Haviv Rettig Gur, the senior analyst of the Times of Israel, is a regular guest on my Q&A podcast. When something major happens in Israel, listeners want to hear from HRG, to get a solid understanding. He is an Israel-explainer par excellence. He is deeply informed, dispassionate, articulate — and often moving.
In Israel, the stakes are high, year after year, it seems.
On Wednesday, HRG and I recorded another conversation, here. Israel is in crisis. Unusually, this is not a national-security crisis, though there is a national-security component. The former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, was emphatic about that, when he said, “The rift within our society is widening and penetrating the Israel Defense Forces. This is a clear and immediate and tangible danger to the security of the state. I shall not be a party to this.”
Gallant called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to suspend his plan — his plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary. Netanyahu fired him for that. Then he announced the suspension of his plan.
And here we are.
Some questions for HRG: Both sides say they are trying to defend democracy. What do they mean by “democracy”? How is the Israeli system like the American, or unlike it? What does the lack of a written constitution do? Is Netanyahu trying to borrow a page from Hungary, Poland, and Turkey? Does his plan spring from his own legal troubles? There are rumbles of civil war — how serious is the proposition?
Bret Stephens wrote an interesting column a few days ago. He has known Netanyahu since he (Bret) was in his twenties. He is a close student of Israel. He was the editor of the Jerusalem Post. In that column, Bret wrote,
A Jewish state that loses the trust of half of its citizens — particularly the wealthier, more secular and more globally mobile half — will do itself in even before its enemies do.
And as Haviv Rettig Gur was talking on our podcast, I thought of Lincoln:
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.
That sounds a little apocalyptic — over the top — where Israel is concerned. But times there are very, very tense. David Ben-Gurion and his fellow founders wanted Israel to be a normal country, above all. Given this crisis — chiefly domestic — is Israel now a “normal” country? All too?
Anyway, Haviv Rettig Gur is an invaluable explainer. Again, to hear him, go here.