Israel has provided us with a time machine, giving us a glimpse into our potential future where small minority factions control the narrative—and the government. We’d be wise to pay attention.
Its fragile but stable democracy has heretofore heeded the wishes of a people united by their origin story of a hopeful democracy popping up in the middle of an inhospitable desert, surrounded by inhospitable neighbors. Now, by assembling a group of radical and disparate entities, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, has secured a four-vote majority in Parliament, known as the Knesset, and has turned the country on its head.
Without mandate, and in a naked effort to retain power—no one relinquishes it willingly—Bibi, who also bears the nickname “Crime Minister” because he is under indictment for various corruption charges, built his razor-thin majority in the Knesset by including a combination of far-right parties and ultra-orthodox religionists.
He is determined to end the country’s system of checks-and-balances that relied on the Supreme Court as a fair arbiter. The country has no written constitution, so his four-vote majority was able to cut the court off at the knees. Now, the executive and the legislature, which the executive happens to control, are free to end Israel’s secular democracy, and they’re wasting no time.
We are seeing similar anti-democracy signs here in the movement to change the nature of some of our most durable, apolitical public entities like school boards and library boards.
These little fires everywhere are not coincidental. Neither are they grassroots efforts. They are well-orchestrated, and well-funded by two right-wing think tanks, The Manhattan Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. Neither is shy about their mission to turn back time on equal rights. The Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo is a good strategist and a better propagandist. He taught his minions how to frame school and library boards as bastions of liberal thought that are bent on destroying families by promoting LGBTQ+ agendas and creating CRT curricula.
Demographics are not on the side of the hard-right, and will only get worse for them. That’s why they’re going all-in on their culture wars today. For instance, 69% of Michigan’s under 30 voters went in favor of amending the state constitution to include abortion rights. Last year, in a similar referendum in Kansas, women and young voters rejected weakening the state Supreme Court’s protections on abortion rights.
We have a hard-right faction that disdains the progress that weakens them. They would like to return to the glory days when only White men had the vote, but demographics are destiny, and they’ll settle for holding back the hands of time as long as possible.
Back to Israel, the Netanyahu coalition represents a statistical majority in the Knesset, but outside of electoral coalitions, it is reviled by the masses who have spent 25 weeks protesting in the streets. To quote the conservative Jewish columnist, Bret Stephens, “A statesman sacrifices himself for his nation. A demagogue sacrifices his nation for himself.” He goes on, “That’s why the particulars of the legislation matter less than the way it was carried out and the motives of those who championed it. For the most part, they represent Israel’s least productive and engaged citizens — ultra-Orthodox Jews who want military exemptions and welfare, settlers who want to be a law unto themselves, [and] ideologues in think tanks — abusing their temporary majority to secure exemptions, entitlements, immunities and other privileges that mock the idea of equality under law.”
My fear is that we are on the same path. One where a thin electoral majority in Congress will grind government to halt until they get their way in the culture wars.
People will try to convince us that this is a war between the right and left, but as Stephens notes, it is actually a war between liberalism and illiberalism. The question to us is whether we want to become Hungary or Russia—illiberal states—or whether we want to continue the American experiment which embodies liberalism as an ideal (not, incidentally, political-liberals). And this is, I hasten to say again, not about conservatives and liberals or traditional Republicans and Democrats. It is far more important than parties. It goes to the soul of the nation.
There’s a well-organized, well-funded faction on the hard-right who really want to turn the clock back in all of America to the pre-New Deal 1930s. By providing instruction and materials to local organizations, they’ve made their mission clear. We need to take them seriously before they gain control of our libraries and schools.
Israel’s time machine gives us a glimpse into a dark future. The ultra-right wing, anti-democratic factions want to usher us in to that time machine and take us back to the past. That’s a trip I don’t want to take.
©2023 Jon Sinton