Project Head: Shmuel Rosner
Participants: Ghila Amati | Nadia Beider | Ariel Bendor | Eliran Carsenti | Shimrit Cohen-Barbi | Janan Danial | Dana Fahn-Luzon | Shlomo Fischer | Shuki Friedman | Avi Gil | Yehonatan Givati | Noa Israeli | Eli Kannai | Dov Maimon | Robert Neufeld | Tamir Pardo | Rivka Ravitz | Daniela Regev | Yael Ribner | Lipaz Rotkovsy | John Ruskay | Jonathan Saidel | Roy Schondorf | Amit Shoval | Noah Slepkov | Yedidia Stern | Shalom Salomon Wald | Haim Zicherman | Eldar Zilber
The Jewish People Policy Institute’s Annual Assessment plays both a summing-up and a forward-looking role. On the one hand, each year it examines events and developments that had an impact on the State of Israel and on the Jewish world. On the other hand, it monitors important trends to influence their direction, in order to improve the situation of Israel and of Jewish communities around the world.
The pace of events is reflected in the Annual Assessments’ areas of emphasis from year to year. Two years ago, the focus was on the coronavirus pandemic, and its impact on Israel and the Jewish world. Last year, we emphasized the impact of the war in Ukraine, including on its Jewish community and elderly Ukrainian Holocaust survivors, some of whom live in the areas of most intense conflict and are in need of protection and evacuation, many to Israel and to Germany. This year, the focus is on Israel. The social and political polarization that greatly intensified in Israel this year is a major development whose long-term impact on Israel and on the Jewish world cannot, as yet, be fully predicted. But it is clearly affecting the strength and cohesion of Israeli society, as well as Israel’s relations with the rest of the Jewish world, and potentially with the United States.
The main emotion Jews around the world express is anxiety about Israel’s future – not just due to threats by outside enemies, but also because of an internal dispute that threatens the cohesion and unity of the country. This particular anxiety, which is reflected in the data presented in this report, is compounded by alarm over the rise of antisemitism in many countries around the world, including the United States. The resurgence of antisemitism is not a new development. However, in past years one could try to explain it in terms of unique events (social tensions, the pandemic, a military operation in Gaza), this year it is hard to do so. High levels of antisemitic activity were registered in 2022, despite the absence of easily identifiable causal factors. This underscores the possibility that the rise in Jew-hatred is being driven not by temporary but rather by long-term factors, casting doubt on optimistic forecasts of improvement in the near term. They have required Jewish communities to take additional measures to bolster the security of Jews, for the first time especially in the United States, where synagogues and Jewish institutions routinely have to hire security guards and develop evacuation plans in case of terrorist attack.
In addition, the Biden administration has issued the nation’s first Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which includes proposals for funds to protect the Jewish community, but also broader actions to combat the rise of antisemitism, including through social media.
Israel’s internal crisis is taking place at a time when other parallel processes are underway that pose a challenge to Israel’s security and to the Jewish people’s resilience. These threats require cohesion and a focusing of resources that are eroding due to the internal crisis. On the international level, big power competition is intensifying with China and Russia, as the war in Ukraine continues. As the inter-power conflict deepens, Israel’s efforts to maneuver between them become more complex, given Russia’s role in Syria, where Iran seeks a military presence that threatens Israel. Moreover, Israel’s economic and technological relationship with a rising and aggressive China puts pressure on Israel’s relationship with the United States.
In the Middle East, Iran, in addition to its military foothold in Syria, continues to advance its nuclear weapons program, reaching higher levels of uranium enrichment, with more sophisticated centrifuges, longer range missile capability, and the hardening of its nuclear infrastructure. This combination of increasing size, sophistication, and reduced vulnerability of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, if not stopped or reversed, could mean that at a certain point Israel could actually lose its military option. Further, Iran has eased its isolation in the region even as it continues to provide weapons to its proxies in Iraq and seeks to produce precision guidance capabilities for tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets. It is pouring money and arms to the Palestinians at a time when Israel faces a disaffected Palestinian population with no sense of possibility – fertile ground for producing increased Palestinian terrorism.
In addition to these challenges, questions have arisen about the strength of the strategic triangular relationship between Jerusalem, Washington, and American Jewry, and about U.S. policy in areas that affect Israel’s resilience. Israel is being negatively affected by the erosion of its image as a nation that enjoys social and political stability. This erosion may deter investors, and has already led to dire warnings on the part of senior economists around the world, including the credit rating agencies.
Notwithstanding these complex challenges, as Israel celebrates its 75th anniversary as an independent country, the Third Jewish Commonwealth in history, it is important to recognize the remarkable progress Israel has made economically, militarily, and politically. Israel is a regional power with a robust economy – a nation with which quite a few neighboring countries want to cooperate. The Abraham Accords with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan have profoundly improved Israel’s standing in the Middle East. The efforts by the U.S. administration to promote normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel reflects how the region has changed and the potential to transform it in a more far-reaching way. For the moment, the current crisis in Israel is affecting what some of the Abraham Accord countries are prepared to do, even as they are not walking away from their deals with Israel. Still, to reach their full potential, defusing the growing tensions with the Palestinians and demonstrating the payoffs of these accords will be necessary.
The data presented by the JPPI attest to a prevailing consensus in Israeli society that Israel is currently experiencing a “crisis,” but there is a significant gap between the how its severity is perceived by the government’s supporters and its opponents. This creates a gap in expectations regarding how the crisis should be addressed. Our position is that, as Rosh Hashanah approaches and a new year is ushered in, we should be less concerned with backward-looking questions such as “Who is to blame?” and “Why did this happen?” and more inclined to look toward the future.
The Annual Assessment also provides a few scenarios for the design of that future. We believe that the best option will be the one that leads to reconciliation. The crisis underway in Israel shows, among other things, that there is a fundamental weakness in the arrangements that ensure social and political stability. It also indicates an urgent need to formulate “rules of the game” for managing disputes. We will soon embark on a project to explore the elements of a constitution Israel is sorely lacking. Even if they do not immediately resolve essential differences over the state’s identity and vision, at least they may allow these issues to be discussed in a clearly defined framework that is accepted by most segments of the society. The Jewish People Policy Institute has undertaken to assist in shaping a consensus on these rules.
