The Volokh Conspiracy
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Reflections on a Visit to Israel
I spent two weeks teaching and lecturing in Israel. Here are some tentative impressions.
I recently returned from a two-week trip to Israel where I taught a course on "Knowledge and Democracy" at the law faculty at Uriel Reichman University (the former IDC Herzliya). I also did presentations at both Uriel Reichman and Tel Aviv University (both schools are among Israel's leading academic institutions). During our time in Israel, my family and I also met with Israeli relatives of mine, various Israeli academics, and even a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court (that latter discussion is confidential; I promised not to write what she said). I saw a society that is resilient, but also beset with difficult challenges. Many Israelis also worry about the future of their relationship with the US.
This was my fifth trip to Israel, but the first in which I was actually a visiting professor at an Israeli university, and the first since the October 7 war. Given worldwide attention on Israel in recent years, my impressions may be of some interest. But I must caution that I do not speak Hebrew or Arabic, and I am not a true expert on Israeli politics and society. Also, although I have a variety of contacts in Israel, those I know are by no means a representative cross-section of Israeli society. Thus, the analysis here is just one part of a broader picture. But it could be helpful, despite its unavoidable limitations.
Some recent accounts of Israel depict a society traumatized by the events of October 7 and the resulting war. I didn't get that impression. Most of the people we met seem upbeat and going about their ordinary lives. Unless and until the subject of the war comes up, you would hardly know they have been through one. I have seen people traumatized by war and repression, such as some of the Cambodian refugees I worked with as a college student, or some Ukrainian ones I have met more recently. Few if any Israelis I met are like that.
I thought we might encounter more onerous and elaborate security precautions than in my pre-October 7 visits. But, for the most part, we did not. Even when we visited the Israeli Supreme Court (at the invitation of one of the justices), the security was less extensive than at its US counterpart.
At the same time, the war has had an impact, in ways that become apparent when the subject does come up. Israel is a small country (about 10 million people), and almost everyone has friends, relatives, or acquaintances who were killed, wounded, or taken hostage on October 7, or in the subsequent fighting. About 1200 Israelis (mostly civilians) were killed on October 7. As a proportion of the population, this one-day casualty toll is similar to all the US losses in the Vietnam War, which occurred over a nine-year period, and about ten times greater than the proportion of the US population lost on 9/11. Many, perhaps most, Israelis also have relatives serving in the armed forces. Typical, in some respects, was a Russian Jewish immigrant ride-share driver I spoke to, who worries that Israel faces ongoing crises with little end in sight; his son is an infantryman serving in Gaza.
Most people are happy that the US-sponsored October ceasefire deal with Hamas led to the release of the remaining hostages (I myself am not a fan of such hostage deals), but worry that the peace may not last. The arrangement leaves Hamas still armed and in control of much of Gaza, and fighting could easily break out again. Many are also angry at the government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is widely blamed for being taken by surprise by the Hamas attack. Polls show that Netanyahu's right-wing coalition government is likely to lose next year's election, though it is not clear that the opposition parties (who are internally divided on various issues) will be able to form a stable government themselves. They ultimately failed last time they tried, in 2021-22.
In addition to the war and its aftermath, Israel also faces serious internal divisions. One that came up a lot in my discussions with Israeli academics and others is the conflict over judicial review. Before October 7, the right-wing coalition government sought to enact new legislation that would have largely gutted judicial review in Israel. These attempts sparked extensive public opposition, including massive protest demonstrations. The government partially backed off, and the war for a time put an end to its efforts.
But, in recent months, the ruling coalition has sought to enact this agenda by stealthier means, and has also impeded the appointment of new Supreme Court justices (thus, the Court now only has 11 justices, as opposed to the allotted number of 15). Israeli academics and other experts I spoke to are divided in their assessment of whether the government is likely to succeed in these efforts, and what effect they will have if it does.
Israeli legal scholars are disproportionately left of center (though, as one put it, somewhat less so than their US counterparts, because - he said - "we have lived through war"). Thus, almost all those I spoke to oppose the government's plans. I largely agree. I oppose right-wing efforts to destroy judicial review in Israel for much the same reasons as I object to left-wing proposals to do so in the US. In addition, I worry that ending judicial review in Israel would lead to a tyranny of the majority in a nation which has few other checks on the power of the government of the day. Israel has neither federalism nor a system of separation of powers.
At the same time, many Israeli academics and experts on constitutional structure also recognize that it is problematic to rely so exclusively on judicial review as a check on government power, especially in the absence of a written constitution clearly delineating the powers of government, and constraints on them (which Israel still does not have, almost 80 years after the establishment of the state). Most I asked about the topic favor creating a constitution. But there is deep disagreement over such basic issues as whether there should be a federal state or a unitary one, the role of religion in public life (religious bodies currently control personal status law in Israel, such as on matters of marriage and divorce; many Israelis would like to replace this system with a secular one), the extent to which the government should privilege Jews over other groups, and more. Disagreements in the broader public are even more extensive than among academics and experts.
I could be wrong. But I am not optimistic that these divisions are going to be overcome anytime soon. For that reason, I doubt that Israelis will - at least in the near future - be able to generate a sufficient consensus to establish a written constitution or resolve related divisive issues about judicial review, religion, and national identity. Thus, the conflict over them is likely to continue for some time to come.
