Are Israel's pro-democracy protests fruitful or futile?

Resist much, obey little/ Once unquestioning obedience/ Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of the earth/ Ever afterward resumes its liberty. – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)

When you live in Israel, you get used to roller-coaster ups and downs.

Serene periods of quiet, interspersed with rocket barrages and short fierce battles. Downpours followed by drought. Chilly weather followed by 100-degree F. heat. And lately, a dysfunctional excess of democracy – five national elections in 1,302 days – followed by a severe paucity of democracy – frontal assault on democracy by the far-Right Netanyahu coalition, igniting massive pro-democracy protests.

Yes, life in our little country is – let’s call it “eventful.”  A polar opposite to Switzerland or Singapore.

According to Yale University senior lecturer Dawn Brancati, between 1989 – the end of the Cold War – and 2011, there were 310 democracy protests in 92 countries. In massively protesting attacks on democracy, Israelis have joined a growing crowd of countries.

Background

Israel’s new 64-member coalition government was confirmed by the Knesset on December 29. Only six days later, on January 4, the new Likud Justice Minister, Yariv Levin, together with Religious Zionist MK Simcha Rothman, head of the Knesset Constitution, Justice, and Law Committee, began the process of warp-speed approval of legislation to curtail the powers of the Supreme Court and to control the appointment of judges at all levels. Insiders observe that Levin has ambitions to succeed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

They call it “judicial reform.” Opponents call it a “legislative coup.”

Immediately following Levin’s announcement of his reform plan, widespread protests broke out. The largest protest occurred on March 25, after Netanyahu announced that he was firing his defense minister Yoav Gallant, who had called for a pause in the accelerated legislative reform process. More than 630,000 people attended that day’s rallies throughout Israel, or one in every 14 Israeli citizens. In addition, the national labor union Histadrut called a general strike.

On March 27, Netanyahu backed down and said he was temporarily halting judicial reform legislation. At present, President Isaac Herzog is mediating talks on the reform between coalition and opposition representatives.

What will help make Israel’s mass protests successful?

I interviewed Brancati, who has compiled a massive database on pro-democracy protests. She sent her responses to my questions by email.

Based on the remarkable database you assembled, 1989-2011, covering 310 democracy protests in 92 countries, what are the key factors that determine success of democratic protests?

Researchers have investigated the relationship of many different factors. The only factor thus far that they have found to be strongly correlated in statistical analyses with the success of pro-democracy protests (with success defined as the government accommodating the protesters’ demands in some way) is size.

Larger protests are more likely to extract democratic concessions than small ones. However, as the massive democracy protests in Hong Kong demonstrates, these concessions are not necessarily sustained.

Some research suggests that if 3.5% or more of adults protest, the protests succeed. On March 25 in Israel, 7% of the population came out to demonstrate. What have you found? 

While various numbers have been touted, I am skeptical of claims that protests must be above a certain threshold in terms of numbers of participants to be successful. These numbers, for one, are often based on analyses that group together different types of protests in different contexts. Protests against backsliding in democracies, as in the case of Israel, may be more successful with fewer participants than protests for democracy in authoritarian states.

In the previous decade, we saw pro-democracy protests break out in six Mideast countries: Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. The protest in Tunisia succeeded – though its progress is now being sharply rolled back. Is there any evidence that such successful protests spread from one country to its neighbors?

There is no good evidence that the success of democracy protests in neighboring countries is influential or that the cohesion of the protests or that the type of protest organizer affects the success of democracy protests.

How crucial is nonviolence?

While some research has claimed that protests in general are more successful when protesters are ‘unarmed,’ I, and others, have not found that democracy protests are more successful when they use violence. However, this may be due to differences in what constitutes violence and whether the protests occur in democracies or non-democracies, among other things.

What else can troubled citizens do, besides mass demonstrations?

Protests are not the only way that citizens can voice demands for democracy. Public opinion polls and social media can also be important in this regard. Protests, though, send a strong signal regarding people’s conviction because they require more effort and sacrifice than other means of the publicly expressing support for democracy.

ASSAULTS ON democracy and resulting protests are indeed on the rise. Harvard University professor Erica Chenoweth finds that “the number of demonstrations has increased steadily since 2006… the most prevalent demand of protesters around the world in the period 2006-2020 was for ‘real democracy.’”

Her 2021 book Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know documents how “over 50% of the nonviolent revolutions from 1900 to 2019 have succeeded outright – while only about 26% of the violent ones did.”

The most frequent source of grievance, Chenoweth found, in analyzing almost 3,000 protests, is failure of political representation and political systems – Israel’s current ailment.

Lessons from the US

“Is our democracy in danger? It is a question we never thought we’d be asking. Yet we worry…politicians now treat their rivals as enemies, intimidate the free press….[and] try to weaken the institutional buffers of our democracy, including the courts…”

Those words fit precisely Israel’s current predicament. But they were published in 2018 in the book How Democracies Die, by [Harvard University political scientists] Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, and refer not to Israel but to the United States.

What most worried the authors? Two critical US “guardrails of democracy,” key norms, secured American democracy in the past.

One is “mutual tolerance – acceptance of political rivals as legitimate competitors and leaders.” A second is “institutional forbearance – politicians exercise restraint over their power,” resisting the temptation to act in a way that violates the spirit of the law, even if technically legal.

