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
After the elections and the formation of a new coalition, and the subsequent announcement of a comprehensive judicial reform plan, Israel became embroiled in a major sociopolitical crisis. As the data presented later in this report show, and regardless of whether the proposed reform (and the small part of it that has been enacted thus far) is necessary or not – this crisis has been a negative development on many levels, including for security, foreign relations, and economic resilience.
The most notable impact of the current crisis has been the harm it has done to Israeli cohesion (with an emphasis on the Jewish sector), but it has also had ramifications for Israel-Diaspora relations. In Israel, there has been an intensification of the disturbing trend of decreased public trust in the state institutions and the erosion of confidence in the country’s future. A corresponding anxiety regarding Israel’s future is felt among Diaspora Jews. These major tensions translate for many Israelis into an overwhelming concern for what awaits Israel in the wake of demographic developments that are changing its character. This concern is fueling opposing sectoral outlooks and rising levels of suspicion between different identity groups in Israeli society. It has led to a polarizing discourse on the desire for “separation” between different sectors and, among a not-insignificant minority, about the possibility of emigrating to other countries.
Israel is considered a regional power with a strong economy, whose neighbors are disposed to rely on it and to cooperate with it. However, the current crisis is undermining Israel’s deterrence due, among other things, to its erosion of the willingness for voluntary IDF service. The danger of violence erupting in Judea and Samaria and on the northern border has increased, and Iran continues to advance its nuclear project while improving its diplomatic bargaining position. Along with other sources of discord, the crisis has also harmed Israel’s relations with the current U.S. administration, which has chosen to take an oppositional stance to the government’s actions. Apart from these issues, a highly positive development for Israel may materialize if and when the effort to reach a peace treaty with Saudi Arabia proves successful. Such an agreement would be a historic turning-point in Israel’s relations with the countries of the region and with the Islamic nations as a group.
In the past year the growing normalization of antisemitism manifested in several ways. The strengthening of the far right in Europe drove numerous expressions of antisemitism in the political sphere; the normalization of antisemitic discourse in the United States hit an inflection point when a former president hosted an antisemitic rapper and a Holocaust denier; and a torrent of antisemitic incidents were reported in the U.S., with the Pittsburgh synagogue terrorist who murdered 11 Jews being sentenced to death for his crimes.
The war in Ukraine has led to a large wave of Jewish emigration from Ukraine (to Israel and other countries, mainly in Europe), and has also increased the rate of immigration to Israel from Russia and, to a certain extent, from Belarus. These trends are accelerating the contraction of what, two centuries ago, were the largest Jewish population centers in the world, and intensifying the present concentration of Jews into two main countries: Israel and the United States.
