Ori Nir
Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining this webinar with Noa Sattath of ACRI, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel. This webinar is a little different. It is brought to you by two organizations, the New Israel Fund and Americans for Peace Now, APN. I'm Ori Nir with Americans for Peace Now. I am delighted to have with me my longtime friend and colleague, Libby Lenkinski of the New Israel Fund. I'm going to hand her the baton in a second. Just before I do that, because some of you may not be familiar with APN, Americans for Peace Now is an advocacy and education organization here in Washington, which works to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace. It is the sister organization of Peace Now, Shalom Achshav, Israel's preeminent peace movement. And now I'm handing the baton to Libby.
Libby Lenkinski
Thank you so much, Ori, and I'm very pleased to be here collaborating with you again. And I'm especially excited to finally be featured on the PeaceCast Podcast. I'm like, what does a girl have to do to get on that podcast, so I'm very happy that we'll be on it today. As Ori said, I'm here to co-facilitate on behalf of New Israel Fund where I serve as Vice President. And I often think of APN and NIF as sort of like the two organizations that are part of our Progressive Israel Network world here that really do have boots on the ground there. Peace Now and New Israel Fund are real engines of all kinds of important work for democracy and peace on the ground in Israel. And simultaneously, we're here at organizing among North Americans and around the world in support of that important work. So I wish that we were here to celebrate all of our amazing successes and how you know how much we're getting closer to the future that we want. But we all know that we've suffered a big setback with the new government. And we're here to talk with Rabbi Noa Sattath, executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the flagship grantee of New Israel Fund, a close partner also to Peace Now, my own alma mater where I was last employed before I came here to New Israel Fund, to talk specifically about the override clause. And to hear ACRI's perspective and Noa's perspective about that. I'm going to just give you a brief bio of Noa, because she's only been in ACRI, for I think just like a year or a little bit more than a year. Rabbi Noa is the executive director of ACRI for the last year or so. Before that she ran the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), where she was responsible for leading public strategy on religion and state, gender equality, and the struggle against racism. Among other things, she was a partner in leading significant processes of change, like the struggles against the exclusion of women, the extremist organization Lehava, which used to feel very fringe to all of us and today is sitting in very important ministries in our government, which we will talk about. And also she led the disqualification of racist, insightful candidates from running for the Knesset. Prior to her work in IRAC, Noa directed the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, where she was a partner in the historic process of leading Jerusalem's inaugural pride parade. So I really can't imagine how this moment feels to you. We're going to talk about that. And I think we, some of us, have seen lots of photos from the protests on Saturday night. We know that there are Israelis standing up in new ways to this government. We're also facing, and we feel this inside NIF and I know at Peace Now as well, like it's sort of like that January 6, moment of just like a lot of chaos, a lot of noise, a lot of statements by new ministers, and new MKs about things that they want to do. And we think that this override clause, this change in the judiciary, is kind of like a cornerstone to all of those things, but we don't know. It's very chaotic. And so I want to ask you, just by way of like opening, and I know Ori's gonna want to jump in with questions about this, too, just like what is this override clause, and what is so significant about it to the broader set of issues that we're focused on as organizations, as progressives, please? And welcome Noa, thank you so much for being with us.
