{"id":26076,"date":"2023-08-15T23:31:06","date_gmt":"2023-08-15T23:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/belalcazar.org\/?p=26076"},"modified":"2023-08-15T23:31:06","modified_gmt":"2023-08-15T23:31:06","slug":"opinion-beiruts-nightmare-could-become-israels-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/belalcazar.org\/analysis-comment\/opinion-beiruts-nightmare-could-become-israels-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Beirut\u2019s Nightmare Could Become Israel\u2019s Future"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

By <\/span>Thomas L. Friedman<\/span><\/p>\n

Opinion Columnist<\/p>\n

On Sept. 12, Israel\u2019s Supreme Court will consider whether the judicial power grab by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is legal. Netanyahu has repeatedly refused to commit to abide by an adverse decision, so if the court rules against his coalition, Israel will be in full-blown judicial crisis.<\/p>\n

The heads of the military, Mossad, Shin Bet and the police will have to decide to whom they are loyal \u2014 a political coalition engaged in a judicial putsch or a Supreme Court that preserves its independence.<\/p>\n

But even if the court rules that it is powerless to maintain its authority, Israel will still be in a full-blown crisis. Because Netanyahu and his far-right coalition of Jewish supremacists and ultra-Orthodox Jews have already breached the core social contract that has held Israel together for the last 75 years \u2014 \u201clive and let live.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know a lot about that principle. I lived in two countries in the Middle East from the late 1970s to the late 1980s \u2014 Lebanon and Israel \u2014 that maintained their stability for years by respecting that principle. Until they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Lebanon and Israel have two big features in common: They are really small in geography and incredibly diverse in population \u2014 religiously diverse, ethnically diverse, politically diverse, linguistically diverse, educationally diverse.<\/p>\n

When your democracy is really, really small and really, really diverse, there\u2019s only one way to maintain stability \u2014 all the diverse actors must respect the principle of \u201clive and let live.\u201d Or, as the Lebanese described it each time some faction there breached that principle, plunged the country into civil war and then had to re-establish balance among sects, \u201cno victor, no vanquished.\u201d Everybody has to respect certain limits on their reach.<\/p>\n

Over the last two decades, though, Lebanon\u2019s pro-Iranian Shiite militia, Hezbollah, whose name means \u201cthe party of God,\u201d trashed that principle. It used its superiority in arms and warfighters, and the backing of Iran, to impose its authority on all the other Lebanese parties and sects. Instead of \u201cno victor, no vanquished,\u201d Hezbollah imposed the principle often associated with African dictators \u2014 \u201cit\u2019s our turn to eat,\u201d meaning democracy be damned, it\u2019s our turn to get more than our fair share of state resources, operating unchecked by any independent authority (such as a judicial system).<\/p>\n

For all the many differences between Lebanon and Israel, Netanyahu\u2019s coalition is its own Party of God, and it decided that this was its turn to eat \u2014 even though it won last November\u2019s election by a mere 30,000 votes out of 4.7 million cast. So it broke the live-and-let-live principle and immediately began transferring unprecedented amounts of new money to ultra-Orthodox religious schools \u2014 without requiring them to teach math, science, English or democratic civics \u2014 and appointing ministers with criminal records and pouring government resources into expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank in order to unwind the Oslo peace process. This was all done while trying to neuter the Supreme Court\u2019s ability to stop any of it.<\/p>\n

This sort of resource\/power grab is unprecedented in Israeli politics, and it is all the more galling when you consider that it is being done, in part, by ultra-Orthodox parties whose members pay the least amount of taxes and serve the least in the military.<\/p>\n

Up to now, with occasional exceptions, everyone knew their limits \u2014 the secular knew how far to press the Orthodox to open restaurants on the Sabbath, the Orthodox knew how far to press the secular on L.G.B.T.Q. rights. The West Bank settlers hated the Oslo agreement, but they never tried to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank. Even the Supreme Court had become much more ideologically balanced in recent years between conservatives and liberals, despite Netanyahu\u2019s misleading statements to the contrary.<\/p>\n

My friend David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, tells the story of how when his son was born in Jerusalem in 1998, David wanted to be at the side of his wife, Varda. Varda\u2019s obstetrician told him that would be fine \u2014 as long as the one ultra-Orthodox delivery room nurse, who would object, was not on duty. The doctor checked on his wife throughout her labor, said David, and managed to time the delivery for right after that religious nurse went off duty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when the doctor said to Varda, \u2018Time to push,\u2019\u201d David recalled. \u201cThat\u2019s how I got to be in the delivery room. It was a microcosm of an Israel where people could hold onto principles, but still find creative ways for coexistence.\u201d<\/p>\n

