Learning to compromise: Israel’s domestic post-war challenge

The resurrection of the judicial reform debate now suggests that Israel has defeated its external enemies and can once again afford the luxury of toxic internal battles.

By HERB KEINON DECEMBER 15, 2024 19:52

Anti - overhaul activists protest against the judicial overhaul and and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the opening ceremony of the light rail, in Petah Tikva, August 17, 2023. (photo credit: CHAIM GOLDBEG/FLASH90)

Many are the lessons of October 7 that can be learned even before a State Commission of Inquiry is established—which it should be—and publishes its findings.

Israel implemented one such lesson in jaw-dropping fashion last week when, within a matter of days, it decimated what was once Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s army. The lesson learned from October 7 was clear: never again allow an organization hell-bent on your destruction to build up right on your border and threaten your communities.

However, another lesson from October 7 has neither been internalized nor implemented: don’t tear society apart by pushing polarizing agendas. Just witness the head-scratching return of the judicial reform/overhaul and the mind-boggling histrionics it has already produced.

On Thursday, the High Court of Justice ordered Justice Minister Yariv Levin to hold a vote in the Judicial Selection Committee to vote for a new president of the Supreme Court by January 16, something Levin has failed to do since the committee - as currently constituted - will likely select Isaac Amit, based on the tradition of selecting the judge with the most seniority. Levin is opposed to Amit’s selection.  

On Saturday night, Levin responded by promising to revive the government’s frozen judicial reform plan. 

JUSTICE MINISTER Yariv Levin sits in the Knesset plenum in July. (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

This led Moshe Lador—the former state attorney - to call on reserve pilots not to serve, choosing instead to protest against what he described as the making of a dictatorship. No less.

Meanwhile, former prime minister Ehud Barak called for massive civil disobedience, including strikes, walkouts, and other forms of disruption.

It’s all as if October 7, whose timing was not divorced from the deep divisions inside Israel and its enemy’s perception of a country that lost its solidarity and will to fight, never happened.

Or rather, it’s as if the war were over, the hostages were all home, Iran was no longer a threat, all the Israelis displaced from their communities were back in their homes, the economy was humming along, and Israel did not have to refurbish its standing in the international community.

The resurrection of the judicial reform debate now - at least among politicians and certain public figures, though not necessarily among the wider public - suggests that Israel has defeated its external enemies and can once again afford the luxury of toxic internal battles.

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But that’s a fantasy. 

The war is not over, the hostages are not home, and the threats to the country’s survival have not disappeared.

Even if that were the case, that does not mean that the country can afford to return to the polarizing divisions that left it weakened and invited an attack on October 7, its enemies convinced that the country had lost its resolve to fight. But who could blame them—watching the scenes that played out on the country’s streets in the months and weeks beforehand: the massive demonstrations, the hyperbolic rhetoric, the calls for refusal to serve, 

Then Hamas attacked, and all that evaporated.

Protesters who were at each other’s throats on October 6 were fighting side by side to repel a vicious and brutal enemy on October 8.

Those who had threatened not to serve reported for duty, and reserve call-ups saw unprecedented response rates, with some units exceeding 130% to 150% participation. 

Those who had threatened to leave stayed, while tens of thousands of Israelis abroad scrambled for flights to bring them home so they could join their units. 

Then, the government froze the judicial reform—realizing, wisely, that this was not the time.

It’s still not the time - at least not in the original form. There is definitely room to reform a judicial branch that has become too powerful - arguably more powerful than the other two branches of government - but this has to be done carefully, gradually, and with as much consensus as possible.

Instead, Levin and Amit, the justice minister and the Supreme Court justice, are locked in an arm-wrestling contest, each determined to pin the other. That’s not what the country needs. 

Israel needs compromise 

What Israel needs is a compromise, and finding one - finding a way to appoint a president for the supreme court and three new supreme court justices - should not be beyond the capacity of a nation that dismantled the Syrian military in 48 hours and incapacitated much of Hezbollah with exploding beepers and walkie talkies in two days.

Israeli thinker Micah Goodman once boiled the whole judicial reform debate down to a struggle between two competing visions of Israel’s identity: Should Israel be a "Jewish democratic" state, prioritizing its Jewish identity, or a "democratic Jewish" state, prioritizing its democratic values? 

For anti-reform advocates, democracy was the supreme value, leaving no room for compromise because who could comprise on democracy?  For reform proponents, Israel’s Jewish identity was paramount, making compromise equally inconceivable because who could compromise on Israel as a Jewish state?

Both sides treated the other’s core values as negotiable while holding their own as sacred and unmovable. Calls for compromise for the sake of unity were dismissed as weakness, as the territory of the weak-willed and the non- decisive.

Then October 7 hit, however, and—at least momentarily—slammed home a grim truth: without unity, Israel risks being neither a Jewish state nor a democratic one. It risks ceasing to exist altogether as its enemies will take advantage of its divisions to destroy it.

That realization resonated in the immediate aftermath of the attack but now appears to be fading in the glow of battlefield successes. This return to old patterns is not only shortsighted but dangerous. It ignores the lessons of recent history and dismisses the stark warnings of October 7.

Journalist Kalman Lipskind wrote Friday in Makor Rishon that the divisions we thought defined the nation - Right vs Left, religious vs secular, “Bibi is King” vs. “Anyone but Bibi” - are no longer the true dividing lines.

Instead, he argued powerfully, the real division is between those who can’t sleep at night, consumed with worry for sons, husbands, and fathers on the front lines, and those who don’t live with an immediate fear of that proverbial “knock on the door” and for that reason can fight about all sorts of peripheral issues. 

For those who can’t sleep, the priorities are clear: bring their loved ones home safe and sound, ensure the country’s safety, and leave everything else for another day. Considering all the country has endured over the last 14 months, that seems to be a necessary moral focus. 

The question is whether Israel’s politicians and public figures will heed that call or succumb to the temptations of division once again.

Israel has shown it can unite in the face of mortal threats. The test now is whether it can learn to prioritize compromise even when things begin returning to normal -- only that way can it ensure that internal divisions do not again threaten its survival by emboldening its enemies to attack.