Noa Sattath
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it and I see a lot of names of friends in the chat. I'm very happy to be here with you and you know who you are. It's great to see you. I just want to zoom back and talk about this moment. So first of all, I think we should acknowledge that it's a nightmare. And I also think that history has had a lot to teach us about this moment. And so I've been really diving deep into the writing of Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat who is a fascism scholar, she's an amazing writer. And she describes this moment as the moment of shock and awe. So when the populist leader comes into power, she tracks them from Mussolini and onwards. There are a lot of statements about what's going to happen, we can remember that from the early Trump days, where he announced that he would make 100 executive orders taking away every freedom. So we were at this moment before the Knesset assembled. And now we're transitioning into the much slower process of actual legislation where there are a lot of limitations and that's where we are now. And when we talk about the override clause, in many senses, we talked about judicial independence altogether. So zooming out, Israel has no constitution. We have only one house of parliament. And, we have very little separation between the executive and the legislative branches. And so the Supreme Court is really the main tool of oversight that our parliament or our government has. And the various members of this coalition, each one of them from their own perspective, has a strong interest in limiting judicial independence. And so they're talking about a package of laws, the override clause being one of them. Yariv Levine, the new Minister of Justice, announced a whole package of laws, including the override clause, which we'll get into in a second, but also limiting the issues, the ways that the court can deliberate cases and limiting the the oversight of attorney general's, which has been very instrumental in protecting some rights in Israel. The override clause is limiting the court's ability to to overrule Knesset legislation. That is, on the one hand, it's a small fraction of what the court does. I would say that 98% of what the Supreme Court does has nothing to do with the override clause. The override clause is a very specific clause that is used when there is legislation that is unconstitutional and there's a hearing about it. But it's a critical part of what the court does. Just in the past few years, ACRI has overturned the legislation about indefinite imprisonment of asylum seekers. So that was a law that the President has passed and we use the ability to override legislation in doing that. And we also managed to have success in terms of the law allowing expropriation of private Palestinian land. So this law, should it pass, would significantly limit the ability of the courts to oversee the Knesset legislation. And I think the best explanation about it that I read is that it would mean that the law would only apply to the minority, because the majority can always change the law. And if there are no limitations on that, it would mean that the majority can always change the law to fit whatever their political interests are. And you can go to different ways of imagining what that would look like. I'm happy to dive into what we think this might look like very concretely at this stage but there are many different scenarios that we can imagine.
Ori Nir
Yeah, well, we'll probably do that as we go along. Just wanted to make sure that we got the name right. You were talking about Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, right? Yes. And it's spelled G-H-I-A-T, right.
Noa Sattath
Yes, and I strongly recommend her book "Strong Men," where she speaks about the emergence of strong men leaders, populist leaders.
Ori Nir
So last week, last week, you sent a message, an email that referred to the radical measures that were announced by the new Justice Minister, Yariv Levin, as a national emergency, and you said it was an abyss that we have a difficult time getting out of. What you were referring to was a collection of measures that were only the first steps in what can only be described as a legal revolution. Talk a little bit more about the other components of this initiative. And also, if you may, in simple terms, try to explain what this government is trying to achieve with these new measures with this revolution.
Noa Sattath
So I think one of the challenges and certainly Israel is not unique in the populist moment that we're facing. And one of the characteristics of this, of the, of the crisis of democracy is that the democratic sphere is shrinking or disappearing in small technical steps. And that's one of the challenges that we have in Israel, and that maybe all of us have, as advocates, in explaining why these very technical and minor steps have such a huge impact on the future. And we at ACRI did a whole mapping of the threats that this government poses to democracy and human rights and we're prioritizing the measures that we think will be very, very hard to reverse in the future. And these measures that we're talking about right now, are going to be very hard to reverse in the future. So in terms of the package that Yariv Levin was mentioning, we spoke about the override law, we spoke about the attorney generals. So the attorney generals have a very important position in each of the government offices and each of the government ministries. And they really limit the policies to the rule of law. So the attorney general can determine that a specific policy is illegal, and then the minister would have to change it. What they're trying to do now is to make those nominations, political nominations, so that anybody could bring their own people, and the attorney general's would act like private lawyers representing their client, the minister, and not representing the rule of law. And that would be a dramatic shift because the attorney generals have been a very important watchdog in the Israeli system. Another proposed change is the issue of the nomination of Chief Justices, judges to the Supreme Court in Israel. We have a 16 judge panel, a 16 judge court. And the current way that judges are nominated is by a non-political process in which there are members of the coalition and the members of the opposition and members of the current justices and members of the Israeli Bar Association. And so the process of nomination is always a process of compromise. And they're trying to politicize the process, giving the government an absolute majority to nominate whatever judges that they want. The last measure that has not been brought up yet is the limiting of access to the court. In the full package that was signed to the coalition agreements was also an agreement to limit access to the court to plaintiffs who have a principal case. So you would have to prove that you have a specific damage caused to you as a person, not up to you as a group, in order to have access to the court, which would limit mostly corruption cases and environmental cases from access to the court. And the agendas here are varied. The ultra-orthodox members of the coalition have experienced the Supreme Court as an enemy in barring all sorts of preferential treatment that they've been getting over the years, and they want those privileges removed. The ultra-right has witnessed the Supreme Court as an enemy to settlement expansion even though the court usually rules in favor of the military in favor of the settlements, they still see it as a barrier, and they want that removed. And Netanyahu is facing three criminal charges, he's very worried about his appeal to the Supreme Court, which will be in the future and he wants to change the makeup there so that he can get a favorable decision on his appeal.
