Dear Friends,
In the past few days, as is usually the case in the days leading up to a holiday, I have found myself saying farewell with the blessing “Chag Sameach.” But unlike usual, every time the blessing came out of my mouth, my heart clenched. It was as though the blessing reminded me of what I try to repress: this holiday will not be full of happiness. It will not be a joyful one. Instead, we will once more “celebrate” Passover under the dark clouds of war.
The Hebrew word Chag has a double meaning. The first, and most familiar, is “holiday.” The second is “to spin around.” This is an ancient reminder that when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, and our ancestors would pilgrimage three times a year, they would circle the structure seven times. Jewish wedding traditions hold a distant memory of this as well.
The idea of circling holy sites is found throughout the world. It is usually explained by the notion that a circle is the perfect form, and as such, it is one of the universal signs of the divine.
But for me, as I have said the blessing over and over again, it has become a painful reminder that Israel is going in circles, and far from bringing us closer to perfection, those circles resemble more a whirlpool, pulling us deeper and deeper as we fail to break the dangerous motion. This is the third Passover in a row that war looms over us.
The cycle is hard to follow. As we try desperately to live our lives, to provide a sense of normalcy for our children, we push the painful reality away. Our minds drift to daily challenges and routines, so for most hours of the day we “enjoy” mental freedom. But reality always comes knocking. It always reminds us that there is no real freedom except in facing it.
And when we find the courage to face it, we must admit that this Passover will be a sad one, the third time in a row.
How can we rejoice when we are constantly wondering when the next missile attack will come? When every sound our phone makes causes us to jump in fear? How can we find happiness when the beautiful faces of young soldiers appear on the news, letting us know they were killed in battle?
When we cannot travel north to be with our families because the roads are not safe, when our children are afraid to be outside, it is hard to have a “Chag Sameach.”
In the chaos that the long war is creating, there is one surprising island of stability. With the passing of the state budget, the Israeli government has most likely secured its survival until the end of the year, which will enable it to achieve a rare full four-year term. In almost 80 years, Israel has had 25 different parliaments; only six of them have completed a full term. The last time was in 1988, every other one dissolved before reaching its legal end.
It seems that we are not only about to witness a rare occasion, if this current government completes its days, but that we will have the “privilege” of experiencing an astonishing contradiction.
The current leadership has been able to generate political stability in the most unstable time in Israel’s history.
It could be considered a political miracle. Yet we cannot escape the harsh reality: Israel’s leadership, the one responsible for the judicial reform, the October 7 failure, more than 900 days of unending war; a prime minister branded internationally as a wanted war criminal; growing international isolation, and more, is still in power, and there is nothing in sight to change it.
We are left to wonder: what is their secret? How have they succeeded where all others, at least since 1988, have failed?
By looking at the current coalition, we can identify four specific groups: the ultra-Orthodox, the settlers, the Jewish supremacists, and the Likud party supporters. Each of these groups has its own core goals and ideology. Sometimes these overlap, and sometimes we can even find contradictions, but there is something that binds them together, something that enables them to hold ranks when the storm grows stronger.
Traditionally, when Israel is at war, the parliament sets aside any legislation that is not directly related to the war effort. Maybe it is the unprecedented length of this war, or perhaps it is a refusal to stick to tradition and custom, but this Knesset has chosen to legislate and promote laws and policies that are important to its different groups and are not connected to the war effort. So alongside approving the budget, the coalition has promoted several additional laws: the expansion of the authority of the rabbinical courts, the death penalty for terrorists, and the exemption law. In a very unsurprising way, we can easily see how these match the groups that form the coalition.
The death penalty law is the crown jewel of the Jewish supremacist faction led by Itamar Ben Gvir. I hope you did not have the chance to see how he celebrated the approval of the law, with an open champagne bottle on the parliament floor. It is important to mention that Israel does have a death penalty law, but it has rarely been used. The new law is different in several aspects. The first is that it states that in order to sentence someone to death, the purpose of the murder must be to deny the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state, meaning it will only be used against Palestinian terrorists. The second is that the death sentence will not require a unanimous decision of all the judges. And lastly, there will be no option for appeal, and the sentence must be carried out within a maximum of 90 days.
Last week, Israel passed a law expanding the jurisdiction of the rabbinical courts, enabling them to handle cases beyond divorce and marriage, provided that both sides agree to it. This law has been a long-standing aspiration of the ultra-Orthodox. It will enable them to raise the walls of their modern shtetls even higher, pushing themselves even further away from general Israeli society. Since the early days of the state, the ultra-Orthodox have had a complex relationship with civil law, the question has always been whether they should follow civil or religious law. You should not see this as a standalone law, but alongside the refusal to serve in the military and the allocation of enormous budgets to independent education systems that do not teach core modern subjects while still receiving public funds.
