Israeli Politics Does Not Translate to American Understanding

By Josh Lancman ‘24
Coming into HaShalom station in Tel Aviv just before Pesach, only a week after nationwide protests had ended, experiencing the holiday did not feel so different than it did a year prior. People were crowded on the sidewalks, while taxis and cars, rather than protestors, filled the streets and the Ayalon highway below. Life appeared to have gone back to normal; it almost certainly has, but then there is that everlasting problem of being a Jew, specifically an American Jew, on the outside looking in at the State of Israel: you can try your best to understand this place, you certainly can strongly identify with it, but there will always be a barrier to gaining complete comprehension. 

​

Writing well before the anti-Judicial reform bill protests began and flared up throughout March, Thomas Friedman, in his widely published Op-Ed “The Israel we Knew is Gone,” describes Israel’s “political trends” as only “off-Broadway to our [the U.S.’s] Broadway.” Friedman’s concerns over a far-right Israeli government causing a national destabilization of politics proved legitimate; however, his devaluing of Israeli politics and government as solely an outcropping of related American issues is a flawed evaluation.
For comparison, have you ever had family or friends from outside the United States ask you about, say, why Donald Trump won the election in 2016 despite him losing the popular vote, and found yourself having to explain the entire electoral college system and how it rewards candidates in a winner-take-all function by the individual state instead of a straightforward nationwide majority victory? I know I have, and whenever I find myself in this situation detailing our nation’s unique political systems, I always try to base my explanation on our own history and societal progression. 
To explain the peculiar-seeming institution of the electoral college, I try to base it on the founding fathers’ hatred of the tyranny of the majority, the idea that in a perfectly democratic system, a majority group in the population can impose its own will onto the minority without the latter, smaller group having any say. You can see this in democratic countries with a pronounced ethnic or regional split, such as in India between Hindus and Muslims; the former, the majority of the population, controls the government and can impose its will for its sole benefit onto the country as a whole. 

The electoral college, at least in the 1780s when it was devised, necessitates that presidential candidates have to gain a broad coalition of support from across the political spectrum to win the election, as they must recognize less populous states to get the needed votes. In Federalist No. 10, future President James Madison explains why this system is necessary. "The majority, having such coexistent passion or [self] interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression.” At the time, when the population center of the nation was the North, this system gave the smaller South, where Madison of Virginia hailed from, a greater ability to control national politics and prevent tyranny by the Northern majority, incidentally allowing them to keep, by virtue of their powerful position in the political situation, their own peculiar institution of slavery. 
Yet as we have seen numerous times in our nation’s history, in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and most recently in 2016, this system does not work, as a candidate can win an election without even a simple popular majority. To nations across the world, it seems absurd that we keep the electoral college around, but by virtue of knowing our history, we as Americans can at least explain, if not justify, why our country is the way it is, therefore paving the path to eventually change it for the better. 
Why do we then force an understanding of Israel from the terms of American democracy? America’s government functions as it does by the product of its own history and society, and although oftentimes slowly and after the fact, it does change to accommodate the change in the nation as a whole. We may have only passed seventeen amendments to the Constitution since the Bill of Rights, but the government has still changed and developed with the times, though not always positively or quickly. 
In the same way, the Israeli government adapts to the country’s history and society, so to truly understand Israel, you must first understand the way in which its government functions, why that is, and what that means for the country. 
From an American perspective, the Judicial reform bill championed by Prime Minister Netanyahu overrides the separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches, a vital component of our own democracy. ABC News stated that the nationwide protests were about an attempt by “parliament to increase its oversight of the court system” and is a grab for power by the current government. This is, while ignoring the fact that separation of the executive and legislative branch does not exist in Israel, a parliamentary democracy, technically true, but an oversimplification by putting the issue into American terms. The judicial reform bill also is intended to counteract judicial activism, specifically by more left-wing judges. Yet, since this concept has little correlation with American politics or government, you do not see any mention of it. 
Even though the American analysis of Israel may accurately identify some major issues, perceiving all Israeli politics from an American lens is incorrect. Israel is its own nation, after all, and deserves to be understood on its own terms, not simply as an outcropping of American Jewry and democracy in the Middle East; not a state to be criticized for failing to align with our own values or merely a chess piece in a game of geopolitics, but as its own living, breathing nation, with its own beliefs, its own history, its own society, somewhat similar and intertwined with our own but just not us. We can view Israel, yes, we can love it, absolutely, but to understand it, to have a complete comprehension, an absolute relation to it, you must first recognize that it is not you and understand it on its own basis first, for only then will you be able to have an impact on this country that you may not be a citizen of, but are still intimately connected with.