Libby Lenkinski
Thank you, Noa. This is complex stuff and I'm seeing like a lot of it's not complex, because we don't have the mental capacity to understand it. It just works very differently than in the United States and in Canada, this is a chance to say hello to the Canadians that have joined us, but it's a totally different system. So we're kind of following along and being like, wait, what does it mean if there's no constitution, and this happens? And the appointments don't work? So as I'm seeing questions like that in the Q&A and Ori and I are going to try to incorporate some of those into our conversation. We'll also turn to them a little bit later. But I guess I wanted to ask you, and this is a few questions from the Q&A embedded into a question that I wanted to ask you, which is, you know, when you talked about Professor Ben-Ghiat, and the sort of comparative analyses that likens this moment to other places in the world, like one of the things that I think, is familiar, is this feeling of barrage. It's like the first 100 days of Trump, every day a different thing. And there's a dynamic that happens, I think, in the media and among larger NGOs, who are focused broadly, which is like, 'Oh, we shouldn't be talking about this, while this is going on. Why would we be talking about this little thing when this big other thing is going on?' And I want to ask you, so from the perspective of both civil society as a potential target, like NGOs and activists as a target for an increasingly authoritarian, anti-dissent government, but also as the gatekeepers to a lot of advocacy on a broad set of issues. With all of the various things banned, enforcing the ban on Palestinian flags and other kinds of free expression things and threats to the education system and LGBTQ, why is this override clause, why is this Levin plan? How will this impact, A) NGOs in terms of our own space to operate? And, B) the issues that we bring into legal advocacy? What will this mean? Is this a big thing to talk about? Don't talk about these little things, because this big thing is the main one? How to think about that, from the perspective of us in the work that everybody on this call supports.
Noa Sattath
I think that the living plan dramatically changes the playing field. We speak about it, we tried to build the work plans for 2023 and we said that we likened it to playing cricket with the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. So you play a game and the Queen keeps changing the rules of the game, and you have to adjust all the time. And so we're really focusing on changing the rules of the game, which would then be very hard to reverse going forward. And so I think that that is dramatic and it impacts the undermining of judicial independence will impact almost every issue that NIF is working on. I can barely think of one that won't be impacted. And I also think that there's a tendency to talk about the issues that are very easy to understand, right. It's very easy to understand that we should all be outraged when Avi Maoz says that he's going to bar pride in Jerusalem or when Ben-Gvir says that he's gonna arrest protesters in Tel Aviv, left-wing demonstration. Our challenge as activists and as a society is to really think about how we personalize and make the issues accessible to these bigger issue questions that will then have larger impact that they're harder to grasp at the first step. And so I think that all of the NGOs that you know, and love in Israel are using judicial independence and if we don't have judicial independence, that will undermine dramatically the tools that we have. You also referred to the threats against civil society and human rights organizations. So I think maybe some of you have heard that Smotrich called human rights organizations existential threats. And we should, and that Ben-Gvir is trying to add taxation to organizations that are getting funding from European governments, which are mostly occupation organizations, anti-occupation organizations. And the more effective we are, the more the government will try to do that. So we should anticipate it and we should understand this is part of the process that's going to happen. If we are effective against this government, this government will try to make our lives more difficult and that's part of the game that we're playing right now.
Ori Nir
Thanks. I wanted to echo what Libby said about this feeling of, you know, drinking from a fire hydrant. It's just It keeps coming at you. And one of the things that we're seeing is that this government really comes in with a very aggressive agenda and with terrible vengeance. But I wanted to go back and project the certain sentiment or certain trend that we see here in the in the Q&A, and that is people asking about the uniqueness of the Israeli system. So I wanted to touch upon a few things that are unique and ask you about those. First is the question of constitutionality, when we say constitutional, constitutional law or things like that, what does that mean in a country that does not have a constitution? That is a question that I've seen quite a few times reoccurring here on the Q&A. And then the other thing is the special nature of the Supreme Court in Israel, as an instance, for people to bring their grievances. And particularly, you know, you talked earlier about the attempt to limit access to the Supreme Court, how does that impact Palestinians who have used the Israeli Supreme Court quite often?
