Just two months after the establishment of the 6th Netanyahu government, Israel has never been so divided. For more than a month, week after week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis, refusing to see their country change its regime, have been demonstrating. They are no longer just the usual “leftist traitors”, as the leaders and opinion makers of the right have been calling them for years, but all the components of the Israeli society: secular and religious, employers and economists, high-tech business leaders who are the driving force of the country’s economy, writers and artists, past and present members of the secular apparatus…It is no longer only the inhabitants of the Telavivian bubble who occupy the crossroads of their city on Saturdays, but those of the cities of the center as well as of the periphery. According to some estimates, there were 300,000 people chanting around the Knesset “Democratia” on the day of the first reading vote of laws that would transform the democracy created by their parents and grandparents nearly seventy-five years ago, of which they are so proud, into a regime that will no longer be a democracy, and that will give all powers to a circumstantial majority. 55% of the population oppose this “legal revolution“.
And this week, to the chaos of the street in the country is added that of a loss of control of the situation in the occupied territories, where the army intervened only after several hours in the village of Hawara while hundreds of settlers were carrying out a real pogrom in reaction to the assassination of two young brothers living in one of their nearby colonies.
This situation does not surprise us. We feared it 13 years ago when we launched our Call to reason. Today we are launching another Call to reason at a conference in the European Parliament on 27 March which you can attend either in person or via video-conference.
We are convinced that in Israel like in the diaspora, we are the majority who refuse the suicidal drift of this country, to which we are unwaveringly attached as Jews. It is time for our majority to make its voice heard to express its convictions and its commitment to keep Israel what its Founding Fathers wanted it to be: a Jewish AND democratic state for all its citizens!
