Political arguments are always clarified when people say the quiet part out loud. Such a moment occurred last week on Israeli television when as part of a news panel discussion, Channel 12 host Galit Gutman referred to haredi Jews as “bloodsuckers.”

Gutman’s comments engendered a storm of protest from a broad range of Israeli society, including some members of the opposition as well as the government. But the incident also offers an insight into the political turmoil that has been going on in the Jewish state for the past five months.

The focus on Gutman—who issued a weasel-worded apology about hurting the feelings of haredim rather than acknowledging that her words were not merely offensive but employed a classic trope of antisemitism—is immaterial. However, the model turned television presenter shone a spotlight on the feelings that have been dividing Israeli society. And that’s something that Americans, who have been fed a steady diet of media coverage that characterizes the debate as one that is really about the survival of democracy, need to understand and take to heart.

What’s driving the demonstrations?

The demonstrations that have attracted hundreds of thousands of protesters and intimidated the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into temporarily shelving its proposals for judicial reform have ostensibly been in defense of “democracy.” This movement has generated unprecedented attention and mobilized to threaten the country with ruin should the government legislation be passed. Ostensibly, this was because much of the Israeli population and the media, business, academic, legal and even parts of the security establishments believe that cutting back on the unaccountable power of the Israeli Supreme Court and the legal establishment would lead to the creation of an authoritarian regime.

The spurious claims about judicial reform are deeply felt by the demonstrators. They think that unless left-wing judges are allowed to maintain their power to rule on any issue under any circumstances—and overrule the elected legislature and government with impunity and with no rationale other than their own ideas about what is “reasonable”—democracy is imperiled. Their position is actually antithetical to the basic principles of democracy that hold that the chosen representatives of the majority of the voters should be allowed to govern. But those who identify with the secular left and the country’s ruling elites genuinely believe that unless their particular views prevail, the outcome is inherently undemocratic.

Yet the more one digs deeper into both the discussion and the invective being hurled at the government, which was broadly elected last November, the easier it is to see that a cultural, ethnic and religious divide is driving the protests as much, if not more than, any theoretical arguments about maintaining the power of the courts. Comments (not unlike those of Gutman) have often been made by demonstrators and their sympathizers. The seething contempt for their fellow citizens who gave Netanyahu’s coalition a clear majority in the Knesset is not exactly a well-guarded secret.

The characterization of supporters of the government as “freeloaders,” words often heard about the haredi sector, relates to the fact that a vast majority of their males don’t perform mandatory army service. Many of these men also study Torah full-time rather than hold jobs—an issue equally offensive to other Israelis, who bitterly and not unnaturally resent the burden this places on them to support a growing sector of the population that lives in poverty due in no small measure to this choice.

The backlash against the establishment of the current government was largely because of the influence in it of religious voters, as well as those who are politically right-wing or of Mizrachi origin. Those who supported the National Religious and the Otzma Yehudit Parties, as opposed to the two haredi parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, are among the most likely to serve in the military (even though that alliance’s two leaders, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir did not). But the main focus of the anger of the demonstrators has been about the idea that the haredim have a strong voice in the government.

The opposition in the streets is, for the most part, a movement of secular Ashkenazi Israelis who are economically better off and who are dismayed at the idea that the other half of the country might actually be allowed to govern without being obstructed at every turn by the courts. This speaks to the wellspring of distrust and animosity that one side in the country’s tribal conflict feels about the other. And beyond that it is a fight about whether a secular vision of what a Jewish state should mean can long prevail over one backed by a growing majority that wants it to be more assertively Jewish, while still democratic, even if more voters prefer the latter to the former.

The talk of democracy has always been a thin facade covering a desire to overturn the results of the November 2022 election in which Netanyahu’s allies received approximately half of the votes and 64 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. The protests are—similar to the reaction to the election of former President Donald Trump in 2016—a “resistance” determined to topple the object of their ire by any means possible, fair or foul. Only such a belief could possibly justify the determination of Netanyahu’s opponents to cripple Israel’s economy (by pulling investment out of the country) and its security (by military pilots refusing to do reserve duty) in order to get their way.

Image - Miriam Alster/Flash90