Noa Sattath
These are such great questions. So in terms of constitutional principles, Israel doesn't have a constitution. We do have what we call basic laws. And so these are laws that have a special status, have been have been approved by a special majority, even by a majority which is not a huge majority. And these laws create the basis for a future constitution. And so they have supremacy over other laws. And this is the way that the Supreme Court used to or still is, still is able to override legislation is to say, this new law that you just approved, stands in contradiction to previous basic legislation. And this is the the constitutional principles that we have. But constitutional basic laws, which are the constitutional foundations, can be changed in a much quicker process. You just need a 61 majority, which is a 51% majority in the Knesset, in order to change a constitutional or a basic law. So this is a much weaker basis than a constitution. And it's also much less detailed, and it's much less comprehensive than constitutions usually are. So that was the question about the uniqueness of the system. In terms of the implications of barring access to the law to the court. It's very interesting to see now, one of the major points of discourse in Israel right now is that Palestinians are in general not joining the protest movement against the anti-democratic measures. And I think that it's a learning process for non-Palestinian Israelis to learn how much the Supreme Court has disappointed Palestinians in the past, and how consistently it rules with the military and not with the Palestinians seeking justice. So we at ACRI, for example, have lost multiple cases, significant cases, cases that we felt were very, very strong, overwhelmingly strong representing just clients and we lost several devastating losses with Palestinian clients. And still we think that the institution is a central institution of Israeli democracy and is worth protecting. So actually, I think that most of what the government wants to pass and change for Palestinians, it doesn't need the override clause in order to do. The law for expropriation of Palestinian land is an exception to that. The law of expropriation is basically a law that allows the government to take any private land and build settlements on it and we have been able to get the Supreme Court to override that law. And the override clause would, if it passes, then I think that this legislation might come back.
Libby Lenkinski
Thanks, Noa. I want to ask a little bit more about strategies for opposition during this environment. And I want to wrap in a couple things that I've seen in the Q&A, which is like, first of all, and I used to be around the very table that you're having these debates in, and I'm wondering, like, from the inside of the ACRI conference room, room I love, what are the discussions? How are you thinking about strategies going forward? And also, what do you see happening more broadly in civil society and even in other sectors? If you're seeing like, what does opposition what is possible to accomplish right now, realistically, and like what do you see already happening? And there's also a question about terminology, because you said, you were talking about Palestinians in connection to disappointments with the Supreme Court, and also Palestinians not quite joining the protests right now. So I think when you're talking about the Supreme Court, you're talking about Palestinians living under occupation, in which Peace Now, Yesh Din, and ACRI, and many other organizations have tried to litigate cases on behalf of villages about land and things like that. But I'm also wondering when you're talking about Palestinians joining or not joining various kinds of opposition, like protests, do you mean citizens of Israel, Arab-Israelis, Palestinian citizens, or both? Kind of maybe unpack that as sort of part of the plan. I mean, I'm already setting you up to say the thing that I think, which is that only a true partnership is gonna give us any kind of win for the future that we want. But now, I'd like for you to share your thoughts about that.
Noa Sattath
So in terms of strategy, and I want to connect to the drinking from a fire hydrant analogy, we have to be everywhere. We know that populism thrives in a vacuum. And everywhere where there's no resistance, the populist agenda will move quicker. And so we just were building the support and strength and stamina for the staff so that they can be very strong and very present on the multiplicity of issues that may arise. And we're also in terms of our staffing, we're building more flexibility. We used to have lawyers that were very designated to each issue and we may need to shift around so that we can be more agile in our response that we're building. And in terms of what is possible in terms of resistance, I want to say that A) litigation is going to continue to be key, even with the limitations on the Supreme Court, there will be different options to litigate. And although the field may become even more difficult than it was, it was not easy in October. The litigation can create the space for stopping the clock, for freezing the situation as it is. We need to prepare for a situation where this government lasts a long time or gets reelected. But we can also imagine that this government will only last a couple of years. So freezing a situation as it is, is incredibly valuable. And also litigation is treating the platform for public discourse and for clarification of the issues in a way that nothing else does. And so we have for instance, at ACRI we have a very methodical way of taking on a case. And the way we use to decide on whether you take on a case was what is the likelihood of winning. And we are now redefining winning, because just creating the public discourse and just freezing the situation is very meaningful right now. In terms of other forms of resistance, I think that the ray of hope that we can see now is that Israelis, Jewish-Israelis in a large majority, oppose this government. They don't support, there's no majority for any of the steps that the government wants to take. And that's what we need to capitalize on. And so we're seeing both large protests that are taking to the streets. And also we're seeing sectors that have not been outspoken in the past, from lawyers who have never been very vocal to leaders in the software industry, really finding their voice. So that's very encouraging. And I think that a time of crisis is always a time of opportunity. I'm struggling to see it right now. But I know that it's true. And I think that as we can adjust to the situation, but we can learn to live with it, then we will have the time to really think about what you said Libby, about how we got to the situation where the delegitimization of the Palestinian narrative and the Palestinian voice is really blocking our path to any political change. And so that I think that that is going to be very central and what we do moving forward, I also want to say that in terms of strategies, I mean, if we look at the kind of a large, you know, a bird's eye view of the past five election system, so in 2018, the Netanyahu block had 65 mandates, and then by some sort of miracle, of Avigdor Lieberman, who is very hawkish the head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Israel Our Home, decided not to go with Netanyahu anymore. And that really created the cycle of four consecutive election systems. And now we're at the place where Netanyahu has 64 members in his coalition. And I think that two things have changed for our benefit. One is that we have this big protest movement that is really out there. I mean, imagine what it would look like, if 12% of the American public went out to the streets in one day. I mean, that's what happens in Israel, it would be massive. So that's what we have. And the other thing that we have now that we didn't have in 2018, is that Trump is no longer in the White House. And that, you know, now I'm looking at you, my friends, and saying, this is a very important strategy that we have to use. We are already seeing that international discourse, international pressure is something that can have a deep impact on Israeli policy. We have seen that in the past two months, very, very clearly. We need a lot more of that. And that's where we need to partner together to create the change.
Ori Nir
Great so that's a really great segue to the next question, or next, maybe cluster of questions that we'd like to ask you. And that is the role of American Jews and the role of the United States more broadly. Maybe I'll start with actually reading out the question from Mark Pelavin of the Religious Action Center of the Reform Movement. Noa, he says it's great to see you again. So Mark is writing, and I had it in front of me just a moment ago, and now it's disappeared. But anyway, what he was asking, I can't find it, is how acute is this government and Israelis in general, to what American Jews think? Do they really have an impact? Does their voice have an impact when there's let's say, oh, here. Thank you, Libby. That was nice of you. So do things like letters from the, you know, Israel-related organizations have an impact? In either case, what are the things that American Jews can or should be doing that will have an impact?
Noa Sattath
So we know that well, you know, during the Trump years, Netanyahu really transitioned from leaning on the support of American Jews for his policies to leaning on support of American Evangelical Christians for his policies. And so I think that in the kind of emotional state of Netanyahu, I don't think that he is really impressed by what the American Jewish community says or does, certainly not the American liberal Jewish community. But I think, and I know, that the Biden administration is very acute to what the American Jewish community says or does. And Netanyahu is very, very, very attuned to that. So I think that the letters should not be going to Netanyahu. I mean, by all means communication is always key, but if you're going to write one letter, write to your representative and tell them what have you done today to talk to the State Department to tell them to not do this, or do that or support this or say, say that. This is how I would focus. I think that the kind of internal Jewish dialogue, I'm not sure that we have somebody to talk to. And still I think that the role is critical. It's just a little different. And frankly, that, for example, Ambassador Nides is very responsive to, you know, calls and letters from American constituents. It's very important. And I can tell you that on the day after the elections, I texted him, and I said, 'I have really great news for you.' And he said, 'Really, you have great news today?' And I told him, 'You are now the most important U.S. ambassador to Israel in history. What are you going to do about it?' I think that he hated that question but we need to keep asking him exactly that.
Libby Lenkinski
Yeah. I mean, anybody who's been on one of these webinars with me before knows that my favorite thing is that for an NIF webinar, or on an APN webinar, we always get the same question first, which is, 'What can I do? As an American Jew, what can I do to help?' And I love and appreciate that the almost 400 people that are on this call, are really asking that question. And one in particular, Noa was saying like, you know, beyond supporting the organizations that are doing democratic pushback in Israel, and beyond speaking with our Congress people through organizations like APN and J Street, what else can I do? And I always tell people that, you know, there isn't really a silver bullet in these. I don't like the metaphor, it's a wartime metaphor. but you know, there isn't one answer, but people are asking, like, what is the one thing that I can do? And you know, I think in this country in the United States and North America, at least, there is a shakeup moment around this government. For some of us who are in the trenches of this work for decades, as the three of us and many people on the call are, it's, you know, it's like a, this feels like an extreme version of things that we've experienced already. Not that it's more of the same, but it's also not, you know, we've been saying this could happen, we've been watching the writing on the wall, but for a lot of people, and you know, we're hearing from unlikely voices who are saying I may no longer be able to support Israel, I don't know what I'll do, or, you know, if I were there, I would be joining the protests, say people who are associated with the American Jewish right. And so I am wondering if they're, in addition to supporting ACRI, and other organizations through NIF, through any other vehicles, you guys don't stop doing that, now is the time to double down and beyond supporting APN and J Street in the work to really contact our members of Congress and do the thing that Noa was just saying, what other things or were what do you see as an important right now moment, or right now action that people outside of Israel can take?
Noa Sattath
I think that, I'm curious about, you know, to hear from you whether you've experienced the same thing. We have witnessed two kinds of responses. One, which was overwhelming, is people who are now people from North America who are now ready to, you know, join the fight. Libby, we met when I was in New York in March, and I met with a lot of people who told me, 'You know, I have different priorities. I'm very busy right now, get back to me in the future.' You know, these kinds of polite, polite Americans know. And then, in November, after, you know, on their own accord, they came back to me and said, 'Okay, you know, I'm game now.' And so we have seen a lot of that. But we've also seen a lot of people saying, 'This is too big, I don't know what to do with this.' And you all have friends who are overwhelmed or who are disconnecting. And I think that that's the one of the ways that you can be engaging with them would be very helpful to us because we need all the support that we can get. And I think that you know, all of you can see from this car that we are energized and we are ready to go and we need the support to continue to go on and I think that a lot of people are feeling scared or overwhelmed and are staying away and we need you to help us pull them back in.
Ori Nir
I think it's important to emphasize that what we need is a long term commitment. And in that vein, I wanted to ask, you know, about the long term attitudes of members of this government, and particularly to ask you about one character that you are familiar with personally, and that is Itamar Ben-Gvir. You know, in personal you've, you've interacted with him in the past. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about that, if you could just give us the anecdote. And then and then from that, tell us a bit about what you think his ambitions are both personally as a politician, but also, programmatically, you know, what is what is his vision of Israel, for example.
Noa Sattath
So, I've been working against Ben-Gvir for many, many years. The first time that I met him in-person was when he had just gotten his law degree. It was 2007, and he was submitting a petition to the Supreme Court against the Israeli police who gave the Jerusalem Open House license to have a pride march in Jerusalem. That was following an ACRI appeal after those police refused. And then when we won that appeal, he appealed the other way around, and then when you appeal, you have to supply a copy of the appeal to the different sides. So he had to come to the Open House and give us well, he didn't have to come, he could've sent a messenger, but he chose to come to the Open House and give us the appeal wearing rubber gloves, because he did not want to be contaminated by whatever it was that we were spreading. I've really been following him very, very closely for more than a decade now.
Ori Nir
Just to make sure I understood here, he thought that you were, trying to imply that you're contaminated. Was that? Okay, got it.
Noa Sattath
Classy guy. So, I think that he is very strategic, very smart. And his goal is not to be the Minister of National Defense, his goal is to be Prime Minister, which I think he's very, very far from getting there. But that's his goal. And I think that the dangerous, I mean, this is beyond the scope of where we are in terms of the override clause, and I'm warning you this is going to be very, this is what worries me most is that all of our previous cycles of violence, have begun with a change in the status quo on Al-Aqsa, Temple Mount. And that generated a response in Gaza and East Jerusalem. And then that deteriorated to various levels of horrific violence. And then the cycles always ended with Israel, pulling back from whatever it did on Temple Mount, Al-Aqsa. And now is the first time that we have, A) such an extremist minister who thrives on conflict, and, B) a minister, and even a cohort of coalition members, who are so dedicated to changing the status quo on Al-Aqsa. And so, we at ACRI are very, very worried that we would be getting into a cycle of violence, that it would be longer, more bloody and more dangerous than we've seen in the past. And I think that the American response, for example, that we've seen to saying we're not going to accept any changes is exactly what we need. And we need to keep pushing for that and keep making sure that's on the agenda. I think that's one of the major risks. And the very personal prediction that I have is that Ben-Gvir is going to try to outright Netanyahu. He's going to try and present himself as the real right-wing leader who, you know, who is saving Temple Mount, and Netanyahu as somebody who's trying to get him to get off the Mount and bow down to the Arabs. That's the way he would put it. And I think that that is an extremely, extremely dangerous situation. But that's also one of the options of how this government will end.
Ori Nir
I just wanted to share before you go Libby, just to just to let let you know that I met just recently a few days ago with a diplomat for one of the countries that recently normalized relations with Israel here in Washington, who told me that their nightmare and this this he says something that is shared by the various other countries that normalize relations with Israel is this kind of explosion in Jerusalem that would follow perhaps something like Ben-Gvir did in a limited way a few days ago. So yeah, so Jerusalem, I think I totally agree with you that Jerusalem is the could be the source for a big, big explosion. Yeah.
Libby Lenkinski
One of the things that we love to do as the liberal and progressive left is like, eat ourselves alive and say how much better the right is at everything than we are. I don't share that analysis. But I fall into it in moments like this. And I'm seeing some questions in the chat that are about like, I mean, I like what you said about Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu. When I was recently in Israel, a cab driver that I was talking, to a guy sort of like my age, really handsome tatted up like very tattooed, started talking politics with me because there was something that was on the radio, and I was hemming and hawing and saying, 'Oh my God, oh, I can't believe it' and whatever. And so we started talking and he was like, 'I'm looking at you and I imagine that you're probably live here in Tel Aviv. You're probably a Meretz voter. I'm just like you, I'm a Likudnik my whole life. I voted for Bibi. I'm not the crazies. I'm not Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, I'm a liberal, probably just like you.' And I said to him, 'It's so insane. It's like only in this moment, that you would think that there's not that much space between you and me as a Bibi voter.' It's only because the right has gotten so much more extreme and it really does make me think, and this is something that people are asking in the Q&A too, you know, the right is sort of presenting this unified front. But how unified are they? And how, how unified are they behind Yariv Levin's plan? How unified are they between other measures that have been out there? Like, are they a unified front? Or are there fissures? And if so, might we exploit those fissures?
Noa Sattath
I think that first of all, I want to say something about the Israeli left. Just to kind of give us a little bit of defense. I think that everywhere in the world democracies and crisis and populism is on the rise. Even in the U.S., and even when you beat them, it's really you should be beating them by a lot more than we are. And democratic narrative is still not fully adjusted to addressing populism, and that's true everywhere. And populism always thrives on finding an enemy and blaming them for everything. And the fact that Israel there really is an enemy. Israel is the perfect place for populism to grow. And in some sense that the crisis is not local, and the response will not be only local. We are part of a big wave of populism. And Israel is really a small speck of water in this huge storm that is happening. And we will be impacted by it. I'm sure that, I'm confident that democracy is the best system, that equality is the best value. And we will find a way to articulate that in the face of populism. And when we do, which will be a global thing, then that will also impact Israel. So just to phrase that, in terms of we've been analyzing the coalition agreements, they are insane. I think that the one thing that is very clear is that none of Bibi's partners really believes that he will follow through. These are agreements that were signed by people who have zero faith in each other. And I think that there's a lot of diversity. Inside the right-wing between the ultra-Orthodox have one agenda and Likud members have a different agenda, the ultra-nationalists have a different agenda. I think that in many issues, they would go with the extreme. So Likud members are not necessarily homophobic, but I don't know that they would risk their government at all, for the LGBT community. The ultra-Orthodox are against going on Temple Mount for halakhic reasons, it's banned. It's worse than Women of the Wall halachically, just saying, but I don't think that they will, they will risk their seats in order to prevent that from happening. I think that if there was a war, and they want to end the war, and the war creates a big toll on Israeli citizens and they want that to end, then that may be the result. But so I don't know what the factor lines are. But I think we will find out. I think, you know, Netanyahu wanted to assemble a government in two weeks. He had the power to do it. It took 60 days. And that's a demonstration of how fractured the government really is. And so I don't know that it's a relatively stable government. And it's very hard to predict right now, how long that will, that will last.
