"GLOBAL ISSUES, LEADERSHIP CHOICES":

This Foreign Policy article by University of Pennsylvania professor and Middle East expert Ian Lustick provides a far-reaching analytical framework for interpreting the recent protests over judiciary reforms in Israel:

"Pundits warn that civil war may be coming to Israel. In fact, civil war has already arrived. In just the first 10 weeks of this year, bloody violence in all parts of the country has resulted in nearly a hundred dead and thousands wounded, along with waves of mass civil disobedience and a looming constitutional crisis. All this follows an unprecedentedly tumultuous period in Israeli politics—five indecisive elections in just four years. But what, exactly, is this war being fought over? Ask hundreds of thousands of protesters opposing the government’s legislative blitz against the judiciary and they will say it is over whether Israel will remain a democracy or become a dictatorship run by ultranationalists, racists, and fundamentalists. Ask government officials and they will say it is over whether Israel will be ruled democratically, by the will of the majority of voters, or whether an elite-controlled deep state, protected by weaponized courts, will ride roughshod over the people’s will. Ask Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and they will say it is over whether the nightmare they are living can be made to include Israeli Jews or whether masses of Arab non-citizens can be bludgeoned into political irrelevance. Ask rampaging Jewish settlers and they will say it is over whether a Supreme Court of unbelievers can use foreign ideas to keep Jews from settling and redeeming their land. What is most striking is that although both sides say they are fighting for democracy, no one will publicly acknowledge what this struggle is actually about. Much like white northern elites in the United States during the 1850s who didn’t see that the brewing conflict was fundamentally about equal citizenship rights, few in today’s Israel acknowledge what is at stake in the Israeli context: namely, whether Palestinians will someday be equal citizens of the state in which they live."
foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/26/israel-civil-war-protests-lincoln-united-states