Israeli Democracy Rests in the Democratic Spirit of Its People

Feb. 27 2023

Although Alan Dershowitz is skeptical about the reforms to the judicial system currently being considered by the Israeli government, he finds the attention they are receiving outside the Jewish state entirely unmerited:

The world paid little attention when left-wing Democrats demanded the packing of the U.S. Supreme Court and limitations on the terms and powers of the justices following the controversial overturning of Roe v. Wade. Even when President Joe Biden appointed a commission to study these issues and make recommendations, the international community ignored it. But the world seems obsessed with the Israeli debate, as it does about so many other issues relating to Israel. This obsession is part of the dangerous double standard that the international community has long imposed on the nation state of the Jewish people.

The international community has little or no stake in the outcome of this debate. It will have little effect, if any, on any peace process or on the Abraham Accords or on Israel’s relationships with other countries.

And what of the dire warnings, exported from the pages of Israeli newspapers to those of the New York Times and the Guardian, that democracy is under threat in the Jewish state? Dershowitz continues:

Democracy produced the new government [now pushing for judicial reform], and democracy produced the protests against it. So much for the fear mongering among those who are telling the world that Israel is on the verge of becoming an autocracy—or in the false and dangerous words of some extremists, that it has already become the Germany of the 1930s. . . . I don’t believe that the Israeli people will easily succumb to the temptations of authoritarianism—and certainly not fascism. They are too independent, opinionated, and ornery. They have chutzpah, in the best sense of that term. More importantly, and more relevant to this discussion, if the pendulum were ever to swing in the direction of fascism—which I do not believe it will—the Supreme Court alone will not save it.

Read more at Jerusalem Strategic Tribune

More about: Alan Dershowitz, Israeli democracy, Israeli Judicial Reform, Israeli politics

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023