The topic of political and constitutional developments in the US also came up repeatedly in my discussions with Israeli academics and policy experts. Most of them follow US law and public policy closely, and many write about these issues in their professional work. Many of them are worried about the erosion of liberal democratic norms and constitutional constraints since Trump returned to power. Again and again, I heard statements to the effect that they used to admire and respect US constitutional democracy, but now have serious doubts about it. There is a striking parallel here to the very similar sentiments I heard from Mexican academics and former government officials during my recent visit to that country. We would do well to heed these warnings, but I fear those who most need to hear them probably won't.
Israeli academics also have a very different set of concerns about the US. Several raised with me the issue of outbreaks of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel bias, harassment, and violence on US college campuses. Israeli academic institutions have close connections to their US counterparts, and this issue was deeply troubling to my Israeli colleagues, many of whom have been students or visiting faculty in the US.
I think these concerns are sometimes overblown, and anti-Semitic incidents have died down considerably over the last year. Dramatic cases of violence and harassment understandably attract more media attention than the much larger number of cases where Jewish and Israeli students and faculty on US campuses go about their business without incident. That said, it's hard to deny there is a genuine problem here, and that some schools have tolerated misbehavior from anti-Israel activists that they would never have accepted coming from right-wingers. We in the US academic world should do a better job of addressing it. I think the two David Bernsteins (including my co-blogger David E. Bernstein) are largely right in arguing that colleges should broadly tolerate free speech (including anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic speech), but crack down on violence, harassment, and discrimination.
The focus of "Knowledge and Democracy" - the course I taught at Uriel Reichman University - is the problem of voter ignorance, an issue on which I have written a book and many articles. The university administration chose this topic over several others I offered them. Interestingly, my recent Mexican hosts made much the same decision when I offered them a choice of possible lecture topics. One can say that recent events have made the topic of political ignorance great again, though I think it has always been a serious problem.
As in Mexico and other countries where I have spoken about this issue in recent years, few academics and students seem sympathetic to arguments to the effect that voter ignorance is not a significant problem, even though I devote considerable time to such ideas in my talks and in the class I taught. These days, there is widespread agreement - in many nations - that voter ignorance is a dangerous menace, but equally widespread disagreement over potential solutions (I go over several possible options here).
As a native speaker of Russian myself, I was able to communicate extensively with members of the large Russian-speaking minority (about 15-20% of the Israeli population). Russian immigrants (most of them Jews, but also many non-Jews allowed to immigrate as close relatives of Jews). Almost everywhere we went in Israel, there were many Russian speakers, and it was easy to strike up conversations.
In general, Russian-speaking Israelis seem happy to be in Israel, relative to their countries of origin. But many are troubled by growing political conflict and polarization within Israel, and by the constant sense of crisis. There is also great variation in the extent to which they feel assimilated in Israel, though on the whole assimilation seems substantial.
One Russian-speaking native of Kyiv told me straight out that he liked Ukraine better than Israel, felt more comfortable there, and would move back, if not for the war unleashed by Vladimir Putin, which as disrupted life in Ukraine far more than the October 7 war has disrupted it in Israel. This man was unusual in actually wanting to move back to Ukraine (he noted that his own family disagrees with him). But, like him, many Russian-speaking Israelis are actually from Ukraine, and still have friends and relatives there. Thus, many closely follow the course of the Russia-Ukraine War, as well as the October 7 war that beset Israel. They are, in a sense, impacted by two wars at once.
Most Russian-speaking Israelis - even those who are from Russia itself, as opposed to Ukraine and other countries - have little love for Putin's regime, and oppose his war of aggression. But a minority do buy into Putinist propaganda, sometimes getting it from Russian government media (which is readily available online). One even forcefully defended the Kremlin line that Ukraine started the war and that the country is ruled by "Nazis." I noted that it doesn't often happen that a Nazi government is led by a Jew (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish). My interlocutor was not persuaded, but two of his relatives (who were with him) jumped in to support my point.
The conventional wisdom on Russian-speaking immigrants is that they have moved Israeli politics to the right. This is likely true when it comes to security policy, though the impact of the Russians is likely less significant than that of the failure of the Oslo peace process, and the resulting upsurge of terrorism. On the other hand, the exact opposite is true when it comes to another big issue that divides Israeli society: the conflict over the role of religion in the state. Most Russian-speaking immigrants are highly secular, and would be happy to eliminate the privileges given by the state to the rabbinical establishment (which controls personal status law for Jews), and the ultra-Orthodox "Haredim" (who enjoy substantial government subsidies and exemptions from the military draft).
One of my Russian-Jewish Israeli relatives married a non-Jewish woman (also a Russian immigrant); they had to go outside the country to do it, because Israeli authorities will not perform interfaith marriages. This kind of situation is far from unique, and causes considerable resentment. Russian-Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman leads Yisrael Beteinu, an opposition party that is hawkish on security issues, and also advocates a secular state. Lieberman draws much - though by no means all - of his support from other Russian immigrants.
In sum, what I saw cuts against the idea that is Israel is deeply traumatized. But the country does face significant challenges, including deep structural issues and divisions that will not be easy to resolve.
This is not the place for a general statement of my views on Israel's political system or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But for a compendium of my writings on these and related issues, see here. In that post, I also briefly explain why Israel is not an exception to my general opposition to ethno-nationalism.
In conclusion, I would like to thank Uriel Reichman University for inviting me to be a visiting professor, and various Israeli friends, relatives and academic colleagues for their generous hospitality. I emphasize that this post reflects my own views and impressions, and I alone am responsible for it.
