At the moment, Israel’s right-wing coalition government’s plan to disempower the Supreme Court there is on hold, a mark of grudging deference to what have been the largest peaceful protests in the country’s history. This setback hasn’t stopped the government from passing, just last month, to much less notice, a budget that hugely increases the already substantial state subsidies to the ultra-Orthodox religious community that is at the heart of the coalition. But it does mean that one of the government’s agenda items, in line right behind “judicial reform,” similarly disempowering Israel’s excellent public-broadcasting system, is also, for now, on hold.
What’s happening in Israeli politics is a heightened version, in a small space, of a broader phenomenon, maybe the dominant phenomenon of twenty-first-century politics worldwide: the rise of ultranationalist, populist, religious, democracy-eroding leaders and political parties, in, among other places, India, Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and, of course, the United States. Often this kind of politics combines generous state benefits for people perceived by those in power as their own with hostility to others, like, in the case of Israel, Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. The Israeli iteration resembles other versions in its appeal to a more rural, less-educated constituency that is highly susceptible to seductive attacks on the prosperous, educated, urban, secular élites who have supposedly screwed life up for traditional, God-fearing families. The only difference is that in Israel it’s harder than in most places to blame the Jews.
Like most institutions in Israel, the press has a more European-style than American-style history. Newspapers were originally associated with political parties, and broadcasting was public, not private. Over time, Israel developed a strong, independent print press, but its broadcasting system slid into mediocrity. The advent of commercial broadcasting made it look doomed. In 2014, the Knesset passed a law abolishing the old public-broadcasting system and establishing a new one, known as Kan, to be governed by an independent and diverse board of distinguished people which would shield it from government interference. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister then as now, was known to be hostile to the creation of Kan, but it launched on television anyway, in 2017.
The guiding spirit of Kan was Eldad Koblenz, one of those dynamic organization-builders who’s apparently not so attuned to creating a positive workplace culture. A 2021 investigation by Haaretz, which ran under the headline “Dozens of Israeli Public Broadcaster Employees Allege Sexual Harassment, Abuse and Humiliation,” (not by Koblenz personally) was the beginning of the end of his leadership, and he stepped down last year. But by then Kan had built a widely admired small empire that included television, radio, digital, and podcast platforms, and created journalistic and entertainment programming. The Communications Minister, Shlomo Karhi, has repeatedly called for Kan’s abolition; Kan has responded by hiring several new broadcast hosts who are regarded as being, as Israelis put it, shofars (roughly speaking, megaphones) for Netanyahu. Kan is now less confrontational than it used to be, but it is still independent and still valuable for adding to the store of good journalism in Israel. It’s not clear whether it has maneuvered itself out of the government’s crosshairs only temporarily.
There’s a common thread in the Israeli governing coalition’s attacks on institutions such as the Supreme Court, Kan, the National Library, and, sometimes, the Bank of Israel: they are all meant to operate independently, under the control of people with a measure of experience and expertise. That premise opens them to the accusation of élitism. Because Israel has universal military service, and because the ultra-Orthodox are exempt, élite networks in Israel often begin in military units, as in the United States they do in Ivy League universities. In journalism, the network’s wellspring is Galatz, the excellent, general-purpose, round-the-clock Army radio station, which, too, Karhi is threatening to shut down; Kan’s rise entailed the employment of many Galatz alumni, including Koblenz. More broadly, the Israeli right likes to celebrate the long-deferred end of the dominance of “First Israel” (European-origin, liberal, secular) and the rise of “Second Israel” (originally from elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, conservative, religious). The Court, Kan, and institutions like them represent First Israel. So do the hundreds of thousands of people who have taken to the streets to protest the government’s plans—including leaders of the military who have supported the demonstrations.
Today we understand democracy to mean, first of all, universal voting rights and open, fair elections. This is essential, but it isn’t sufficient for a healthy democracy, as this century’s crop of elected authoritarians has shown. Democracy also entails minority rights (which, to say the least, are not a priority of the Israeli government), strong independent institutions, and mechanisms that stand between moment-to-moment variations in majority public opinion and enacted government policy. (One wants a democratic structure that offers a measure of protection from moral panics and periods when bad guys are in charge.) All of these are being undermined by right-wing parties, in Israel and elsewhere.
There is no way to avoid it—the non-electoral aspects of democracy are always open to accusations of élitism, because they entail putting a measure of state power into the hands of people with training and experience who have the latitude to balance pure majoritarianism with other first principles. The defense of democracy, never more necessary than now, must include not just protecting specific institutions under threat, like Kan, but also a broad understanding of just how complicated, how essential, and how fragile true democracy is. Elections are where the fight begins, but they can’t be where it ends. ♦
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Nikkei Editorial
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
visit website