Both, the authors note, have been seriously damaged since 2016.

Junking both “guardrails,” Netanyahu cites his razor-thin majority as a blank check and ignores or denigrates all opponents, who include a former Mossad head, several former Shin Bet heads, former head of the Israel Police, former IDF chief of staff, and all 10 living commanders of the Israeli Air Force.

Democracy builds on twin values: the will of the majority, and respect for the rights of the minority. True democracy cherishes both. Levin’s judicial reforms threaten to destroy the second. And the “minority” turns out to be an opposition majority.

Do Israelis support the Levin-Rothman proposed judicial reforms?

In late February, opinion polls showed: “63% think the Supreme Court should have the power to strike down a law if it is incompatible with the Basic Laws; 60% think that the current balance in the makeup of the Judicial Selection Committee should be maintained; 58% oppose modifying the current method by which ministry legal advisers are appointed; 67% agreed there should be compromise negotiations between the conflicting parties to create consensus.” (The poll was conducted by Israel Democracy Institute’s Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research. IDI, as its name indicates, is strongly pro-democracy).

Polls reveal that if elections were held tomorrow, Netanyahu and Likud would not win. According to The Times of Israel, a Channel 13 poll on Sunday, April 9, predicted that Likud would fall to 20 Knesset seats were elections held now, compared to the 32 it currently holds – a low it has not seen in 17 years.

Is halachic Judaism consistent with democracy? 

Most Israelis believe that Israel should be a Jewish and a democratic state. But are those two defining characteristics compatible?

In 1995, in the wake of the assassination of prime minster Yitzhak Rabin, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow established Tzohar, an organization of liberal Orthodox rabbis. A decade ago, Cherlow addressed the alleged contradiction between democracy and Halacha:

“Those who come in the name of Judaism claim more than once that they cannot speak the language of democracy, which includes compromises, concessions and agreements, since it is not about their personal positions that can be conceded, but rather represents positions that are of divine origin, and therefore agreements and compromises cannot be reached. Whereas those who come in the name of democracy claim that there is no authority whatsoever that has the right to violate individual rights.”

In other words, God commanded; who are we to disobey?

God commanded? Really? Who says?

Cherlow disagrees with this dogma. And so did a top Orthodox authority, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, professor of philosophy and author of The Halachic Mind (1986).

Here is what Soloveitchik, a dedicated believer in Halacha, wrote in the magazine Tradition: “Jewish thinking is dialectical thinking [i.e., the ability to view issues from multiple perspectives]. But not like Hegel. It is irreconcilable and interminable. It only consists of thesis and antithesis. The third stage, synthesis, is missing.”

Of course, Jews must think and choose what to believe and do. But this is an individual democratic choice. Jews were democratic centuries before the Magna Carta. There is no book more democratic than the Talmud – 2,711 pages of dialectic, Beit Hillel vs. Beit Shammai, containing fierce debates about core issues among 400 learned sages. And no pat answers.

Soloveitchik, the foremost Orthodox thinker of his time, proposed “teleological heterogeneity” – academic jargon for a multiplicity of views regarding cause and effect. In other words, democracy. We each are free to choose what we do and what we believe – and have the obligation to do so in an informed manner.

Ethics of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot, mostly from the Mishna) counsels: Choose a Rav (aseh l’cha rav). In other words, choose an authoritative voice. But note the word: “choose”! Each of us, democratically, based on learning, values, culture, family history, and personality, chooses whom to follow, what to believe and why, and whose scholarly wisdom to embrace. This is parallel to voting – democratically choosing a leader.

So much for Judaism being inherently anti-democratic.

Will the pro-democracy protests lead to a constitution? 

In their piece published in this issue, my Neaman Institute colleagues Reuven Gal, Eitan Adres and Nachi Alon believe the protests will succeed, but it will take a very long time: “…as long as the threat to the strength of society and the state continues, this resistance response will continue as long as it is required.”

There are some small indications of compromise. From the rather vitriolic negotiations mediated by President. Herzog, there are very early hints of a draft constitution, which, like the US Constitution, comprises a Bill of Rights for citizens and defines the rules by which democratic conflicts are resolved.

Israel’s Declaration of Independence of 1948 is a 650-word document reflecting wide consensus in Israeli society. It calls clearly for a constitution: “...until the establishment of the elected and regular authorities of the state in accordance with the constitution to be determined by the elected constituent assembly no later than October 1, 1948…”

That constituent assembly never happened, owing to the War of Independence and, later, fractious politics.

It is high time Israel had a constitution – 75 years late, far better late than never.  ■

The writer heads the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center at S. Neaman Institute, Technion and blogs at www.timnovate.wordpress.com.

Civil resistance: Five things everyone should know

1. Civil resistance is a realistic and more effective alternative to violent resistance in most settings.
2. Civil resistance works not by melting the adversary’s heart but by creating defections from his/her support base.
3. Civil resistance involves more than just protest – it includes strikes, creation of new alternatives, and alternative political groups.
4. Civil resistance has been far more effective over the past 100 years than armed resistance, both in democratization and pushing forward major progressive change, without creating long-term humanitarian crises.
5. Although nonviolent resistance does not always succeed, it works much more than its detractors want you to know.

Source: Erika Chenoweth, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (2021)