In breaking that live-and-let-live balance by sheer force \u2014 thanks to a tiny, transitory political advantage in Parliament \u2014 Netanyahu and his coalition have broken something much more important than a law. They have broken the unwritten norm holding Israel together. It is hard to see how the country will ever be the same.<\/p>\n

If the Supreme Court declares that it doesn\u2019t have the authority to stop Netanyahu\u2019s judicial coup, or if Netanyahu refuses to abide by a ruling against his power grab, the Israeli system \u2014 already fracturing because so many army and air force reservists are refusing to serve a government they now consider dictatorial, not democratic \u2014 could completely spin out of control.<\/p>\n

Here is how Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank (to which I am a donor) put it in a recent essay on the organization\u2019s website:<\/p>\n

An elected government just made a potentially far-reaching constitutional change on narrow partisan lines. Whatever one thinks of the amendment in question, a red line has been crossed. \u2026 The fact that this executive power grab was carried out in the face of the largest and most sustained protests in the country\u2019s history, against the will of a majority of the public, and notwithstanding severe warnings from security, law and economic experts, has brought home the magnitude of the threat to millions of Israelis.<\/p>\n

From this moment forward, Plesner added \u2014 in an analysis that has real echoes for America democracy as well \u2014 \u201cevery time an Israeli citizen goes to the polls, they will do so with the frightening new awareness that the price of defeat could be their way of life. A religious man will place his ballot in fear that a secular-led government could unilaterally undermine the Jewish character of the state if it chose to do so. A secular woman will cast her ballot trembling at the ramifications of a right-wing victory for her rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, the rights of Israel\u2019s 1.6 million Arab citizens, for whom the Supreme Court has been a vital protector, could henceforth be totally at the mercy of the Jewish majority if this new law stands. This never, ever should have happened in such a live-and-let-live, diverse nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cElections must not become a winner-takes-all contest, in which the victor seizes everything and the loser risks losing everything,\u201d concluded Plesner. \u201cThat is not democracy: It is a recipe for civil war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, I asked the Israeli author and essayist Ari Shavit what he feared most today in his country. It was not, he remarked, that Israel would become \u201can elective dictatorship \u2014 another Hungary, Poland or Russia. That\u2019s because the Jewish-political heritage cannot countenance authority-through-absolutism, and because the radical right in Israel doesn\u2019t have enough power to impose its will on the liberals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The true danger, he argued, is that Israel will descend into chaos and disintegrate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe looming specter is Lebanon,\u201d Shavit added. \u201cOur neighbor to the north suffered a great rupture when its delicate intertribal order crumbled.\u201d And now, in Israel, \u201cthe historic compromise that allowed its highly diverse communities to live together peacefully \u2014 with the right controlling political power for most of the last 20 years and the center and left holding sway in the courts, the media and the universities \u2014 has collapsed.\u201d<\/p>\n

As in the days of the First and Second Temples, Shavit said, \u201czealotry and factionalism are tearing us apart and threatening to destroy the magnificent nation we built here. So, the nightmare that jolts me awake in the small hours is not Budapest or Warsaw \u2014 but Beirut.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having personally lived that Beirut nightmare back in the late 1970s, I can confirm that it is all too real a possibility for Israel today. You break it, you lose it \u2014 and you can\u2019t get it back.<\/p>\n

The Times is committed to publishing <\/em>a diversity of letters<\/em> to the editor. We\u2019d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some <\/em>tips<\/em>. And here\u2019s our email: <\/em>letters@nytimes.com<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on <\/em>Facebook<\/em>, <\/em>Twitter (@NYTopinion)<\/em> and <\/em>Instagram<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs Op-Ed columnist. He joined the paper in 1981, and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award. @<\/span>tomfriedman \u2022<\/span> Facebook <\/span><\/p>\n

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By Thomas L. Friedman Opinion Columnist On Sept. 12, Israel\u2019s Supreme Court will consider whether the judicial power grab by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is legal. Netanyahu has repeatedly refused to commit to abide by an adverse decision, so if the court rules against his coalition, Israel will be in full-blown judicial crisis. 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