstrators wave large Israeli flags during a protest against the Netanyahu government's overhaul of the judicial system, outside the Knesset in Jerusalem, on Monday, July 24, 2023, as parliament passed the 'reasonableness' law. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

It is 3 a.m. in Jerusalem. These days, that is not an unusual time for me to be awake. Like many Israelis, I have become a political insomniac. The disruption of sleep is a small reflection of the dread so many of us feel for the long-term viability of the Jewish state.

Here, then, in no particular order, are some late-night thoughts on this Israeli moment.

The war on the Start-Up Nation

For me, the most compelling of all the slogans of the democratic movement was imprinted on a giant banner one recent Saturday night at the weekly protest on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv: “Save Our Start-Up Nation.”

Even more than a struggle for democracy, this is a struggle to save the Israeli success story.

The greatest danger to the Start-up Nation is an emigration of despair. In fact, that exit has quietly begun. And if the government continues to fundamentally transform Israel in its image – an alliance of ultra-nationalists, religious fundamentalists and the merely corrupt – we will experience our first ideologically motivated mass flight, among those who connect this country to the global economy and the democratic world.

In one sense, what is happening to Israel is hardly unusual. Populist wars against elites are being waged all over the world. And yet Israel is unique: While other societies can endure a populist wave of resentment and even violent hatred, Israel’s long-term survival in the Middle East depends on maintaining its modernist elite (while expanding the entry points into the elite to ensure greater diversity). The alternative is gradual – or perhaps rapid – descent into a dysfunctional society led by corrupt counter-elites, precisely the scenario modeled by this government.

Israel is unique in one other way: Our elites are not only “privileged” but sacrificial. There is no elite like ours anywhere else in the West.

Just when we assumed that the era of sacrifice was over, and the stereotype of the Tel Avivis concerned only with their own interests and pleasure had taken hold in the public imagination, along came the most intense protest movement in Israel’s history. Led by veterans of elite combat units, by men and women who have taken open-ended leave from positions in high tech and academia to devote themselves to saving Israel, the movement is an outbreak of passionate patriotism, a protective embrace of the Israeli ethos.

Over and over, protesters tell interviewers variations of the same story: I’m doing this for my father who was wounded in the Yom Kippur War, for my son who was killed in Lebanon, for my grandparents who were uprooted from Iraq or who survived the Holocaust, for my great-grandparents who helped build the state. Now, they say, it’s my turn to defend the country.

The protest movement persists week after week, maintaining astonishing turn-outs, because its wellsprings are Jewish history and the Zionist story

One of the protest movement’s greatest achievements has been in claiming as its symbol the Israeli flag, refusing to cede it to the right. The movement persists week after week, maintaining astonishing turn-outs, because its wellsprings are Jewish history and the Zionist story. This force is unstoppable.

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