While the ultra-Orthodox are drawing inward, the settlers are expanding outward. The government openly supports the spread of Israeli civilian control over growing areas in the West Bank. The way this is being achieved is through the establishment of farms across the West Bank, hundreds of them have been set up since the war began. The system is very clear: the settler movement encourages young families to settle on barren hills in areas where Palestinian farming and shepherd communities once lived. Once they settle, the authorities build roads, electricity lines, water infrastructure, and communication systems.
Security forces are required to provide protection, but due to a shortage of soldiers, the IDF calls in local residents of these farms as reservists, provides them with weapons, and grants them authority to use them in order to secure the farms. The residents often create friction by taking their herds into disputed areas with Palestinian neighbors. The Palestinians, in turn, try to prevent them from entering their land, and from there, the road to violence is short.
The settlers enjoy the protection of IDF reservists, who often use their weapons to defend them as they move into Palestinian areas, creating an almost surreal reality. Palestinian farmers find their land entered by settlers, and when security forces arrive, they protect the settlers from the Palestinians. This leads to a growing number of Palestinian communities leaving their land in search of safety. The settlers and their leaders call this success, they are seizing control of the West Bank.
The last group is the Likud party, what we might call “Bibi’s supporters.” They are the core of the current coalition, the pillar that leads the Israeli right. Many find it surprising that their support for the coalition remains so high. For them, the war is extremely successful. They believe Israel is reshaping not only the region, but even the world. Where I see failure, they see success.
They see the war as the manifestation of the deep dream of the Israeli right: Greater Israel. Not only are the settlers expanding control over the West Bank, but Israel has also taken land from Syria and from Gaza, and now, in their eyes, we are on the verge of conquering Lebanon. For the first time since 1967, and after decades in which land was given in exchange for questionable peace agreements, they believe we have finally changed direction, and are expanding.
It is interesting to notice that some of these laws and policies are creating contradictions between the different parts of the coalition. The death penalty law, for example, raises religious difficulties for the ultra-Orthodox parties. Historically, they have always opposed such legislation, and indeed the Ashkenazi parties either voted against it or were absent, while the Sephardic ones voted in favor. Shas, the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox party, has electoral overlap with the Likud party and with the Jewish supremacist faction of Ben Gvir, while the Ashkenazi parties have no such overlap and can maintain their traditional stance. We can argue that Ben Gvir has successfully pulled parts of the Israeli right into more dangerous territory.
Another contradiction emerges as Israel expands its control on multiple fronts: the growing need for soldiers. This has led the Chief of Staff to issue an official warning that the IDF is overstretched. Yet this does not prevent the government from continuing to promote the exemption of the ultra-Orthodox, nor from failing to provide a real solution to the manpower shortage.
We can see that the coalition has the ability to survive these contradictions. It is able not only to stay afloat, but also to continue promoting its agenda. We are therefore left with no choice but to accept that there is more uniting it than dividing it, and to ask what is the fine line that runs through all its different parts.
The potential answer frightens me. As I have shared with you often, I truly believe that Israel has the ability to face any external threat; it is the internal struggle that worries me. Israel is struggling over its character. We are asking: who are we? And two answers emerge.
We can be a liberal Western democracy, one that sees itself as part of the international community, that extends its hand in peace to all those who are willing, that places science and progress at the forefront. Or we can be a Middle Eastern conservative nation, one that values religion and nationalism above all, that believes we will always have to live by the sword.
The fine line that holds this current coalition together is its belief in the second option. In the shadow of the war, Israel has unknowingly made a choice.
Looking at Israel today, at our leadership, but also at large parts of our society, we cannot escape the truth: many of us are willingly marching toward a country that resembles everything we once hoped not to become. Israel is becoming a typical Middle Eastern country.
If in the past we were an island of democracy in the region, if we once held ourselves to a different moral code than our enemies
The approval of the budget means that the path Israel is taking will remain the same, at least until October, when elections are supposed to be held. In the many months until then, we can assume that the whirlpool will continue pulling us in, Israel will become more and more religious, conservative, and less democratic.
The war is enabling the government to push even harder, with less public attention, and as such, we can assume they will do anything to keep it going. If not in Iran, there are many other arenas: the West Bank, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen.
We have to consider the following: the reason that this is the third Seder in a row that we are at war, is that we want to be in it. Or at least, that the government and its supporters want it so. The long war is the manifestation of a choice, of our identity.
It is painful to wonder if the war has become part of who we are.
I want to end with one more common Hebrew phrase, in free translation: “We survived Pharaoh, we’ll survive this too.”
I wish you all a happier and more joyful Passover than mine.