Ori Nir
We're nearing the end of our webinar, there are lots of questions that have been in the Q&A, and we won't be able to address them. But if you go on our websites, ACRI's website, which I put a link to in the chat, NIF's website, APN's website, there's lots of analysis and information there. ACRI's website is really, really information and analysis-rich, and I would very much recommend that you.
Noa Sattath
On the ACRI website we have a document with our analysis of all of the risks, or the major risks posed by this government, and it's very, it's not very long, but I hope that it clarifies the situation.
Ori Nir
Yeah, to end with I thought, no, maybe we can talk a little bit about the nature of the opposition to the measures that this government is taking, you know, outside the Knesset opposition, where is there significant, potentially effective opposition? Who are your allies were you working with?
Noa Sattath
So we've been seeing in the past weeks both the civil society world really rising to the occasion. Last Saturday night, we had 30,000 people in Tel Aviv and that's very encouraging. We've also been seeing people who have not been vocal in their opposition to the government, specifically, the Bar Association, have really taken a very central role in the protest movement, past Supreme Court justices, past chiefs of police have spoken like they've never spoken in the past. So that's an asset. And I think that we are beginning to see the economic heart of Israel, the software industry, and the data industry that have really been very silent in past years begin to mobilize and rise, it's still in process. And one of the things that is on the agenda is a strike. And I think that that would be very effective. We can make it happen.
Ori Nir
A strike to protest political measures, political moves?
Noa Sattath
Yeah.
Ori Nir
Wow.
Noa Sattath
I think that anybody who is contributing to the Israeli economy should stop. Stop that contribution until the wind changes. I think that the center of Israeli society that is making the economy work, and the economy is the basis for everything this government does, is vastly opposed to these measures and would be deeply impacted by them.
Ori Nir
Yeah, go ahead, Libby. Yeah.
Libby Lenkinski
Noa, I just wanted to say that, as you know, as I mentioned earlier, like as somebody who's sitting as all three of us are sort of sitting in the middle of activism and civil society action. But I also just to lift up what you just said about the Bar Association and former chiefs of police and things like that. I think it'll be very interesting in the weeks going forward to see which state and quasi-state sectors are enforcing this government's policies and which are opposing it. So I'm in favor of your idea of a strike. And I, you know –
Noa Sattath
So am I. I like it.
Libby Lenkinski
Or that you mentioned here, and I'll say to the New Israel Fund supporters on the call, I can't speak on behalf of APN strategies that we do work very closely together, we do see it as our job to keep you abreast of these kinds of opposition efforts. And so you should be ready for your airwaves to be flooded with these stories, because we think it's particularly important. Noa said we all need your support. And the first step towards that is to just be aware that there are just so many Israelis stepping up in different kinds of ways to oppose either the totality of this regimes, you know, discourse or specific areas of it like in education, like in police and security and like the override clause and the changes to the judiciary. So I think I can speak maybe for Ori as well to say that we do see it as our job to keep you abreast of that through webinars, in our emails, on our social media, our podcasts and we need to be keeping track of those stories to know where we fit in. Also, on the advocacy side, there were so many questions about that today. So I will turn it back to you Ori. But I'll just say thanks to everybody for coming. And thank you Noa, for sharing your wisdom.
Ori Nir
Yeah, I mean, ditto of course, and we also have a network. We actually have a network of progressive Israel-related the Jewish organizations here in the United States who are working together and will intensify their collaboration to address this huge challenge that we're facing. One question that we saw a lot on the Q&A was whether this is recorded. So yes, it is recorded. As I mentioned before, there will be a video recording on APN's YouTube channel and an audio recording on our podcast. And with that, we've reached the end of our really interesting webinar. So thanks again, Libby and Noa, thank you very very much for joining us. This was really interesting and informative and sad. So thanks, everyone for joining and see you soon.