To understand the current events in Israel, only one question arises: what limits the power of the government? Strong democracies rely on a whole system of checks and balances. However, Israel has no constitution, no upper house of parliament, no federal system, or any other control of governmental power, except for one: the Supreme Court.
If Israel’s ruling coalition passes a bill stripping Arab citizens of their right to vote, only the Supreme Court can prevent this undemocratic bill from becoming the law of the land. Likewise, if the ruling coalition decides to ban labor unions, evict women from public spaces, criminalize LGBTQ people, or subject secular Israelis to the authority of Jewish religious courts, the only mechanism capable of stopping it is the Supreme Court. However, the government is trying to neutralize the Supreme Court. This Monday, he plans to pass the first of a series of laws that will destroy his authority and independence. If the government succeeds, there will be no limits to its power.
Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition has previously signaled its intention to pass laws and pursue policies that discriminate against Arabs, women, LGBTQ people and secular citizens. Once the Supreme Court is dismissed, nothing can stop this coalition. Moreover, once the Supreme Court is neutralized, the government can easily rig future elections, for example by prohibiting Arab parties from participating in the elections – a measure already proposed in the past by members of the coalition. Israel will still hold elections, but these will become an authoritarian ritual rather than a free democratic contest.
Majority Dictatorship
The members of the government in no way hide their intentions. They even brag about it openly. They explain that, since they won the last elections in Israel and that they have a narrow majority in the Israeli Parliament (64 deputies out of 120), this means that they can do whatever they want. Like other authoritarian forces in the world today, the Israeli government does not understand what democracy means. He believes that democracy is a dictatorship of the majority and those who win democratic elections are thereby granted unlimited power. Over the past few months I have spoken with many Netanyahu supporters and they sincerely believe that any restriction on an elected government is undemocratic. “What do you mean by that when you say we can’t deprive people of their basic freedoms?” they say. “But we won the elections! That means we can do whatever we want!”
In reality, democracy is not synonymous with majority dictatorship. Rather, it is synonymous with freedom and equality for all. Democracy is a system that guarantees certain freedoms to everyone, which even the majority cannot suppress. In a democracy, even 99% of voters do not have the right to kill, imprison, disenfranchise or silence the remaining 1%.
Jewish supremacy
The establishment of a dictatorship in Israel would have serious consequences, and not only for Israeli citizens. The ruling coalition is led by messianic religious zealots who believe in an ideology of Jewish supremacy. This ideology calls for annexing the occupied Palestinian territories to Israel without granting citizenship to Palestinians, and its ultimate dream is to destroy the compound of the al-Aqsa Mosque – one of Islam’s holiest sites – in order to build a new Jewish temple there instead. Jewish supremacy is not a marginal ideology. It is represented in the coalition by the Jewish Force party and the Religious Zionist Party. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (of the Religious Zionist Party), for example, recently called for the annihilation of an entire Palestinian town in retaliation for the murder of two Jewish settlers.
Men like Smotrich now command one of the most formidable military machines in the world, armed with nuclear weapons and advanced cyber weapons. For decades, Prime Minister Netanyahu has waged a campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He warned the world of the dangers posed by a fundamentalist regime with nuclear capabilities. But now Netanyahu is establishing such a regime in Israel. A fundamentalist dictatorship in Israel could set the entire Middle East on fire, with consequences that would reverberate far beyond the region. It would be incredibly stupid of Israel to do such a thing, but as the Russian invasion of Ukraine taught us, we must never underestimate human stupidity. It is one of the most powerful forces in history.
Strong resistance in the army and the “start-up nation”
The good news is that over the past few months a powerful resistance movement has emerged to save Israeli democracy. Rejecting the ideology of Jewish supremacy and building on ancient traditions of Jewish tolerance, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are demonstrating, protesting and resisting in every non-violent way we know. As of Friday, more than 10,000 Army reservists – including hundreds of Air Force pilots, cyber warfare experts and commanders of elite units – have publicly declared that they would not serve a dictatorship and would therefore suspend their service if the overhaul of the justice system continues. This Tuesday, the famous Israeli Air Force, which relies largely on reservists, could be partially grounded.
To realize the magnitude of this approach, it should be remembered that for many Israelis, military service is a sacred duty. In a country that emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust and has faced existential risks for decades, the military has always been shielded from political controversy. This is no longer the case today. Former heads of the Israeli army, air force and security services have publicly called on the soldiers to stop serving. Veterans of Israel’s many wars say this is the most important battle of their lives. The Netanyahu government tries to portray this situation as a military coup, but it is the exact opposite. Israeli soldiers do not take up arms to oppose the government, they lay down their arms. They explain that their contract is linked to Israeli democracy and that once democracy expires, so does their contract.
This sense of a breach of the social contract has also led universities, unions, doctors, tech companies and other private businesses to threaten strike action if the government continues its undemocratic stranglehold on power. Israelis understand the potential damage to our country. As the “start-up nation” shuts down, investors around the world are pulling their money out of Israel. Internal damage is even greater. As the social contract is shattered, fear and hatred now dominate relations between different sectors of society. Members of the Netanyahu government call protesters and reservists “traitors” and demand that force be used to crush the opposition. The Israelis fear that we are days away from a civil war.
But the hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrating in the streets believe we have no choice. It is our duty, to ourselves, to Jewish tradition and to humanity to prevent the rise of a Jewish supremacist dictatorship. We are on the streets because we cannot help it. Please stand with us and help us save Israeli democracy.
* Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher and the author, in particular, of sapians, of Homo Deus and children’s series We, the indomitable ones, all translated by Albin Michel. He is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the co-founder of the organization Sapienship.