Why Let the Left Dominate Israeli Institutions?

From newspapers and television stations, to the committee that appoints Supreme Court justices, to the body responsible for overseeing school curricula, a number of key Israeli institutions have long been under the de-facto control of the left. As Evelyn Gordon points out, many have complained about this situation, but very few have tried to change it:

[A]n intellectual or cultural elite isn’t just a random collection of individuals who produce intellectual or cultural output; it’s a power center. And while Israel’s center-right produces both intellectuals and artists, not only has it failed to mobilize these resources to pose any real challenge to the left’s cultural dominance, but for the most part, it hasn’t even tried. Instead, it makes do with whining. . . .

[L]eftists didn’t achieve their dominance of these power centers by divine decree; they achieved it through decades of intensive effort. So if the right wants to contest left-wing domination of the intellectual and cultural elite, it needs to invest equivalent effort. If it just keeps waiting for the left to share this power of its own accord, it will be waiting until the messiah comes.

Read more at Evelyn Gordon

More about: Israel & Zionism, Israel Prize, Israeli culture, Israeli left, Israeli Supreme Court

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF